The Wheel of Life

the shrill piping of the flute. Mr. Bleeker, with an untouched glass of sherry at his elbow and an unlighted cigar in his hand, s

was very old indeed-had in fact successfully rounded some years ago the critical point of his eightieth birthday, and there was the zest of a second childhood in the animation with which he had revived the single accomplishment of his early youth. That youth was now more vivid to his requickened memory than the present was to his enfeebled fa

ly confessed that she had reached the time of life when to bore her was the chief offence society could commit, "so, besides the comfort I afford dear Angela, it is much the pleasantest place for me to pass the evening. I've always been a merciful woman my child," she pursued shaking he

point lace, which yawned over her lean neck, that the distinction she

assion," suggested her husband, a beau

ed Angela to hysterics, and you actually have the face to tell me it is harmless! Judged by its effects, I consider it quite as reprehensible as a taste for car

nant spirit which caused Mr. Payne to shiver whenever she tilted agains

ight Uncle Percival could be seen, warm and red and breathless but still blissfully fluting to the sl

it's a part of his life just as poetry is a part of mine, and to be ha

r penetrated behind her vivid outside armour of personality. He was a man of great unsatisfied tenderness, who indulged a secret charity as another man might have indulged a vicious taste. All his inclinations strained after goodness, and had he possessed the courage to follow the natural bent of his

f her long, meditative looks. "Uncle Horace, of all

match for Rosa yet, my dear," he answered with his gentle

don't think their ways. I don't

s, I suppose, that you don't want to be married. Who is it this

her glance, he told himself that he understood the mysterious active principle of her personality-how the many wer

dreams," she said at last, "could fall in lo

the age when a poor lover may make an excellent friend-and besi

s congeniality-it is nothing in real life that comes between, for I am fond of him and I

ble is that you don't live on the earth at all, b

want life

ms, though I was not a poet. But there are precious few of us who are willing in youth to acce

tself that I want

Rosa, my dear, ev

w of surprise in the lo

else, and when Rosa loved me I told myself it had all come true. Well, perhaps, in a measure it

unt Rosa," said Laura, "but that I sup

nd mutilated forms. That will most likely be your portion, too, my child, for life has hurt every

upon him a face which had grown brilliant with animation. "I want to t

ve in reality as little part in that bustling turmoi

ll come to me-I feel

have the best of your adventures as

, and they sat in silence until Mrs. Payne swept down upon them

andirons was unlighted, and striking a match she held it to the little pile of splinters underneath the logs, watching, with a sensation of pleasure, the small yellow flames lick the crumpled paper and curl upward. Rising after a moment, she stood breathing in the soft twilight-coloured atmosphere she loved. The place was her own an

ally so bad as that she wondered, with a dim memory that somewhere, back in an obscure corner of her bookshelves, lay his first thin, promising volume published now almost fifteen years ago. Rising presently, she began a hasty search among a collection of little novels which had been banished ignominiously from the light of day, and, coming at last upon the story, she brought it to the lamp and commenced a reading prompted solely by the mo

ant of blind terror which comes with the realisation of the fleeting possibilities of earth. Outside-beyond her-existence in its multitudinous forms, its diversity of colour, swept on like some vast caravan from which she had been detached and set apart. Lying there she heard the call of it, that tremend

had arisen in the night to resume his impassioned piping; and, rising hurriedly, Laura lit her candle and went out into the hall, where a streak of light beneath Angela's door ran like a w

did the flute wa

blanched and stricken face out of which two beautiful haunted eyes stared like livin

ssly, raising her quivering hands to her ears. "I

ran down the dark staircase, while with each step the a

entered she called out in a voice that held a

t at the corners of his mouth, her indignation changed suddenly to pity. It seemed to her that she saw all his eighty years looking at her from that furrowed face out of those little wandering round blue eyes-saw the human part of him as she had never seen it before-with its patience of unfulfilment

e took his shrivelled little hands into her warm, comforting cla