“Only for man; how bitter not to grave
On his Soul’s palms one fair, good, wise thing
Just as he grasped it.”
—ROBERT BROWNING.
LESLIE went back to the studio bewildered. She had sent him away without
excuses. He wondered blankly what he was being punished for, and why she
was denied him in the present; and as Kew Gardens, unless one is a
naturalist, is not the place one goes to alone, he sat down before his
picture and thought about her in the past.
He was young and full of ideals when he first met her. He believed in
the possibility of a Galahad, and that all women were exquisitely good,
except a sad few who were picturesquely unfortunate. He had had a good
mother, two beautiful sisters, and he had only seen Paris in a veil. He
met Cynthia in the studios; her glorious red hair and the wonderful way
she looked at him became the key to the universe. After that followed
months of ideal companionship, and on his part at least unprecedented
blindness. Perhaps she loved him for that most of all. Then she told
him. He was horribly startled. He said surprised and terrible things,
and then she looked at him—Oh that wonderful, broken, tragic look!—and
went back to her brother. And he grew older, and wiser, and less
surprised.
He had not meant to find her in London. When he had, and they met again
and yet again, and in fact even from the moment when she had told him
where and how she lived, he had made the great decision.
The locusts should eat no more empty years. If she could forget (_could_
she forget, forgive at least?) that stammering judgment eight years ago,
how happy they would be together! What noble, magnificent work would
they not do—together—and now she had sent him away with no excuse. Had
that self-made barrier of his fallen for another to rise? He smoked hard
and rang the bell. There is always one way of finding out things if a
man has sense and no false pride—to ask. He was going to ask, and he
smiled grimly to himself as he thought of the answer she would give
him—_should_ give him!—if strength and power and purpose went for
anything. The tea-things that were set out for her looked miserable as
only neglected food can look, and the room lost in the gathering
twilight seemed emptily expectant of the guest who had not come.
Leslie Damores cared nothing at all for omens and less for gloom, and
even the fact that he could not find his matches did not evoke a frown.
He was going to see her, and he _meant_ to see her, and he terribly
over-paid the cabman’s fare. How many sullen looks and surly words do we
not owe to the over-generosity of lovers, who appear to think that by
tipping the universe they will earn the reward of Providence in the
shape they most desire? Alas! we human beings are always misplacing our
tips, and then we wonder when the raps that come to us seem to be
misplaced as well!