The Nest, The White Pagoda, The Suicide, A Forsaken Temple, Miss Jones and The Masterpiece

lly saw me or spoke to me. Such a mistake as I have made-or as others have made for me-is irretrievable. An unhappy marriage seems to ruin everything

her eyes fixed on vacancy. The contemplation of ruins for the last five years had filled these eyes with a pensive resignation; but they showed no tearful repinings, no fretful restlessness. They were clear eyes, large and luminous, and in looking at them and at the wan, lovely little face where they bloomed like me

r skin was swarthy, her eyes, under broad, tragically bent eyebrows, were impenetrably black. Her features, had they not been so small, so finely finished, would have seemed too emphatic, significant as they were of a race-horse nervousness and of something inflexible in the midst of an ex

rifted to her and rest

ly she

to care so much,

o ca

eaning towards her a little, and the smile seemed to flut

riend, always," Mrs. Drent replied,

know, the silly, pathetic, sentimental and selfish mixture one is at nineteen;-and Mamma said that he was that ideal; and he said nothing; so I believed her! Poor Dick! He was in love, I think, really, and not a bit with himself, and with only enough articulateness to ask me to marry him; and of course he was, and is, very good-looking. You know

ble, such marriages," sai

, as perhaps a little misplaced. "Terrible? No, hardly that

did not know herself,

that i

le for him if he

licity and harmlessness for having broken mine. Marriage and a wife were incidents-incidents only-to him, and if they have failed to be satisfactory incidents, he has other far more absorbing interests in his life to take his mind off the breakdown of his domestic happiness. Indeed, domesticity, when he cares to avail himself of it, is always there in its superficial forms and ceremonies. I can't pretend to love him, but I take care of his

s. Drent, "but it is incredible that such a

rusive always, and, unobtrusively, she was known to be inconsolable. Yet Milly had heard it whispered that Gilbert Drent had married her for her money and that, charming person though he had been, she had passionately idealized him. There w

o have such a memory. All I know is that I wish with all my heart I had never married Di

ity, and understanding, and devotion. Some women can find enough in the mere fact

c in its chambers; but even if he got inside and were able to see and hear, he wouldn't care a bit about them; he would say: 'Awfully nice,' and look for the smoking-room. And there," said Milly, pressing her hands together while her eyes filled suddenly with tears, "there is the little tragedy. For of course every woman thinks that she has pictures and jewels and music, and longs-oh longs!-to show them to the one, the one person who will love to see and hear. And when she finds that no one sees or hears, or knows, even, that there is anyth

ish! There's nothing else in life! All the rest is death. It's only when we are in the castle-with our music and our pictures and our jewels-that we are alive. You know it; you feel it; it's what makes the difference between the re

of you!" fa

t all one's miseries and desolations. But the sudden leap of spiritual fire found her unprepared. She was a little ashamed, as though her own reality were somewhat unreal beside Mrs. Drent's belief in it. There had been something pleasant in the tracing of her little tragedy, something sweet in the thought of that

her childlike radiance, her smiles, her air as of rifts of blue over a rainy landscape-(for everybody knew that Dick and Milly Quentyn didn't hit it off)-it had been these sweet, these doubly pathetic qualities that had first attracted her. "I am not easily attracted," said Christina. "Had there been a languis

her, as the distinguished young poetess, and had thought of her as a sombre and

ss a bleak sky the flight of an unknown bird. In her own little world of fashion they had made her a tolerably famous figure. But it was an echo only of her regrets and longings that Christina was able to put into her poems, all perhaps that she chose to put; they were never intimate or personal. The essence of her was t

y were sealed for ever, the sacred emptiness for ever empty; Christina could never have remarried. Bu

ves about her, fortifying, expanding her own. Her disappointment in her husband had turned to something like a wan disgust. His crude appreciations of her, which, in the first girlish trust of her married life, she had taken as warrant of all the subtle, manifold appreciations that she needed, were now offences. Poor Dick Quentyn blundered deeper and deeper into the quagmire of his wife's disdain. His was a boyish, unexacting natur

, with a bleak patience, while he admired, with a genial endeavour to do the right thing, all the wrong pictures at the shows where they went together. She sat silent, her eyes aloof, dimly smiling, while he tried to win her interest in a very jolly book,-watered Dumas, as a rule, decantered into modern bottles. He saw

him out from even these manifestations of tenderness. He was not at all dull in feeling that; not at all dull in his quick withdrawal before her passive distaste; not dull in knowing that if he were not to withdraw the distaste would become more than negative. He had now, cheerfully, it seemed, recognized that his marriage was a failure and, as Milly had said, it di

en life, if there were materials with which to build it. The first glance at Dick showed her the futility of such hopes. He was a dear; that at once was obvious to her; and he was delightful looking; his small head well set on broad shoulders, his short nose expressive of courage and character; his grey eyes as free from all malice and uncharitableness as they were from introspection. But he was a boy, a kind, good boy, an ingenuous, well-mannered materialist, living, as it were, by automatic functions,

She did not care so much about Dick's very problematic discomfort. He showed none; he talked with great good spirits, made cheerful, obvious jokes and looked eminently sane, fresh and picturesque in his out-of-door attire. Yet even

st because you are so right in what you feel t

to Dick? Oh, Christina!-yo

other, these two, and bared their

ee you always right, exquisitely right. You make me uncomfortable when you are not. He has done you no wrong. Why should you treat him a

his only conception of human intercourse. I know I'm horrid-I know it; but it is the long, long accumulations of repressed exasperation that have made me so-worse than exasperations. I remember, during the first months of our married life, when I was becoming dreadfully frightened, catching g

id:-"Dick shy! Oh no, he is not sensitive enough for shyness. He doesn't feel things at all as you, with yo

he first time in her life, knew the intoxicating experience of being sought out and needed. It was Milly who turned to her; Milly who put out appealing hands, like a lonely child

was not aware of this nor aware that it was the first time in her life that she was the recipient of as much devotion as she gave. They read and rode and walked and talked and carried on energetic reforms and charities in the village. Chris

n and recognition, and Milly possessed the irradiating attractive qualities that Christina lacked. Together they became something of a touchstone for the finer, more recondite elements in the vortex of the larger London life. All their people seemed to come to them through some p

ated. With all its harmony, their life did not want its more closely knitting times of fear, as when Milly was dangerously ill and Chri

account, tolerant, loving comprehension, the ripest stage of affection, seeming achieved. Milly was capricious, had moods of gloom and disconsolateness when nothing seemed to interest her, neither books nor music nor people, not even Christina, and when, sunken in a deep armchair, she would listlessly tap her fingers on the chair-arms, her eyes empty

ne so strong, so generous, so large-natured. Why then should Christina, like a foolish school-girl, show unmistakably-her efforts to hide it only making her look dim-eyed, white-lipped-a sombre misery if Milly allowed anyone to absorb her? This really piteous infirmity was latent in Christina; she did not show it at all during the first years of their companionship; it grew with her growing devotion to Milly. Milly discovered it when she asked little Joan Ashby to go to Italy with them. Christina, at the proposal, had been all glad, frank ac

ly once her innocent eyes were opened, and all her strength went to hiding the suffering. Milly, watching, felt a helpless alarm, really a shyness, gaining up

when she ran to her, Christina pushed her fiercely away. "You k

the exhibition in her grave, staunch Christina frightened her

es daring now to tease and rally, had yet the chill of a new discovery to reckon with. A weight seemed to have come upon her as she realised how much Christina cared. It was as if Christina had confessed tha

or old, male or female, as much as before, more than before, since now her folly was dissipated by confession; but Milly in her heart knew better than to believe her.