Robert Orange

un, at intervals, shone out like a live coal among dying embers. All was obscured; the foot-passengers and passing vehicles seemed black straying shadows in the atmosphere. But the express emerged a

the scene, but her emotions did not seem to her, emotions. Absorbed by them, and in them, she neither abandoned herself to the hour nor asked herself what the hour held. She and the hour were one-a single note; and the joy she felt at being with Robert, leaning on his arm and hearing his voice, was so simple that, even if a psychologist of the deepest experience had been able to probe into the workings of her mind, he would have found nothing there to analyse. Hers was a child's affection-the first love of a heart still immature, and not yet made suspicious of itself by contact with others less innocent. Parflete had been too worldly-wise not to guard and value-at its true price-a disposition so graceful in its very essence. She had a knowledge of affairs beyond her years, yet her own instincts, her education, her few friendships, had kept her curiously ignorant of evil, of much also that is neither good nor evil, but merely human. The sombre sentimentality which lurks in most young girls of seventeen was not in her character at all, and in its stead she possessed the gaiety and carelessness of feeling which belongs to imaginative rather than to sensuous natures. A boy-like spirit showed itself i

Catesby?" she asked suddenly. "I s

er fragrant, animated face. "I wish," said he,

it's affection for him was not love in the full human sense of the word. He had exchanged an ordinary self-restraint for an impossibly false position. She could inspire his life, but could she enter into it, be it, live it with him daily? Would there not have to be great reservations, half statements, and, worst of all, a subtle kind of hypocrisy? He reproached himself for selfishness, yet the fear came and it remained. He had captured the rainbow and married the goddess. Were there not many legends illustrating this folly?-stories of men who had married divinities and perished, not because the divinities were at fault, but because mortals must wed with mortals. The sight of his wife's beauty caused a sudden, violent irritation. He wished she had none, for then, perhaps, he thought he would have been satisfied, more than content, in the placid consideration of her charms of character. He found himself reduced to the absurd predicament of deci

e chicken and one of those very droll, very stupid, English rice puddings? Please let me have one.... And may I

h excellent points, gave Brigit, after many entreaties, his paw. She addressed the monkey in Italian, and laughed till she cried at its absurdities. Robert looked on, consume

fond of animals," he said, as t

you I feel so happy that I want to kiss everything-the ground,

why no

a little, and waited some

t accustomed to you yet. I keep thinking 'I shall wake up in a minute and he will be miles away.

s

sappointed in me because I seem-I must seem-rather flippant. I da

why

louded by the old, terrible, unnatural sadness

ver get to Heaven, our first impulse will be to run

wit, darling, to

ant you always. That is all ... you, always, on any term

a pi

that might be realised." A smile hovered again about her lips, but she looked steadily ahead, as though

ch told Robert that his dissatisfaction had been the inevitable result of too many blessings on a base natu

ning is a surprise. I think, too, about your character ... your career. Have I helped you, or have I been a hindrance? I am perverse, capricious

rld's opinion, trying to do the will of God than saved-doing nothing! One has to ta

would call th

mes do not matter. The ghastly, unspeakable dread is

t suffer horribly within ourselves when we do wrong, I believe

eing rippled, as it were, with the new disturbance, just as a pond will tremble to its edges at the mere dip of a swallow's wing. The artistic hatred

ible devil, but this struggle wit

moods and tast

and sometimes it is so loud and so beautiful that I wonder why every one else doesn't stop to listen. They n

ve heard

en scruple-a sort of delicacy. She thought nothing at all of her beauty and never of her fortune; but in giving Robert he

were going to

er some of the nights at the theatre.... I liked the theatre.... I believe I could ac

ed, had given her that quality of mysteriousness, of dreamy habits of thought, of languor, which, even to Robert, had looked as though she might find this earth too rough to live on. But the despair which comes from fighting, unsuccessfully, the world, is not that app

on the stage," sa

th anguish, the deep amazemen

u instead. I want to devote my

at this is a kind of-of pity-of anyth

learning Phédre and Juliet was the reason I lived, I was thinking of the time when I had no right to think of you. Of course I loved you always, from the beginning. It began at Chambord when I first met you. I very seldom say these things, and it is bett

g spirit, and yet it is seldom that the touch can be given without inflicting agony. Orange could not reply at once. In his resolve to be unselfish-to put aside that personal equation which w

also indestructible. You hear the echo of the call as long as you live-perhaps afterwards. At your age

joyousness and clung m

of forgetting you. It is something resembling happiness to be alone in the turmoil of the world with one unspoilt illusion. This illusio

n your mouth. Woe to us both if we cannot be resolute now. I could have waited-had I seen any reason to wait. Time could make no difference in my lo

istant hills and tree tops show most distinctly before a storm, so every possibility which can arise from a conflict of duties stood out with a decisive clearness for his consideration. He had married in haste a child-bride. There was no blinking the fact. She had the strenuous religious fibre, and with it real Bohemian blood. She was also at the yielding age, when a dominant influence could do much to divert or modify every natural trait. He could not doubt that he had this power over her then. How far, and to what purpose, should he exert it? For himself he wished to discourage any hankering on her part for public life, and, most of all, public life behind the footlight

o proverb: 'Find the flower which can bloom in the silence that follows-not that which precedes-the storm.' This applies perfectly to a talent or a vocation. If the mood is there, in spite of fatigue, or dis

in wha

your conduct or by your own estimate of your conduct. You have no vanity, so

not have foreseen, the effect of h

r. Sometimes it seems as though the extraordinary, impossible ideal would be to have you with me for ever, and be an actress as well. But that is out of the question. And if I had

u I should be a d

xcomb," she

the sea, which, near the horizon, was as green as the sky on a summer evening. But clouds were gathering in the north-west, and the peculiar brightness which presages rain lent a fugitive brillianc

ts ground. How I love my country and the