"But surely love means perfect trust," said Rosalind.

"Theoretically, yes; practically, no. On the contrary, it means

exactly the opposite. Trust, perfect trust, with loved ones far away!

No, it is an inhuman ideal, and the more one loves the less one lives

up to it. If not, what do these tears mean?"

"Oh, no!" Rosalind retorted, with a flush, "you mustn't say that. I

trust Orlando absolutely. It isn't that; it's simply that I can't bear

to be away from him."

What women mean by "trusting" might afford a subject for an interesting

disquisition. However, I forbore to pursue the matter, and answered

Rosalind's remark in a practical spirit.

"Well, then," I said, "if that's all, the thing to do is to find

Orlando, tell him that you cannot bear it, and spend the rest of your

holiday, you and he, together."

"That's what I thought," said Rosalind.

"Unfortunately," I continued, "owing to your foolish arrangement not to

tell each other where you were going and not to write, as being

incompatible with Perfect Trust, you don't know where Orlando is at the

present moment."

"No; but I have a good guess," said Rosalind. "There's a smart little

watering-place, not so many miles from here, called Yellowsands, a sort

of secret little Monaco, which not many people know of, a

wicked-innocent gay little place, where we've often talked of going. I

think it's very likely that Orlando has gone there; and that's just

where I was going when we met."

I will tell the reader more about Yellowsands in the next chapter.

Meanwhile, let us complete Rosalind's arrangements. The result of our

conversation was that she was to proceed to Yellowsands on the morrow,

and that I was to follow as soon as possible, so as to be available

should she chance to need any advice, and at all events to give myself

the pleasure of meeting her again.

This arranged, we said good-night, Rosalind with ever such a

brightened-up face, of which I thought for half an hour and then fell

asleep to dream of Yellowsands.

CHAPTER V

CONCERNING THE HAVEN OF YELLOWSANDS

On the morrow, at the peep of day, Rosalind was off to seek her lord.

An hour or so after I started in leisurely pursuit.

Yellowsands! I had heard in a vague way of the place, as a whim of a

certain young nobleman who combined brains with the pursuit of

pleasure. Like most ideas, it was simple enough when once conceived.

Any one possessing a mile or two of secluded seaboard, cut off on the

land side by precipitous approaches, and including a sheltered river

mouth ingeniously hidden by nature, in the form of a jutting wall of

rock, from the sea, might have made as good use of these natural

opportunities as the nobleman in question, had they only been as wise

and as rich. William Blake proposed to rebuild Jerusalem in this green

and pleasant land. My lord proposed to erect a miniature Babylon amid

similar pleasant surroundings, a little dream-city by the sea, a home

for the innocent pleasure-seeker stifled by the puritanism of the great

towns, refugium peccatorum in this island of the saints.

"Once it was the Puritan Fathers who left our coasts," he is recorded

to have said; "nowadays it is our Prodigal Sons."

No doubt it was in further elaboration of this aphorism that the little

steamboat that sailed every other day from Yellowsands to the beckoning

shores of France was called "the Mayflower."

My lord's plan had been simple. By the aid of cunning architects he

had first blasted his harbour into shape, then built his hotels and

pleasure-palaces, and then leased them to dependants of his who knew

the right sort of people, and who knew that it was as much as their

lease was worth to find accommodation for teetotal amateur

photographers or wistful wandering Sunday-school treats. As,

unfortunately, the Queen's highway ran down in tortuous descent to the

handful of fishermen's cottages that had clung there limpet-like for

ages, there was always a chance of such a stray visitation; but it was

remote, and the whole place, hand and heart, was in the pocket of my

lord.

So much to give the reader some idea of the secret watering-place of

Yellowsands, situated at the mouth of that romantic little torrent, the

river Sly. Such further description as may be needed may be kept till

we come within sight of its gilded roofs and marble terraces.

CHAPTER VI

THE MOORLAND OF THE APOCALYPSE

I reckoned that it would take me two or three days, leisurely walking,

to reach Yellowsands. Rosalind would, of course, arrive there long

before me; but that I did not regret, as I was in a mood to find

company in my own thoughts.

Her story gave me plenty to think of. I dwelt particularly on the

careless extravagance of the happy. Here were two people to whom life

had given casually what I was compelled to go seeking lonely and

footsore through the world, and with little hope of finding it at the

end; and yet were they so little aware of their good fortune as to risk

it over a trumpery theory, a shadow of pseudo-philosophy. Out of the

deep dark ocean of life Love had brought them his great moon-pearl, and

they sat on the boat's edge carelessly tossing it from one to the

other, unmindful of the hungry fathoms on every side. A sudden slip,

and they had lost it for ever, and might only watch its shimmering fall

to the bottom of the world. Theories! Theories are for the unknown and

the unhappy. Who will trouble to theorise about Heaven when he has

found Heaven itself? Theories are for the poor-devil outcast,--for him

who stands outside the confectioner's shop of life without a penny in

his pocket, while the radiant purchasers pass in and out through the

doors,--for him who watches with wistful eyes this and that sugared

marvel taken out of the window by mysterious hands, to bless some happy

customer inside. He is not fool enough even to hope for one of those

glistering masterpieces of frosted sugar and silk flowers, which rise

to pinnacles of snowy sweetness, white mountains of blessedness, rich

inside, they say, with untold treasures for the tooth that is sweet.

No! he craves nothing but a simple Bath-bun of happiness, and even that

is denied him.

Would I ever find my Bath-bun? I disconsolately asked myself. I had

been seeking it now for some little time, and seemed no nearer than

when I set out. I had seen a good many Bath-buns on my pilgrimage, it

is true. Some I have not had space to confide to the reader; but

somehow or other they had not seemed the unmistakably predestined for

which I was seeking.

And oh, how I could love a girl, if she would only give me the

chance,--that is, be the right girl! Oh, Sylvia Joy! where art thou?

Why so long dost thou remain hidden "in shady leaves of destiny"?

"Seest thou thy lover lowly laid,

Hear'st thou the sighs that rend his breast?"

And then, as the novelists say, "a strange thing happened."

The road I was tramping at the moment was somewhat desolate. It ran up

from a small market town through a dreary undulating moorland, forking

off here and there to unknown villages of which the horizon gave no

hint. Its cheerless hillocks were all but naked of vegetation, for a

never very flourishing growth of heather had recently been burnt right

down to the unkindly-looking earth, leaving a dwarf black forest of

charred sticks very grim to the eye and heart; while the dull surface

of a small lifeless-looking lake added the final touch to the Dead-Sea

mournfulness of the prospect.

Suddenly I became aware of the fluttering of a grey dress a little

ahead of me. Unconsciously I had been overtaking a tall young woman

walking in the same direction as myself, with a fine athletic carriage

of her figure and a noble movement of her limbs.

She walked manfully, and as I neared her I could hear the sturdy ring

of her well-shod feet upon the road. There was an air of expectancy

about her walk, as though she looked to be met presently by some one

due from the opposite direction.

It was curious that I had not noticed her before, for she must have

been in sight for some time. No doubt my melancholy abstraction

accounted for that, and perhaps her presence there was to be explained

by a London train which I had listlessly observed come in to the town

an hour before. This surmise was confirmed, as presently,--over the

brow of a distant undulation in the road, I descried a farmer's gig

driven by another young woman. The gig immediately hoisted a

handkerchief; so did my pedestrian. At this moment I was within a yard

or two of overtaking her. And it was then the strange thing happened.

Distance had lent no enchantment which nearness did not a hundred times

repay. The immediate impression of strength and distinction which the

first glimpse of her had made upon me was more and more verified as I

drew closer to her. The carriage of her head was no whit less noble

than the queenly carriage of her limbs, and her glorious chestnut hair,

full of warm tints of gold, was massed in a sumptuous simplicity above

a neck that would have made an average woman's fortune. This glowing

description, however, must be lowered or heightened in tone by the

association of these characteristics with an undefinable simplicity of

mien, a certain slight rusticity of effect. The town spoke in her

well-cut gown and a few simple adornments, but the dryad still moved

inside.

I suppose most men, even in old age, feel a certain anxiety, conscious

or not, as they overtake a woman whose back view is in the least

attractive. I confess that I felt a more than usual, indeed a quite

irrational, perturbation of the blood, as, coming level with her, I

dared to look into her face. As I did so she involuntarily turned to

look at me--turned to look at me, did I say? "To look" is a feeble

verb indeed to express the unexpected shock of beauty to which I was

suddenly exposed. I cannot describe her features, for somehow features

always mean little to me. They were certainly beautifully moulded, and

her skin was of a lovely pale olive, but the life of her face was in

her great violet eyes and her wonderful mouth. Thus suddenly to look

into her face was like unexpectedly to come upon moon and stars

reflected in some lonely pool. I suppose the look lasted only a second

or two; but it left me dazzled as that king in the Eastern tale, who

seemed to have lived whole dream-lives between dipping his head into a

bowl of water and taking it out again. Similarly in that moment I

seemed to have dived into this unknown girl's eyes, to have walked

through the treasure palaces of her soul, to have stood before the

flaming gates of her heart, to have gathered silver flowers in the

fairy gardens of her dreams. I had followed her white-robed spirit

across the moonlit meadows of her fancy, and by her side had climbed

the dewy ladder of the morning star, and then suddenly I had been

whirled up again to the daylight through the magic fountains of her

eyes.

I'll tell you more about that look presently! Meanwhile the gig

approached, and the two girls exchanged affectionate greetings.

"Tom hasn't come with you, then?" said the other girl, who was

evidently her sister, and who was considerably more rustic in style and

accent. She said it with a curious mixture of anxiety and relief.

"No," answered the other simply, and I thought I noticed a slight

darkening of her face. Tom was evidently her husband. So she was

married!

"Yes!" said a fussy hypocrite of reason within me, "and what's that to

do with you?"

"Everything, you fool!" answered a robuster voice in my soul, kicking

the feeble creature clean out of my head on the instant.

For, absurd as it may sound, with that look into those Arabian Nights'

eyes, had come somewhere out of space an overwhelming intuition, nay,

an unshakable conviction, that the woman who was already being rolled

away from me down the road in that Dis's car of a farmer's gig, was now

and for ever and before all worlds the woman God had created for me,

and that, unless I could be hers and she mine, there would be no home,

no peace for either of us so long as we lived.

And yet she was being carried away further and further every moment,

while I gazed after her, aimlessly standing in the middle of the road.

Why did I not call to her, overtake her? In a few moments she would be

lost to me for ever--

Though I was unaware of it, this hesitation was no doubt owing to a

stealthy return of reason by the back-door of my mind. In fact, he

presently dared to raise his voice again. "I don't deny," he ventured,

ready any moment to flee for his life, "that she is written yours in

all the stars, and particularly do I see it written on the face of the

moon; but you mustn't forget that many are thus meant for each other

who never meet, not to speak of marrying. It is such contradictions

between the purposes and performance of the Creator that make

life--life; you'll never see her again, so make your mind easy--"

At that moment the gig was on the point of turning a corner into a dark

pine-wood; but just ere it disappeared,--was it fancy?--I seemed to

have caught the flash of a momentarily fluttering handkerchief. "Won't

I? you fool!" I exclaimed, savagely smiting reason on the cheek, as I

sprang up wildly to wave mine; but the road was already blank.

At this a sort of panic possessed me, and like a boy I raced down the

road after her. To lose her like this, at the very moment that she had

been revealed to me. It was more than I could bear.

Past the dreary lake, through the little pine-wood I ran, and then I

was brought to a halt, panting, by cross-roads and a finger-post. An

involuntary memory of Nicolete sang to me as I read the quaint names of

the villages to one of which the Vision was certainly wending. Yes! I

was bound on one more journey to the moon, but alas! there was no

heavenly being by my side to point the way. Oh, agony, which was the

road she had taken?

It never occurred to me till the following day that I might have been

able to track her by the wheel-marks of the gig on the dusty summer

road. Instead I desperately resorted to the time-honoured expedient of

setting up a stick and going in the direction of its fall. Like most

ancient guide-posts, it led me quite wrong, down into a pig's-trough of

a hamlet whither I felt sure she couldn't have been bound. Then I ran

back in a frenzy, and tried the other road,--as if it could be any use,

with at least three quarters of an hour gone since I had lost sight of

her. Of course I had no luck; and finally, hot and worn out with

absurd excitement, I threw myself down in a meadow and called myself an

ass,--which I undoubtedly was.

For of all the fancies that had obsessed my moonstruck brain, this was

surely the maddest. Suppose I had overtaken the girl, what could I

have said to her? And, suppose she had listened to me, how did I know

she was the girl I imagined her to be? But this was sheer reason again,

and has no place in a fantastic romance. So I hasten to add that the

mood was one of brief duration, and that no cold-water arguments were

able to quench the fire which those eyes had set aflame within me, no

daylight philosophy had any power to dispel the dream of a face which

was now my most precious possession, as I once more took up my stick

and listlessly pursued my way to Yellowsands.

For I had one other reason than my own infatuation, or thought I had.

Yes, brief and rapid as our glance at each other had been, I had

fancied in her eyes a momentary kindling as they met mine, a warm

summer-lightning which seemed for a second to light up for me the inner

heaven of her soul.

Of one feeling, however, I was sure,--that on my side this apocalyptic

recognition of her, as it had seemed, was no mere passionate

correspondence of sex, no mere spell of a beautiful face (for such

passion and such glamour I had made use of opportunities to study), but

was indeed the flaming up of an elemental affinity, profounder than

sex, deeper than reason, and ages older than speech.

But it was a fancy, for all that? Yes, one of those fancies that are

fancies on earth, but facts in heaven. Perhaps you don't believe in

them. Well, I'm afraid that cannot be helped.

CHAPTER VII

"COME UNTO THESE YELLOW SANDS!"

Nothing further happened to me till I reached Yellowsands, except an

exciting ride on the mail-coach, which connected it with the nearest

railway-station some twenty miles away. For the last three or four

miles the road ran along the extreme precipitous verge of cliffs that

sloped, a giant's wall of grassy mountain, right away down to a dreamy

amethystine floor of sea, miles and miles, as it seemed, below. To

ride on that coach, as it gallantly staggered betwixt earth and heaven,

was to know all the ecstasy of flying, with an added touch of danger,

which birds and angels, and others accustomed to fly, can never

experience. And then at length the glorious mad descent down three

plunging cataracts of rocky road, the exciting rattling of the harness,

the grinding of the strong brakes, the driver's soothing calls to his

horses, and the long burnished horn trailing wild music behind us, like

invisible banners of aerial brass,--oh, it stirred the dullest blood

amongst us thus as it were to tear down the sky towards the white roofs

of Yellowsands, glittering here and there among the clouds of trees

which filled the little valley almost to the sea's edge, while floating

up to us came soft strains of music, silken and caressing, as though

the sea itself sang us a welcome. Had you heard it from aboard the

Argo, you would have declared it to be the sirens singing, and it would

have been found necessary to lash you to the mast. But there were no

masts to lash you to in Yellowsands--and of the sirens it is not yet

time to speak.

It was the golden end of afternoon as the coach stopped in front of the

main hotel, The Golden Fortune; and for the benefit of any with not too

long purses who shall hereafter light on Yellowsands, and be alarmed at

the name and the marble magnificence of that delightful hotel, I may

say that the charges there were surprisingly "reasonable," owing to one

other wise provision of the young lord and master of that happy place,

who had had the wit to realise that the nicest and brightest and

prettiest people were often the poorest. Yellowsands, therefore, was

carried on much like a club, to which you had only to be the right sort

of person to belong. I was relieved to find that the hotel people

evidently considered me the right sort of person, and didn't take me

for a Sunday-school treat,--for presently I found myself in a charming

little corner bedroom, whence I could survey the whole extent of the

little colony of pleasure. The Golden Fortune was curiously situated,

perched at the extreme sea-end of a little horse-shoe bay hollowed out

between two headlands, the points of which approached each other so

closely that the river Sly had but a few yards of rocky channel through

which to pour itself into the sea. The Golden Fortune, therefore,

backed by towering woodlands, looked out to sea at one side, across to

the breakwater headland on another, and on its land side commanded a

complete view of the gay little haven, with its white houses built

terrace on terrace upon its wooded slopes, connected by flights of

zigzag steps, by which the apparently inaccessible shelves and

platforms circulated their gay life down to the gay heart of the

place,--the circular boulevard, exquisitely leafy and cool, where one

found the great casino and the open-air theatre, the exquisite

orchestra, into which only the mellowest brass and the subtlest strings

were admitted, and the Cafe du Ciel, charmingly situated among the

trees, where the boulevard became a bridge, for a moment, at the mouth

of the river Sly. Here one might gaze up the green rocky defile through

which the Sly made pebbly music, and through which wound romantic walks

and natural galleries, where far inland you might wander

"From dewy dawn to dewy night,

And have one with you wandering,"

or where you might turn and look across the still lapping harbour, out

through the little neck of light between the headlands to the

shimmering sea beyond,--your ears filled with a melting tide of sweet

sounds, the murmur of the streams and the gentle surging of the sea,

the rippling of leaves, the soft restless whisper of women's gowns, and

the music of their vowelled voices. It was here I found myself sitting

at sunset, alone, but so completely under the spell of the place that I

needed no companion. The place itself was companion enough. The

electric fairy lamps had popped alight; and as the sun sank lower,

Yellowsands seemed like a glowing crown of light floating upon the

water.

I had as yet failed to catch any sight of Rosalind; so I sat alone, and

so far as I had any thoughts or feelings, beyond a consciousness of

heavenly harmony with my surroundings, they were for that haunting

unknown face with the violet eyes and the heavy chestnut hair.

Presently, close by, the notes of a guitar came like little gold

butterflies out of the twilight, and then a woman's voice rose like a

silver bird on the air. It was a gay wooing measure to which she sang.

I listened with ears and heart. "All ye," it went,--

All ye who seek for pleasure,

Here find it without measure--

No one to say

A body nay,

And naught but love and leisure.

All ye who seek forgetting,

Leave frowns and fears and fretting,

Here by the sea

Are fair and free

To give you peace and petting.

All ye whose hearts are breaking

For somebody forsaking,

We'll count you dear,

And heal you here,

And send you home love-making."

"Bravo!" I cried involuntarily, as the song ended amid multitudinous

applause; and I thus attracted the attention of another who sat near me

as lonely as myself, but evidently quite at home in the place.

"You haven't heard our sirens sing before?" he said, turning to me with

a pleasant smile, and thus we fell into talk of the place and its

pleasures.

"There's one feature of the place I might introduce you to if you care

for a stroll," he said presently. "Have you heard of The Twelve

Golden-Haired Bar-maids?" I hadn't, but the fantastic name struck my

fancy. It was, he explained, the name given to a favourite buffet at

the Hotel Aphrodite, which was served by twelve wonderful girls, not

one under six feet in height, and all with the most glorious golden

hair. It was a whim of the management, he said.

So, of course, we went.

CHAPTER VIII

THE TWELVE GOLDEN-HAIRED BAR-MAIDS.

Now it was not without some boyish nervousness that I followed my newly

made friend, for I confess that I have ever been a poor hand at talking

to bar-maids. It is, I am convinced, an art apart, an art like any

other,--needing first the natural gift, then the long patient training,

and finally the courageous practice. Alas for me, I possessed neither

gift, training, nor courage. Courage I lacked most of all. It was in

vain that I said to myself that it was like swimming,--all that was

needed was "confidence." That was the very thing I couldn't muster. No

doubt I am handicapped by a certain respectful homage which I always

feel involuntarily to any one in the shape of woman, for anything

savouring of respect is the last thing to win the bar-maid heart

divine. The man to win her is he who calls loudly for his drink,

without a "Please" or a "Thank you," throws his hat at the back of his

head, gulps down half his glass, and, while drawing breath for the

other half, takes a hard, indifferent look at her, and in an off-hand

voice throws her some fatuous, mirthless jest.

Now, I've never been able to do this in the convincing grand manner of

the British male; and whatever I have said, the effect has been the

same. I've talked about theatres and music-halls, of events of the

day, I've even--Heaven help me--talked of racing and football, but I

might as well have talked of Herbert Spencer. I suppose I didn't talk

about them in the right way. I'm sure it must be my fault somewhere,

for certainly they seem easy enough to please, poor things! However, my

failure remains, and sometimes even I find it extremely hard to attract

their attention in the ordinary way of business. I don't mind my

neighbour being preferred before me, but I do object to his being

served before me!

So, I say, I couldn't but tremble at the vision of those golden-haired

goddesses, standing with immobile faces by their awful altars. Indeed,

had I realised how superbly impressive they were going to be, I think I

must have declined the adventure altogether,--for, robed in lustrous

ivory-white linen were those figures of undress marble, the wealth of

their glorious bodies pressing out into bosoms magnificent as magnolias

(nobler lines and curves Greece herself has never known), towering in

throats of fluted alabaster, and flowering in coiffures of imperial

gold.

Nor was their temple less magnificent. To make it fair, Ruskin had

relit the seven lamps of architecture, and written the seven labours of

Hercules; for these windows through a whole youth Burne Jones had

worshipped painted glass at Oxford, and to breathe romance into these

frescos had Rossetti been born, and Dante born again. Men had gone to

prison and to death that this temple of Whiskey-and-Soda might be fair.

Strange, in truth, are the ministrations to which Beauty is called.

Out of the high heaven is she summoned, from mystic communion with her

own perfection, from majestic labours in the Sistine Chapel of the

Stars,--yea, she must put aside her gold-leaf and purples and leave

unfinished the very panels of the throne of God,--that Circe shall have

her palace, and her worshippers their gilded sty.

As there were at least a score of "worshippers" round each Circe, my

nervousness became unimportant, and therefore passed. Thus, as my

companion and I sat at one of the little tables, from which we might

gaze upon the sea without and Aphrodite within, my eyes were able to

fly like bees from one fair face to another. Finally, they settled upon

a Circe less besieged of the hoarse and grunting mob. She was

conspicuously less in height, her hair was rather bright red than

golden, and her face had more meanings than the faces of her fellows.

"Why," in a flash it came to me, "it's Rosalind!" and clean forgetting

to be shy, or polite to my companion, I hastened across to her, to be

greeted instantly in a manner so exclusively intimate that the little

crowd about her presently spread itself among the other crowds, and we

were left to talk alone.

"Well," I said, "you're a nice girl! Whatever are you doing here?"

"Yes, I'm afraid you'll have but a strange opinion of me," she said;

"but I love all experience,--it's such fun,--and when I heard that

there was a sudden vacancy for a golden-haired beauty in this place, I

couldn't resist applying, and to my surprise they took me--and here I

am! Of course I shall only stay till Orlando appears--which," she

added mournfully--"he hasn't done yet."

Her hours were long and late, but she had two half-days free in the

week, and for these of course I engaged myself.

Meanwhile I spent as much time as I decently could at her side; but it

was impossible to monopolise her, and the rest of my time there was no

difficulty in filling up, you may be sure, in so gay a place.

Two or three nights after this, a little before dinner-time, while I

was standing talking to her, she suddenly went very white, and in a

fluttering voice gasped, "Look yonder!" I looked. A rather slight

dark-haired young man was entering the bar, with a very stylish pretty

woman at his side. As they sat down and claimed the waiter, some

distance away, Rosalind whispered, "That's my husband!"

"Oh!" I said; "but that's no reason for your fainting. Pull yourself

together. Take a drop of brandy." But woman will never take the most

obvious restorative, and Rosalind presently recovered without the

brandy. She looked covertly at her husband, with tragic eyes.

"He's much younger than I imagined him," I said,--reserving for myself

the satisfaction which this discovery had for me.

"Oh, yes, he's really quite a boy," said Rosalind; adding under her

breath, "Dear fellow! how I love him!"

"And hate him too!" she superadded, as she observed his evident

satisfaction with his present lot. Indeed the experiment appeared to

be working most successfully with him; nor, looking at his companion,

could I wonder. She was a sprightly young woman, very smart and merry

and decorously voluptuous, and of that fascinating prettiness that wins

the hearts of boys and storms the footlights. One of her

characteristics soothed the heart of Rosalind. She had splendid red

hair, almost as good as her own.

"He's been faithful to my hair, at all events," she said, trying to be

nonchalant.

"And the eyes are not unlike," I added, meaning well.

"I'm sorry you think so," said Rosalind, evidently piqued.

"Well, never mind," I tried to make peace, "she hasn't your hands,"--I

knew that women cared more about their hands than their faces.

"How do you know?" she retorted; "you cannot see through her gloves."

"Would any gloves disguise your hands?" I persisted. "They would shine

through the mittens of an Esquimau."

"Well, enough of that! See--I know it's wickedly mean of me--but

couldn't you manage to sit somewhere near them and hear what they are

saying? Of course you needn't tell me anything it would be mean to

hear, but only what--"

"You would like to know."

But this little plot died at its birth, for that very minute the

threatened couple arose, and went out arm in arm, apparently as

absurdly happy as two young people can be.

As they passed out, one of Rosalind's fellow bar-maids turned to her

and said,--

"You know who that was?"

"Who?" said Rosalind, startled.

"That pretty woman who went out with that young Johnny just now?"

"No; who is she?"

"Why, that's"--and readers with heart-disease had better brace

themselves up for a great shock--"that's SYLVIA JOY, the famous dancer!"

CHAPTER IX

SYLVIA JOY

Sylvia Joy! And I hadn't so much as looked at her petticoat for weeks!

But I would now. The violet eyes and the heavy chestnut hair rose up

in moralising vision. Yes! God knows, they were safe in my heart, but

petticoats were another matter. Sylvia Joy!

Well, did you ever? Well, I'm d----d! Sylvia Joy!

I should have been merely superhuman had I been able to control the

expression of surprise which convulsed my countenance at the sound of

that most significant name.

"The name seems familiar to you," said Rosalind, a little surprised and

a little eagerly; "do you know the lady?"

"Slightly," I prevaricated.

"How fortunate!" exclaimed Rosalind; "you'll be all the better able to

help me!"

"Yes," I said; "but since things have turned out so oddly, I may say

that our relations are of so extremely delicate a nature that I shall

have very carefully to think out what is best to be done. Meanwhile,

do you mind lending me that ring for a few hours?"

It was a large oblong opal set round with small diamonds,--a ring of

distinguished design you could hardly help noticing, especially on a

man's hand, for which it was too conspicuously dainty. I slipped it on

the little finger of my left hand, and, begging Rosalind to remain

where she was meanwhile, and to take no steps without consulting me, I

mysteriously, not to say officiously, departed.

I left the twelfth Golden-Haired Bar-maid not too late to stalk her

husband and her under-study to their hotel, where they evidently

proposed to dine. There was, therefore, nothing left for me but to

dine also. So I dined; and when the courses of my dining were ended, I

found myself in a mellow twilight at the Cafe du Ciel. And it was

about the hour of the sirens' singing. Presently the little golden

butterflies flitted once more through the twilight, and again the

woman's voice rose like a silver bird on the air.

As I have a partiality for her songs, I transcribe this Hymn of the

Daughters of Aphrodite, which you must try to imagine transfigured by

her voice and the sunset.

Queen Aphrodite's

Daughters are we,

She that was born

Of the morn

And the sea;

White are our limbs

As the foam on the wave,

Wild are our hymns

And our lovers are brave!

Queen Aphrodite,

Born of the sea,

Beautiful dutiful daughters

Are we!

You who would follow,

Fear not to come,

For love is for love

As dove is for dove;

The harp of Apollo

Shall lull you to rest,

And your head find its home

On this beautiful breast.

Queen Aphrodite,

Born of the sea,

Beautiful dutiful daughters

Are we!

Born of the Ocean,

Wave-like are we!

Rising and falling

Like waves of the sea;

Changing for ever,

Yet ever the same,

Music in motion

And marble in flame.

Queen Aphrodite,

Born of the sea,

Beautiful dutiful daughters

Are we!

When I alighted once more upon the earth from the heaven of this song,

who should I find seated within a table of me but the very couple I was

at the moment so unexpectedly interested in? But they were far too

absorbed in each other to notice me, and consequently I was able to

hear all of importance that was said. I regret that I cannot gratify

the reader with a report of their conversation, for the excuse I had

for listening was one that is not transferable. A woman's happiness

was at stake. No other consideration could have persuaded me to means

so mean save an end so noble. I didn't even tell Rosalind all I heard.

Mercifully for her, the candour of fools is not among my superstitions.

Suffice it for all third persons to know--what Rosalind indeed has

never known, and what I hope no reader will be fool enough to tell

her--that Orlando was for the moment hopelessly and besottedly

faithless to his wife, and that my services had been bespoken in the

very narrowest nick of time.

Having, as the reader has long known, a warm personal interest in his

attractive companion, and desiring, therefore, to think as well of her

as possible, I was pleased to deduce, negatively, from their

conversation, that Sylvia Joy knew nothing of Rosalind, and believed

Orlando to be a free, that is, an unmarried man. From the point of

view, therefore, of her code, there was no earthly reason why she

should not fall in with Orlando's proposal that they should leave for

Paris by the "Mayflower" on the following morning. Orlando, I could

hear, wished to make more extended arrangements, and references to that

well-known rendezvous, "Eternity," fell on my ears from time to time.

Evidently Sylvia had no very saving belief in Eternity, for I heard her

say that they might see how they got on in Paris for a start. Then it

would be time enough to talk of Eternity. This and other remarks of

Sylvia's considerably predisposed me towards her. Having concluded

their arrangements for the heaven of the morrow, they rose to take a

stroll along the boulevards. As they did so, I touched Orlando's

shoulder and begged his attention for a moment. Though an entire

stranger to him, I had, I said, a matter of extreme importance to

communicate to him, and I hoped, therefore, that it would suit his

convenience to meet me at the same place in an hour and a half. As I

said this, I flashed his wife's ring in the light so obviously that he

was compelled to notice it.

"Wherever did you get that?" he gasped, no little surprised and

agitated.

"From your wife," I answered, rapidly moving away. "Be sure to be here

at eleven."

I slipped away into the crowd, and spent my hour and a half in

persuading Rosalind that her husband was no doubt a little infatuated,

but nevertheless the most faithful husband in the world. If she would

only leave all to me, by this time to-morrow night, if not a good many

hours before, he should be in her arms as safe as in the Bank. It did

my heart good to see how happy this artistic adaptation of the truth

made her; and I must say that she never had a wiser friend.

When eleven came, I was back in my seat at the Cafe du Ciel. Orlando

too was excitedly punctual.

"Well, what is it?" he hurried out, almost before he had sat down.

"What will you do me the honour of drinking?" I asked calmly.

"Oh, drink be d----d!" he said; "what have you to tell me?"

"I'm glad to hear you rap out such a good honest oath," I said; "but I

should like a drink, for all that, and if I may say so, you would be

none the worse for a brandy and soda, late as it is."

When the drinks had come, I remarked to him quietly, but not without

significance: "The meaning of this ring is that your wife is here, and

very wretched. By an accident I have been privileged with her

friendship; and I may say, to save time, that she has told me the whole

story.

"What happily she has not been able to tell me, and what I need hardly

say she will never know from me, I overheard, in the interests of your

joint happiness, an hour or so ago."

The man who is telling the story has a proverbial great advantage; but

I hope the reader knows enough of me by this to believe that I am far

from meanly availing myself of it in this narrative. I am well and

gratefully aware that in this interview with Orlando my advantages were

many and fortunate. For example, had he been bigger and older, or had

he not been a gentleman, my task had been considerably more arduous,

not to say dangerous.

But, as Rosalind had said, he was really quite a boy, and I confess I

was a little ashamed for him, and a little piqued, that he showed so

little fight. The unexpectedness of my attack had, I realised, given

me the whip-hand. So I judged, at all events, from the fact that he

forbore to bluster, and sat quite still, with his head in his hands,

saying never a word for what seemed several minutes. Then presently he

said very quietly,--

"I love my wife all the same."

"Of course you do," I answered, eagerly welcoming the significant

announcement; "and if you'll allow me to say so, I think I understand

more about the whole situation than either of you, bachelor though

unfortunately I am. As a famous friend of mine is fond of saying,

lookers-on see most of the game."

Then I rapidly told him the history of my meeting with his wife, and

depicted, in harrowing pigments of phrase, the distress of her mind.

"I love my wife all the same," he repeated, as I finished; "and," he

added, "I love Sylvia too."

"But not quite in the same way?" I suggested.

"I love Sylvia very tenderly," he said.

"Yes, I know; I don't think you could do anything else. No man worth

his salt could be anything but tender to a dainty little woman like

that. But tenderness, gentleness, affection, even

self-sacrifice,--these may be parts of love; but they are merely the

crude untransformed ingredients of a love such as you feel for your

wife, and such as I know she feels for you."

"She still loves me, then," he said pitifully; "she hasn't fallen in

love with you."

"No fear," I answered; "no such luck for me. If she had, I'm afraid I

should hardly have been talking to you as I am at this moment. If a

woman like Rosalind, as I call her, gave me her love, it would take

more than a husband to rob me of it, I can tell you."

"Yes," he repeated, "on my soul, I love her. I have never been false

to her, in my heart; but--"

"I know all about it," I said; "may I tell you how it all

was,--diagnose the situation?"

"Do," he replied; "it is a relief to hear you talk."

"Well," I said, "may I ask one rather intimate question? Did you ever

before you were married sow what are known as wild oats?"

"Never," he answered indignantly, flashing for a moment.

"Well, you should have done," I said; "that's just the whole trouble.

Wild oats will get sown some time, and one of the arts of life is to

sow them at the right time,--the younger the better. Think candidly

before you answer me."

"I believe you are right," he replied, after a long pause.

"You are a believer in theories," I continued, "and so am I; but you

can take my word that on these matters not all, but some, of the old

theories are best. One of them is that the man who does not sow his

wild oats before marriage will sow them afterwards, with a whirlwind

for the reaping."

Orlando looked up at me, haggard with confession.

"You know the old story of the ring given to Venus? Well, it is the

ruin of no few men to meet Venus for the first time on their marriage

night. Their very chastity, paradoxical as it may seem, is their

destruction. No one can appreciate the peace, the holy satisfaction of

monogamy till he has passed through the wasting distractions, the

unrest of polygamy. Plunged right away into monogamy, man,

unexperienced in his good fortune, hankers after polygamy, as the

monotheistic Jew hankered after polytheism; and thus the monogamic

young man too often meets Aphrodite for the first time, and makes

future appointments with her, in the arms of his pure young wife. If

you have read Swedenborg, you will remember his denunciation of the

lust of variety. Now, that is a lust every young man feels, but it is

one to be satisfied before marriage. Sylvia Joy has been such a

variant for you; and I'm afraid you're going to have some little

trouble to get her off your nerves. Tell me frankly," I said, "have

you had your fill of Aphrodite? It is no use your going back to your

wife till you have had that."

"I'm not quite a beast," he retorted. "After all, it was an experiment

we both agreed to try."

"Certainly," I answered, "and I hope it may have the result of

persuading you of the unwisdom of experimenting with happiness. You

have the realities of happiness; why should you trouble about its

theories? They are for unhappy people, like me, who must learn to

distil by learned patience the aurum potabile from the husks of life,

the peace which happier mortals find lying like manna each morn upon

the meadows."

"Well," I continued, "enough of the abstract; let us have another

drink, and tell me what you propose to do."

"Poor Sylvia!" sighed Orlando.

"Shall I tell you about Sylvia?" I said. "On second thoughts, I won't.

It would hardly be fair play; but this, I may say, relying on your

honour, that if you were to come to my hotel, I could show you

indisputable proof that I know at least as much about Sylvia Joy as

even such a privileged intimate as yourself."

"It is strange, then, that she never recognised you just now," he

retorted, with forlorn alertness.

"Of course she didn't. How young you are! It is rather too bad of a

woman of Sylvia's experience."

"And I've bought our passages for to-morrow. I cannot let her go

without some sort of good-bye."

"Give the tickets to me. I can make use of them. How much are they?

Let's see."

The calculation made and the money passed across, I said abruptly,--

"Now supposing we go and see your wife."

"You have saved my life," he said hoarsely, pressing my hand as we rose.

"I don't know about that," I said inwardly; "but I do hope I have saved

your wife."

As I thought of that, a fear occurred to me.

"Look here," I said, as we strolled towards the Twelve Golden-Haired,

"I hope you have no silly notions about confession, about telling the

literal truth and so on. Because I want you to promise me that you will

lie stoutly to your wife about Sylvia Joy. You must swear the whole

thing has been platonic. It's the only chance for your happiness.

Your wife, no doubt, will lure you on to confession by saying that she

doesn't mind this, that, and the other, so long as you don't keep it

from her; and no doubt she will mean it till you have confessed. But,

however good their theories, women by nature cannot help confusing body

and soul, and what to a man is a mere fancy of the senses, to them is a

spiritual tragedy. Promise me to lie stoutly on this point. It is, I

repeat, the only chance for your future happiness. As has been wisely

said, a lie in time saves nine; and such a lie as I advise is but one

of the higher forms of truth. Such lying, indeed, is the art of

telling the truth. The truth is that you love her body, soul, and

spirit; any accidental matter which should tend to make her doubt that

would be the only real lie. Promise me, won't you?"

"Yes, I will lie," said Orlando.

"Well, there she is," I said; "and God bless you both."

CHAPTER X

IN WHICH ONCE MORE I BECOME OCCUPIED IN MY OWN AFFAIRS

During a pause in my matrimonial lecture, Orlando had written a little

farewell note to Sylvia,--a note which, of course, I didn't read, but

which it is easy to imagine "wild with all regret." This I undertook

to have delivered to her the same night, and promised to call upon her

on the morrow, further to illuminate the situation, and to offer her

every consolation in my power. To conclude the history of Orlando and

his Rosalind, I may say that I saw them off from Yellowsands by the

early morning coach. There was a soft brightness in their faces, as

though rain had fallen in the night; but it was the warm sweet rain of

joy that brings the flowers, and is but sister to the sun. They are, at

the time of my writing, quite old friends of mine, and both have an

excessive opinion of my wisdom and good-nature.

"That lie," Orlando once said to me long after, "was the truest thing I

ever said in my life,"--a remark which may not give the reader a very

exalted idea of his general veracity.

As the coach left long before pretty young actresses even dreamed of

getting up, I had to control my impatient desire to call on

Mademoiselle Sylvia Joy till it was fully noon. And even then she was

not to be seen. I tried again in the afternoon with better success.

Rain had been falling in the night with her too, I surmised, but it had

failed to dim her gay eyes, and had left her complexion unimpaired. Of

course her little affair with Orlando had never been very serious on

her side. She genuinely liked him. "He was a nice kind boy," was the

height of her passionate expression, and she was, naturally, a little

disappointed at having an affectionate companion thus unexpectedly

whisked off into space. Her only approach to anger was on the subject

of his deceiving her about his wife. Little Sylvia Joy had no very

long string of principles; but one generous principle she did hold

by,--never, if she knew it, to rob another woman of her husband. And

that did make her cross with Orlando. He had not played the game fair.

There is no need to follow, step by step, the progression by which

Sylvia Joy and I, though such new acquaintances, became in the course

of a day or two even more intimate than many old friends. We took to

each other instinctively, even on our first rather difficult interview,

and very gently and imperceptibly I bid for the vacant place in her

heart.

That night we dined together.

The next day we lunched and dined together.

The next day we breakfasted, lunched, and dined together.

And on the next I determined to venture on the confession which, as you

may imagine, it had needed no little artistic control not to make on

our first meeting.

She looked particularly charming this evening, in a black silk gown,

exceedingly simple and distinguished in style, throwing up the lovely

firm whiteness of her throat and bosom, and making a fine contrast with

her lurid hair.

It was sheer delight to sit opposite her at dinner, and quietly watch

her without a word. Shall I confess that I had an exceedingly boyish

vanity in thus being granted her friendship? It is almost too boyish to

confess at my time of life. It was simply in the fact that she was an

actress,--a real, live, famous actress, whose photographs made shop

windows beautiful,--come right out of my boy's fairyland of the

theatre, actually to sit eating and drinking, quite in a real way, at

my side. This, no doubt, will seem pathetically naive to most modern

young men, who in this respect begin where I leave off. An actress!

Great heavens! an actress is the first step to a knowledge of life.

Besides, actresses off the stage are either brainless or soulful, and

the choice of evils is a delicate one. Well, I have never set up for a

man of the world, though sometimes when I have heard the Lovelaces of

the day hinting mysteriously at their secret sins or boasting of their

florid gallantries, I have remembered the last verse of Suckling's

"Ballad of a Wedding," which, no doubt, the reader knows as well as I,

and if not, it will increase his acquaintance with our brave old poetry

to look it up.

"You are very beautiful to-night," I said, in one of the meditative

pauses between the courses.

"Thank you, kind sir," she said, making a mock courtesy; "but the

compliment is made a little anxious for me by your evident implication

that I didn't look so beautiful this morning. You laid such a marked

emphasis on to-night."

"Nay," I returned, "'for day and night are both alike to thee.' I

think you would even be beautiful--well, I cannot imagine any moment or

station of life you would not beautify."

"I must get you to write that down, and then I'll have it framed. It

would cheer me of a morning when I curl my hair," laughed Sylvia.

"But you are beautiful," I continued, becoming quite impassioned.

"Yes, and as good as I'm beautiful."

And she was too, though perhaps the beauty occasionally predominated.

When the serious business of dining was dispatched, and we were

trifling with our coffee and liqueurs, my eyes, which of course had

seldom left her during the whole meal, once more enfolded her little

ivory and black silk body with an embrace as real as though they had

been straining passionate arms; and as I thus nursed her in my eyes, I

smiled involuntarily at a thought which not unnaturally occurred to me.

"What is that sly smile about?" she asked. Now I had smiled to think

that underneath that stately silk, around that tight little waist, was

a dainty waistband bearing the legend "Sylvia Joy," No. 4, perhaps, or

5, but NOT No. 6; and a whole wonderful underworld of lace and linen

and silk stockings, the counterpart of which wonders, my clairvoyant

fancy laughed to think, were at the moment--so entirely unsuspected of

their original owner--my delicious possessions.

Everything a woman wears or touches immediately incarnates something of

herself. A handkerchief, a glove, a flower,--with a breath she endues

them with immortal souls. How much, therefore, of herself must inhere

in a garment so confidential as a petticoat, or so close and constant a

companion as a stocking!

Now that I knew Sylvia Joy, I realised how absolutely true my instinct

had been, when on that far afternoon in that Surrey garden I had said,

"With such a petticoat and such a name, Sylvia herself cannot be

otherwise than charming."

Indeed, now I could see that the petticoat was nothing short of a

portrait of her, and that any one learned in the physiognomy of clothes

would have been able to pick Sylvia out of a thousand by that spirited,

spoilt, and petted garment.

"What is that sly smile about?" she repeated presently.

"I only chanced to think of an absurd little fairy story I read the

other day," I said, "which is quite irrelevant at the moment. You know

the idle way things come and go through one's head."

"I don't believe you," she replied, "but tell me the story. I love

fairy tales."

"Certainly," I said, for I wasn't likely to get a better opportunity.

"There's nothing much in it; it's merely a variation of Cinderella's

slipper. Well, once upon a time there was an eccentric young prince

who'd had his fling in his day, but had arrived at the lonely age of

thirty without having met a woman whom he could love enough to make his

wife. He was a rather fanciful young prince, accustomed to follow his

whims; and one day, being more than usually bored with existence, he

took it into his head to ramble incognito through his kingdom in search

of his ideal wife,--'The Golden Girl,' as he called her. He had hardly

set out when in a country lane he came across a peasant girl hanging

out clothes to dry, and he fell to talk with her while she went on with

her charming occupation. Presently he observed, pegged on the line,

strangely incongruous among the other homespun garments, a wonderful

petticoat, so exquisite in material and design that it aroused his

curiosity. At the same moment he noticed a pair of stockings, round

the tops of which one of the daintiest artists in the land had wrought

an exquisite little frieze. The prince was learned in every form of

art, and had not failed to study this among other forms of decoration.

No sooner did he see this petticoat than the whim seized him that he

would find and marry the wearer, whoever she might be--"

"Rather rash of him," interrupted Sylvia, "for it is usually old ladies

who have the prettiest petticoats. They can best afford them--"

"He questioned the girl as to their owner," I continued, "and after

vainly pretending that they were her own, she confessed that they had

belonged to a young and beautiful lady who had once lodged there and

left them behind. Then the prince gave her a purse of gold in exchange

for the finery, and on the waistband of the petticoat he read a

beautiful name, and he said, 'This and no other shall be my wife, this

unknown beautiful woman, and on our marriage night she shall wear this

petticoat.' And then the prince went forth seeking--"

"There's not much point in it," interrupted Sylvia.

"No," I said, "I'm afraid I've stupidly missed the point."

"Why, what was it?"

"The name upon the petticoat!"

"Why, what name was it?" she asked, somewhat mystified.

"The inscription upon the petticoat was, to be quite accurate, 'Sylvia

Joy, No. 6.'"

"Whatever are you talking about?" she said with quite a stormy blush.

"I'm afraid you've had more than your share of the champagne."

As I finished, I slipped out of my pocket a dainty little parcel softly

folded in white tissue paper. Very softly I placed it on the table.

It contained one of the precious stockings; and half opening it, I

revealed to Sylvia's astonished eyes the cunning little frieze of

Bacchus and Ariadne, followed by a troop of Satyrs and Bacchantes,

which the artist had designed to encircle one of the white columns of

that little marble temple which sat before me.

"You know," I said, "how in fairy tales, when the wandering hero or the

maiden in distress has a guiding dream, the dream often leaves

something behind on the pillow to assure them of its authenticity.

'When you wake up,' the dream will say, 'you will find a rose or an

oak-leaf or an eagle's feather, or whatever it may be, on your pillow.'

Well, I have brought this stocking--for which, if I might but use them,

I have at the moment a stock of the most appropriately endearing

adjectives--for the same purpose. By this token you will know that the

fairy tale I have been telling you is true, and to-morrow, if you will,

you shall see your autograph petticoat."

"Why, wherever did you come across them? And what a mad creature you

must be! and what an odd thing that you should really meet me, after

all!" exclaimed Sylvia, all in a breath. "Of course, I remember," she

said frankly, and with a shade of sadness passing over her face. "I

was spending a holiday with Jack Wentworth,--why, it must be nearly two

years ago. Poor Jack! he was killed in the Soudan," and poor Jack

could have wished no prettier resurrection than the look of tender

memory that came into her face as she spoke of him, and the soft baby

tears filled her eyes.

"I'm so sorry," I said. "Of course I didn't know. Let's come for a

little stroll. There seems to be a lovely moon."

"Of course you didn't," she said, patting my cheek with a kind little

hand. "Yes, do let us go for a stroll."

CHAPTER XI

"THE HOUR FOR WHICH THE YEARS DID SIGH"

This unexpected awakening of an old tenderness naturally prevented my

speaking any more of my mind to Sylvia that evening. No doubt the

reader may be a little astonished to hear that I had decided to offer

her marriage,--not taking my serious view of a fanciful vow. Doubtless

Sylvia was not entirely suitable to me, and to marry her was to be

faithless to that vision of the highest, that wonderful unknown woman

of the apocalyptic moorland, whose face Sylvia had not even momentarily

banished from my dreams, and whom, with an unaccountable certitude, I

still believed to be the woman God had destined for me; but, all things

considered, Sylvia was surely as pretty an answer to prayer as a man

could reasonably hope for. Many historic vows had met with sadly less

lucky fulfilment.

So, after dinner the following evening, I suggested that we should for

once take a little walk up along the river-side; and when we were quiet

in the moonlight, dappling the lovers' path we were treading, and

making sharp contrasts of ink and silver down in the river-bed,--I

spoke.

"Sylvia," I said, plagiarising a dream which will be found in Chapter

IV.,--"Sylvia, I have sought you through the world and found you at

last; and with your gracious permission, having found you, I mean to

stick to you."

"What do you mean, silly boy?" she said, as an irregularity in the road

threw her soft weight the more fondly upon my arm.

"I mean, dear, that I want you to be my wife."

"Your wife? Not for worlds!--no, forgive me, I didn't mean that.

You're an awful dear boy, and I like you very much, and I think you're

rather fond of me; but--well, the truth is, I was never meant to be

married, and don't care about it--and when you think of it, why should

I?"

"You mean," I said, "that you are fortunate in living in a society

where, as in heaven, there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage,

where in fact nobody minds whether you're married or not, and where

morals are very properly regarded as a personal and private matter--"

"Yes, that's what I mean," said Sylvia; "the people I care about--dear

good people--will think no more of me for having a wedding-ring, and no

less for my being without; and why should one put a yoke round one's

neck when nobody expects it? A wedding-ring is like a top-hat,--you

only wear it when you must--But it's very sweet of you, all the same,

and you can kiss me if you like. Here's a nice sentimental patch of

moonlight."

I really felt very dejected at this not of course entirely unexpected

rejection,--if one might use the word for a situation on which had just

been set the seal of so unmistakable a kiss; but the vision in my heart

seemed to smile at me in high and happy triumph. To have won Sylvia

would have been to have lost her. My ideal had, as it were, held her

breath till Sylvia answered; now she breathed again.

"At all events, we can go on being chums, can't we?" I said.

For answer Sylvia hummed the first verse of that famous song writ by

Kit Marlowe.

"Yes!" she said presently. "I will sing for you, dance for you,

and--perhaps--flirt with you; but marry you--no! it's best not, for

both of us."

"Well, then," I said, "dance for me! You owe me some amends for an

aching heart." As I said this, the path suddenly broadened into a

little circular glade into which the moonlight poured in a silver

flood. In the centre of the space was a boulder some three or four

feet high, and with a flat slab-like surface of some six feet or so.

"I declare I will," said Sylvia, giving me an impulsive kiss, and

springing on to the stone; "why, here is a ready-made stage."

"And there," I said, "are the nightingale and the nightjar for

orchestra."

"And there is the moon," said she, "for lime-light man."

"Yes," I said; "and here is a handful of glow-worms for the footlights."

Then lifting up her heavy silk skirt about her, and revealing a

paradise of chiffons, Sylvia swayed for a moment with her face full in

the moon, and then slowly glided into the movements of a mystical dance.

It was thus the fountains were dancing to the moon in Arabia; it was

thus the Nixies shook their white limbs on the haunted banks of the

Rhine; it was thus the fairy women flashed their alabaster feet on the

fairy hills of Connemara; it was thus the Houris were dancing for

Mahomet on the palace floors of Paradise.

"It was over such dancing," I said, "that John the Baptist lost his

head."

"Give me a kiss," she said, nestling exhausted in my arms. "I always

want some one to kiss when I have danced with my soul as well as my

body."

"I think we always do," I said, "when we've done anything that seems

wonderful, that gives us the thrill of really doing--"

"And a poor excuse is better than none, isn't it, dear?" said Sylvia,

her face full in the cataract of the moonlight.

As a conclusion for this chapter I will copy out a little song which I

extemporised for Sylvia on our way home to Yellowsands--too artlessly

happy, it will be observed, to rhyme correctly:--

Sylvia's dancing 'neath the moon,

Like a star in water;

Sylvia's dancing to a tune

Fairy folk have taught her.

Glow-worms light her little feet

In her fairy theatre;

Oh, but Sylvia is sweet!

Tell me who is sweeter!

CHAPTER XII

AT THE CAFE DE LA PAIX

As love-making in which we have no share is apt to be either

tantalising or monotonous, I propose to skip the next fortnight and

introduce myself to the reader at a moment when I am once more alone.

It is about six o'clock on a summer afternoon, I am in Paris, and

seated at one of the little marble tables of the Cafe de la Paix,

dreamily watching the glittering tide of gay folk passing by,--

"All happy people on their way

To make a golden end of day."

Meditatively I smoke a cigarette and sip a pale greenish liquor

smelling strongly of aniseed, which isn't half so interesting as a

commonplace whiskey and soda, but which, I am told, has the

recommendation of being ten times as wicked. I sip it with a delicious

thrill of degeneration, as though I were Eve tasting the apple for the

first time,--for "such a power hath white simplicity." Sin is for the

innocent,--a truth which sinners will be the first to regret. It was

so, I said to myself, Alfred de Musset used to sit and sip his absinthe

before a fascinated world. It is a privilege for the world to look on

greatness at any moment, even when it is drinking. So I sat, and

privileged the world.

It will readily be surmised from this exordium that--incredible as it

may seem in a man of thirty--this was my first visit to Paris. You may

remember that I had bought Orlando's tickets, and it had occurred to

Sylvia and me to use them. Sylvia was due in London to fulfil a

dancing engagement within a fortnight after our arrival; so after a

tender good-bye, which there was no earthly necessity to make final, I

had remained behind for the purposes of study. Though, logically, my

pilgrimage had ended with the unexpected discovery of Sylvia Joy, yet

there were two famous feminine types of which, seeing that I was in

Paris, I thought I might as well make brief studies, before I returned

to London and finally resumed the bachelorhood from which I had

started. These were the grisette of fiction and the American girl of

fact. Pending these investigations, I meditated on the great city in

the midst of which I sat.

A city! How much more it was than that! Was it not the most portentous

symbol of modern history? Think what the word "Paris" means to the

emancipated intellect, to the political government, to the humanised

morals, of the world; not to speak of the romance of its literature,

the tradition of its manners, and the immortal fame of its women.

France is the brain of the world, as England is its heart, and Russia

its fist. Strange is the power, strange are the freaks and revenges,

of association, particularly perhaps of literary association. Here

pompous official representatives may demur; but who can doubt that it

is on its literature that a country must rely for its permanent

representation? The countries that are forgotten, or are of no

importance in the councils of the world, are countries without

literature. Greece and Rome are more real in print than ever they were

in marble. Though, as we know, prophets are not without honour save in

their own countries and among their own kindred, the time comes when

their countries and kindred are entirely without honour save by reason

of those very prophets they once despised, rejected, stoned, and

crucified. Subtract its great men from a nation, and where is its

greatness?

Similarly, everything, however trifling, that has been written about,

so long as it has been written about sufficiently well, becomes

relatively enduring and representative of the country in which it is

found. To an American, for example, the significance of a skylark is

that Shelley sang it to skies where even it could never have mounted;

and any one who has heard the nightingale must, if he be open-minded,

confess its tremendous debt to Keats: a tenth part genuine song, the

rest moon, stars, silence, and John Keats,--such is the nightingale.

The real truth about a country will never be known till every

representative type and condition in it have found their inspired

literary mouthpiece. Meanwhile one country takes its opinion of another

from the apercus of a few brilliant but often irresponsible or

prejudiced writers,--and really it is rather in what those writers

leave out than in what they put in that one must seek the more reliable

data of national character.

A quaint example of association occurs to me from the experience of a

friend of mine, "rich enough to lend to the poor." Having met an

American friend newly landed at Liverpool, and a hurried quarter of an

hour being all that was available for lunch, "Come let us have a

pork-pie and a bottle of Bass" he had suggested.

"Pork-pies!" said the American, with a delighted sense of discovering

the country,--"why, you read about them in Dickens!" Who shall say but

that this instinctive association was an involuntary severe, but not

inapplicable, criticism? A nightingale suggests Keats; a pork-pie,

Dickens.

Similarly with absinthe, grisettes, the Latin Quarter, and so on.

Why, you read about them in Murger, in Musset, in Balzac, and in

Flaubert; and the fact of your having read about them is, I may add,

their chief importance.

So rambled my after-dinner reflections as I sat that evening smoking

and sipping, sipping and smoking, at the Cafe de la Paix.

Presently in my dream I became aware of English voices near me, one of

which seemed familiar, and which I couldn't help overhearing. The

voice of the husband said,--you can never mistake the voice of the

husband,--

'T was the voice of the husband,

I heard him complain,--

the voice of the husband said: "Dora, I forbid you! I will NOT allow

my wife to be seen again in the Latin Quarter. I permitted you to go

once, as a concession, to the Cafe d'Harcourt; but once is enough. You

will please respect my wishes!"

"But," pleaded the dear little woman, whom I had an immediate impulse,

Perseus-like, to snatch from the jaws of her monster, and turning to

the other lady of the party of four,--"but Mrs. ---- has never been,

and she cannot well go without a chaperone. Surely it cannot matter for

once. It isn't as if I were there constantly."

"No!" said the husband, with the absurd pomposity of his tribe.

"I'm very sorry. Mrs. ---- will, of course, act as she pleases; but I

cannot allow you to do it, Dora."

At last the little wife showed some spirit.

"Don't talk to me like that, Will," she said. "I shall go if I please.

Surely I am my own property."

"Not at all!" at once flashed out the husband, wounded in that most

vital part of him, his sense of property. "There you mistake. You are

my property, MY chattel; you promised obedience to me; I bought you,

and you do my bidding!"

"Great heavens!" I ejaculated, and, springing up, found myself face to

face with a well-known painter whom you would have thought the most

Bohemian fellow in London. And Bohemian he is; but Bohemians are seldom

Bohemians for any one save themselves. They are terrible sticklers for

convention and even etiquette in other people.

We recognised each other with a laugh, and presently were at it, hammer

and tongs. I may say that we were all fairly intimate friends, and thus

had the advantage of entire liberty of speech. I looked daggers at the

husband; he looked daggers at me, and occasionally looking at his wife,

gave her a glance which was like the opening of Bluebeard's closet.

You could see the poor murdered bodies dangling within the shadowy

cupboard of his eye. Of course we got no further. Additional

opposition but further enraged him. He recapitulated what he would no

doubt call his arguments,--they sounded more like threats,--and as he

spoke I saw dragons fighting for their dams in the primeval ooze, and

heard savage trumpetings of masculine monsters without a name.

I told him so.

"You are," I said,--"and you will forgive my directness of

expression,--you are the Primeval Male! You are the direct descendant

of those Romans who carried off the Sabine women. Nay! you have a much

longer genealogy. You come of those hairy anthropoid males who hunted

their mates through the tangle of primeval forests, and who finally

obtained their consent--shall we say?--by clubbing them on the head

with a stone axe. You talk a great deal of nonsense about the New

Woman, but you, Sir, are THE OLD MALE; and," I continued, "I have only

to obtain your wife's consent to take her under my protection this

instant."

Curiously enough, "The Old Male," as he is now affectionately called,

became from this moment quite a bosom friend. Nothing would satisfy us

but that we should all lodge at the same pension together, and there

many a day we fought our battles over again. But that poor little wife

never, to my knowledge, went to the Cafe d'Harcourt again.

CHAPTER XIII

THE INNOCENCE OF PARIS

This meeting with William and Dora was fortunate from the point of view

of my studies; for that very night, as I dined with them en pension, I

found that providence, with his usual foresight, had placed me next to

a very charming American girl of the type that I was particularly

wishful to study. She seemed equally wishful to be studied, and we got

on amazingly from the first moment of our acquaintance. By the middle

of dinner we were pressing each other's feet under the table, and when

coffee and cigarettes had come, we were affianced lovers. "Why should

I blush to own I love?" was evidently my quaint little companion's

motto; and indeed she didn't blush to own it to the whole table, and

publicly to announce that I was the dearest boy, and absolutely the

most lovable man she had met. There was nothing she wouldn't do for

me. Would she brave the terrors of the Latin Quarter with me, I asked,

and introduce me to the terrible Cafe d'Harcourt, about which William

and Dora had suffered such searchings of heart? "Why, certainly; there

was nothing in that," she said. So we went.

Nothing is more absurd and unjust than those crude labels of national

character which label one country virtuous and another vicious, one

musical and another literary. Thus France has an unjust reputation for

vice, and England an equally unjust reputation for virtue.

I had always, I confess, been brought up to think of Paris as a sort of

Sodom and Gomorrah in one. Good Americans might go to Paris, according

to the American theory of a future state; but, certainly I had thought,

no good Englishman ever went there--except, maybe, on behalf of the

Vigilance Society. Well, it may sound an odd thing to say, but what

impressed me most of all was the absolute innocence of the place.

I mean this quite seriously. For surely one important condition of

innocence is unconsciousness of doing wrong. The poor despised

Parisian may be a very wicked and depraved person, but certainly he

goes about with an absolute unconsciousness of it upon his gay and

kindly countenance.

"Seeing the world" usually means seeing everything in it that most

decent people won't look at; but when you come to look at these

terrible things and places, what do you find? Why, absolute

disappointment!

Have you ever read that most amusing book, "Baedeker on Paris"?

I know nothing more delightful than the notes to the Montmartre and

Latin Quarters. The places to which you, as a smug Briton, may or may

not take a lady! The scale of wickedness allowed to the waxwork

British lady is most charmingly graduated. I had read that the cafe

where we were sitting was one of the most terrible places in

Paris,--the Cafe d'Harcourt, where the students of the Latin Quarter

take their nice little domestic mistresses to supper. But Baedeker was

dreadfully Pecksniffian about these poor innocent etudiantes, many of

whom love their lovers much more truly than many a British wife loves

her husband, and are much better loved in return. If you doubt it,

dare to pay attention to one of these young ladies, and you will

probably have to fight a duel for it. In fact, these romantic

relations are much more careful of honour than conventional ones; for

love, and not merely law, keeps guard.

I looked around me. Where were those terrible things I had read of?

Where was this hell which I had reasonably expected would gape leagues

of sulphur and blue flame beneath the little marble table? I mentally

resolved to bring an action against Baedeker for false information.

For what did I see? Simply pairs and groups of young men and women

chattering amiably in front of their "bocks" or their "Americains."

Here and there a student would have his arm round a waist every one

else envied him. One student was prettily trying a pair of new gloves

upon his little woman's hand. Here and there blithe songs would spring

up, from sheer gladness of heart; and never was such a buzz of happy

young people, not even at a Sunday-school treat. To me it seemed

absolutely Arcadian, and I thought of Daphnis and Chloe and the early

world. Nothing indecorous or gross; all perfectly pretty and seemly.

On our way home Semiramis was so sweet to me, in her innocent, artless

frankness, that I went to bed with an intoxicating feeling that I must

be irresistible indeed, to have so completely conquered so true a heart

in so few hours. I was the more flattered because I am not a vain man,

and am not, like some, accustomed to take hearts as the Israelites took

Jericho with the blast of one's own trumpet.

But, alas! my dream of universal irresistibility was but short-lived,

for next afternoon, as William and I sat out at some cafe together, I

found myself the object of chaff.

"Well," said William, "how goes the love-affair?"

I flushed somewhat indignantly at his manner with sanctities.

"I see!" he said, "I see! You are already corded and labelled, and

will be shipped over by the next mail,--'To Miss Semiramis Wilcox, 1001

99th St., Philadelphia, U.S.A. Man with care.' Well, I did think

you'd got an eye in your head. Look here, don't be a fool! I suppose

she said you were the first and last. The last you certainly were.

There are limits even to the speed of American girls; but the first, my

boy! You are more like the twelfth, to my ocular knowledge. Here

comes Dubois the poet. He can tell you something about Miss Semiramis.

Eh! Dubois, you know Miss Semiramis Wilcox, don't you?"

The Frenchman smiled and shrugged.

"Un peu," he said.

"Don't be an ass and get angry," William continued; "it's all for your

own good."

"The little Semiramis has been seducing my susceptible friend here.

Like many of us, he has been captivated by her naturalness, her

naivete, her clear good eyes,--that look of nature that is always art!

May I relate the idyl of your tragic passion, dear Dubois, as an object

lesson?"

The Frenchman bowed, and signed William to proceed.

"You dined with us one evening, and you thus met for the first time.

You sat together at table. What happened with the fish?"

"She swore I was the most beautiful man she had ever seen,--and I am

not beautiful, as you perceive."

If not beautiful, the poet was certainly true.

"What happened at the entree?"

"Oh, long before that we were pressing our feet under the table."

"And the coffee--"

"Mon Dieu! we were Tristram and Yseult, we were all the great lovers in

the Pantheon of love."

"And what then?"

"Oh, we went to the Cafe d'Harcourt--mon ami."

"Did she wear a veil?" I asked.

"Oui, certainement!"

"And did you say, 'Why do you wear a veil,--setting a black cloud

before the eyes and gates of heaven'?"

"The very words," said the Frenchman.

"And did she say, 'Yes, but the veil can be raised?'"

"She did, mon pauvre ami," said the poet.

"And did you raise it?"

"I did," said the poet.

"And so did I," I answered. And as I spoke, there was a crash of white

marble in my soul, and lo! Love had fallen from his pedestal and been

broken into a thousand pieces,--a heavy, dead thing he lay upon the

threshold of my heart.

We had appointed a secret meeting in the salon of the pension that

afternoon. I was not there! (Nor, as I afterwards learnt, was

Semiramis.) When we did meet, I was brutally cold. I evaded all her

moves; but when at last I decided to give her a hearing, I confess it

needed all my cynicism to resist her air of innocence, of pathetic

devotion.

If I couldn't love her, she said, might she go on loving me? Might she

write to me sometimes? She would be content if now and again I would

send her a little word. Perhaps in time I would grow to believe in her

love, etc.

The heart-broken abandonment with which she said this was a sore trial

to me; but though love may be deceived, vanity is ever vigilant, and

vanity saved me. Yet I left her with an aching sense of having been a

brute, and on the morning of my departure from Paris, as I said

good-bye to William and Dora, I spoke somewhat seriously of Semiramis.

Dora, Dora-like, had believed in her all along,--not having enjoyed

William's opportunities of studying her,--and she reproached me with

being rather hard-hearted.

"Nonsense," said William, "if she really cared, wouldn't she have been

up to bid you good-bye?"

The words were hardly gone from his lips when there came a little knock

at the door. It was Semiramis; she had come to say good-bye. Was it in

nature not to be touched? "Good-bye," she said, as we stood a moment

alone in the hall. "I shall always think of you; you shall not be to

me as a ship that has passed in the night, though to me you have

behaved very like an iceberg."

We parted in tears and kisses, and I lived for some weeks with that

sense of having been a Nero, till two months after I received a much

glazed and silvered card to the usual effect.

And so I ceased to repine for the wound I had made in the heart of

Semiramis Wilcox.

Of another whom I met and loved in that brief month in Paris, I cherish

tenderer memories. Prim little Pauline Deschapelles! How clearly I can

still see the respectable brass plate on the door of your little

flat--"Mademoiselle Deschapelles--Modes et Robes;" and indeed the

"modes et robes" were true enough. For you were in truth a very

hard-working little dressmaker, and I well remember how impressed I was

to sit beside you, as you plied your needle on some gown that must be

finished by the evening, and meditate on the quaint contrast between

your almost Puritanic industry and your innocent love of pleasure. I

don't think I ever met a more conscientious little woman than little

Pauline Deschapelles.

There was but one drawback to our intercourse. She didn't know a word

of English, and I couldn't speak a word of French. So we had to make

shift to love without either language. But sometimes Pauline would

throw down her stitching in amused impatience, and, going to her dainty

secretaire, write me a little message in the simplest baby

French--which I would answer in French which would knit her brows for a

moment or two, and then send her off in peals of laughter.

It WAS French! I know. Among the bric-a-brac of my heart I still

cherish some of those little slips of paper with which we made

international love--question and answer.

"Vous allez m'oublier, et ne plus penser a moi--ni me voir. Les

hommes--egoistes--menteurs, pas dire la verite..." so ran the

questions, considerably devoid of auxiliary verbs and such details of

construction.

"Je serais jamais t'oublier," ran the frightful answers!

Dear Pauline! Shall I ever see her again? She was but twenty-six.

She may still live.

CHAPTER XIV

END OF BOOK THREE

So ended my pilgrimage. I had wandered far, had loved many, but I came

back to London without the Golden Girl. I had begun my pilgrimage with

a vision, and it was with a vision that I ended it. From all my goings

to and fro upon the earth, I had brought back only the image of a

woman's face,--the face of that strange woman of the moorland, still

haunting my dreams of the night and the day.

It was autumn in my old garden, damp and forsaken, and the

mulberry-tree was hung with little yellow shields. My books looked

weary of awaiting me, and they and the whole lonely house begged me to

take them where sometimes they might be handled by human fingers,

mellowed by lamplight, cheered by friendly laughter.

The very chairs begged mutely to be sat upon, the chill white beds to

be slept in. Yes, the very furniture seemed even lonelier than myself.

So I took heed of their dumb appeal.

"I know," I answered them tenderly,--"I too, with you, have looked on

better days, I too have been where bells have knoll'd to church, I too

have sat at many a good man's feast,--yes! I miss human society, even

as you, my books, my bedsteads, and my side-boards,--so let it be. It

is plain our little Margaret is not coming back, our little Margaret,

dear haunted rooms, will never come back; no longer shall her little

silken figure flit up and down your quiet staircases, her hands filled

with flowers, and her heart humming with little songs. Yes, let us go,

it is very lonely; we shall die if we stay here all so lonely together;

it is time, let us go."

So thereon I wrote to a furniture-remover, and went out to walk round

the mossy old garden for the last time, and say good-bye to the great

mulberry, under whose Dodonaesque shade we had sat half frightened on

starry nights, to the apple-trees whose blossom had seemed like

fairy-land to Margaret and me, town-bred folk, to the apricots and the

peaches and the nectarines that it had seemed almost wicked to own,--as

though we had gone abroad in silk and velvet,--to the little grassy

orchard, and to the little green corner of it, where Margaret had

fallen asleep that summer afternoon, in the great wicker-chair, and I

had brought a dear friend on tiptoe to gaze on her asleep, with her

olive cheeks delicately flushed, her great eyelids closed like the

cheeks of roses, and her gold hair tumbled about her neck...

Well, well, good-bye,--tears are foolish things. They will not bring

Margaret back. Good-bye, old garden, good-bye, I shall never see you

again,--good-bye.

BOOK IV

THE POSTSCRIPT TO A PILGRIMAGE

CHAPTER I

SIX YEARS AFTER

This book is like a woman's letter. The most important part of it is

the postscript.

Six years lie between the end of the last chapter and the beginning of

this. Meanwhile, I had moved to sociable chambers within sound of the

city clocks, and had lived the life of a lonely man about town, sinking

more and more into the comfortable sloth of bachelorhood. I had long

come to look back upon my pilgrimage as a sort of Indian-summer youth,

being, as the reader can reckon for himself, just on thirty-seven. As

one will, with one's most serious experiences, hastening to laugh lest

one should weep, as the old philosopher said, I had made some fun out

of my quest, in the form of a paper for a bookish society to which I

belonged, on "Woman as a Learned Pursuit." It is printed among the

transactions of the society, and is accessible to the curious only by

loan from the members, and I regret that I am unable to print any

extracts here. Perhaps when I am dead the society will see the

criminal selfishness of reserving for itself what was meant for mankind.

Meanwhile, however, it is fast locked and buried deep in the archives

of the club. I have two marriages to record in the interval: one that

of a young lady whom I must still think of as 'Nicolete' to Sir

Marmaduke Pettigrew, Bart., of Dultowers Hall, and the other the

well-known marriage of Sylvia Joy...

Sylvia Joy married after all her fine protestations! Yes! but I'm sure

you will forgive her, for she was married to a lord. When one is twenty

and romantic one would scorn a woman who would jilt us for wealth and

position; at thirty, one would scorn any woman who didn't. Ah me! how

one changes! No one, I can honestly say, was happier over these two

weddings than I, and I sent Sylvia her petticoat as a wedding present.

But it was to tell of other matters that I reopen this book and once

more take up my pen--matters so near to my heart that I shrink from

writing of them, and am half afraid that the attempt may prove too hard

for me after all, and my book end on a broken cry of pain. Yet, at the

same time, I want to write of them, for they are beautiful and solemn,

and good food for the heart.

Besides, though my pilgrimage had been ended so long, they are really a

part, yea, the part for which, though I knew it not, all the rest has

been written--for they tell how I came to find by accident her whom so

long I had sought of design.

How shall I tell of Thee who, first and last of all women, gave and

awoke in me that love which is the golden key of the world, the mystic

revelation of the holy meaning of life, love that alone may pass

through the awful gates of the stars, and gaze unafraid into the blue

abysses beyond?

Ah! Love, it seemed far away indeed from the stars, the place where we

met, and only by the light of love's eyes might we have found each

other--as only by the light of love's eyes... But enough, my Heart,

the world waits to hear our story,--the world once so unloving to you,

the world with a heart so hard and anon so soft for love. When the

story is ended, my love, when the story is ended--

CHAPTER II

GRACE O' GOD

It was a hard winter's night four years ago, lovely and merciless; and

towards midnight I walked home from a theatre to my rooms in St.

James's Street. The Venusberg of Piccadilly looked white as a nun with

snow and moonlight, but the melancholy music of pleasure, and the sad

daughters of joy, seemed not to heed the cold. For another hour death

and pleasure would dance there beneath the electric lights.

Through the strange women clustering at the corners I took my

way,--women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Zidonians, and

Hittites,--and I thought, as I looked into their poor painted

faces,--faces but half human, vampirish faces, faces already waxen with

the look of the grave,--I thought, as I often did, of the poor little

girl whom De Quincey loved, the good-hearted little 'peripatetic' as he

called her, who had succoured him during those nights, when, as a young

man, he wandered homeless about these very streets,--that good, kind

little Ann whom De Quincey had loved, then so strangely lost, and for

whose face he looked into women's faces as long as he lived. Often

have I stood at the corner of Titchfield Street, and thought how De

Quincey had stood there night after night waiting for her to come, but

all in vain, and how from the abyss of oblivion into which some cruel

chance had swept her, not one cry from her ever reached him again.

I thought, too, as I often did, what if the face I seek should be here

among these poor outcasts,--golden face hidden behind a mask of shame,

true heart still beating true even amidst this infernal world!

Thus musing, I had walked my way out of the throng, and only a figure

here and there in the shadows of doorways waited and waited in the cold.

It was something about one of these waiting figures,--some movement,

some chance posture,--that presently surprised my attention and

awakened a sudden sense of half recognition. She stood well in the

shadow, seeming rather to shrink from than to court attention. As I

walked close by her and looked keenly into her face, she cast down her

eyes and half turned away. Surely, I had seen that tall, noble figure

somewhere before, that haughty head; and then with the apparition a

thought struck me--but, no! it couldn't be she! not HERE!

"It is," said my soul, as I turned and walked past her again; "you

missed her once, are you going to miss her again?"

"It is," said my eyes, as they swept her for the third time; "but she

had glorious chestnut hair, and the hair of this woman is--gilded."

"It is she," said my heart; "thank God, it is she!"

So it was that I went up to that tall, shy figure.

"It must be very cold here," I said; "will you not join me in some

supper?"

She assented, and we sought one of the many radiating centres of

festivity in the neighbourhood. She was very tired and cold,--so tired

she seemed hardly to have the spirit to eat, and evidently the cold had

taken tight clutch of her lungs, for she had a cough that went to my

heart to hear, and her face was ghastly pale. When I had persuaded her

to drink a little wine, she grew more animated and spots of suspicious

colour came into her cheeks. So far she had seemed all but oblivious

of my presence, but now she gave me a sweet smile of gratitude, one of

those irradiating transfiguring smiles that change the whole face, and

belong to few faces, the heavenly smile of a pure soul.

Yes, it was she! The woman who sat in front of me was the woman whom I

had met so strangely that day on that solitary moorland, and whom in

prophecy still more strange my soul had declared to be, "now and for

ever and before all worlds the woman God had created for me, and that

unless I could be hers and she mine, there could be no home, no peace,

for either of us so long as we lived--" and now so strangely met again.

Yes, it was she!

For the moment my mind had room for no other thought. I cared not to

conjecture by what devious ways God had brought her to my side. I

cared not what mire her feet had trodden. She had carried her face

pure as a lily through all the foul and sooty air. There was a pure

heart in her voice. Sin is of the soul, and this soul had not sinned!

Let him that is without sin amongst you cast the first stone.

"Why did you dye that wonderful chestnut hair?" I asked her

presently--and was sorry next minute for the pain that shot across her

face, but I just wanted to hint at what I designed not to reveal fully

till later on, and thus to hint too that it was not as one of the

number of her defilers that I had sought her.

"Why," she said, "how do you know the colour of my hair? We have never

met before."

"Yes, we have," I said, "and that was why I spoke to you to-night.

I'll tell you where it was another time."

But after all I could not desist from telling her that night, for, as

afterwards at her lodging we sat over the fire, talking as if we had

known each other all our lives, there seemed no reason for an arbitrary

delay.

I described to her the solitary moorland road, and the grey-gowned

woman's figure in front of me, and the gig coming along to meet her,

and the salutation of the two girls, and I told her all one look of her

face had meant for me, and how I had wildly sought her in vain, and

from that day to this had held her image in my heart.

And as I told her, she sobbed with her head against my knees and her

great hair filling my lap with gold. In broken words she drew for me

the other side of the picture of that long-past summer day.

Yes, the girl in the gig was her sister, and they were the only

daughters of a farmer who had been rich once, but had come to ruin by

drink and misfortune. They had been brought up from girls by an old

grandmother, with whom the sister was living at the time of my seeing

them. Yes, Tom was her husband. He was a doctor in the neighbourhood

when he married her, and a man, I surmised, of some parts and promise,

but, moving to town, he had fallen into loose ways, taken to drinking

and gambling, and had finally deserted her for another woman--at the

very moment when their first child was born. The child died "Thank

God!" she added with sudden vehemence, and "I--well, you will wonder

how I came to this, I wonder myself--it has all happened but six months

ago, and yet I seem to have forgotten--only the broken-hearted and the

hungry would understand, if I could remember--and yet it was not life,

certainly not life I wanted--and yet I couldn't die--"

The more I came to know Elizabeth and realise the rare delicacy of her

nature, the simplicity of her mind, and the purity of her soul, the

less was I able to comprehend the psychology of that false step which

her great misery had forced her to take. For hers was not a sensual,

pleasure-loving nature. In fact, there was a certain curious

Puritanism about her, a Puritanism which found a startlingly

incongruous and almost laughable expression in the Scripture almanac

which hung on the wall at the end of her bed, and the Bible, and two or

three Sunday-school stories which, with a copy of "Jane Eyre," were the

only books that lay upon the circular mahogany table.

Once I ventured gently to chaff her about this religiosity of hers.

"But surely you believe in God, dear," she had answered, "you're not an

atheist!"

I think an atheist, with all her experience of human monsters, was for

her the depth of human depravity.

"No, dear," I had answered; "if you can believe in God, surely I can!"

I repeat that this gap in Elizabeth's psychology puzzled me, and it

puzzles me still, but it puzzled me only as the method of working out

some problem which after all had "come out right" might puzzle one. It

was only the process that was obscure. The result was gold, whatever

the dark process might be. Was it simply that Elizabeth was one of

that rare few who can touch pitch and not be defiled?--or was it, I

have sometimes wondered, an unconscious and after all a sound casuistry

that had saved Elizabeth's soul, an instinctive philosophy that taught

her, so to say, to lay a Sigurd's sword between her soul and body, and

to argue that nothing can defile the body without the consent of the

soul.

In deep natures there is always what one might call a lover's leap to

be taken by those that would love them--something one cannot understand

to be taken on trust, something even that one fears to be gladly

adventured ... all this, and more, I knew that I could safely venture

for Elizabeth's sake, ere I kissed her white brow and stole away in the

early hours of that winter's morning.

As I did so I had taken one of the sumptuous strands of her hair into

my hand and kissed it too.

"Promise me to let this come back to its own beautiful colour," I had

said, as I nodded to a little phial labelled "Peroxide of Hydrogen" on

her mantelshelf.

"Would you like to?" she had said.

"Yes, do it for me."

One day some months after I cut from her dear head one long thick lock,

one half of which was gold and the other half chestnut. I take it out

and look at it as I write, and, as when I first cut it, it seems still

a symbol of Elizabeth's life, the sun and the shadow, only that the

gold was the shadow, and the chestnut was the sun.

The time came when the locks, from crown to tip, were all chestnut--but

when it came I would have given the world for them to be gold again;

for Elizabeth had said a curious thing when she had given me her

promise.

"All right, dear," she had said, "but something tells me that when they

are all brown again our happiness will be at an end."

"How long will that take?" I had said, trying to be gay, though an

involuntary shudder had gone through me, less at her words than because

of the strange conviction of her manner.

"About two years,--perhaps a little more," she said, answering me quite

seriously, as she gravely measured the shining tresses, half her body's

length, with her eye.

CHAPTER III

THE GOLDEN GIRL

One fresh and sunny morning, some months after this night, Elizabeth

and I stood before the simple altar of a little country church, for the

news had come to us that her husband was dead, and thus we were free to

belong to each other before all the world. The exquisite stillness in

the cool old church was as the peace in our hearts, and the rippling

sound of the sunlit leaves outside seemed like the very murmur of the

stream of life down which we dreamed of gliding together from that hour.

It was one of those moments which sometimes come and go without any

apparent cause, when life suddenly takes a mystical aspect of

completeness, all its discords are harmonised by some unseen hand of

the spirit, and all its imperfections fall away. The lover of beauty

and the lover of God alike know these strange moments, but none know

them with such a mighty satisfaction as a man and a woman who love as

loved Elizabeth and I.

Love for ever completes the world, for it is no future of higher

achievement, no expectation of greater joy. It lives for ever in a

present made perfect by itself. Love can dream of no greater

blessedness than itself, of no heaven but its own. God himself could

have added no touch of happiness to our happy hearts that grave and

sunny morning. You philosophers who go searching for the meaning of

life, thinkers reading so sadly, and let us hope so wrongly, the riddle

of the world--life has but one meaning, the riddle but one

answer--which is Love. To love is to put yourself in harmony with the

spheral music of creation, to stand in the centre of the universe, and

see it good and whole as it appears in the eye of God.

Even Death himself, the great and terrible King of kings, though he may

break the heart of love with agonies and anguish and slow tortures of

separation, may break not his faith. No one that has loved will dream

even death too terrible a price to pay for the revelation of love. For

that revelation once made can never be recalled. As a little sprig of

lavender will perfume a queen's wardrobe, so will a short year of love

keep sweet a long life. And love's best gifts death can never take

away. Nay, indeed, death does not so much rob as enrich the gifts of

love. The dead face that was fair grows fairer each spring, sweet

memories grow more sweet, what was silver is now gold, and as years go

by, the very death of love becomes its immortality.

I think I shall never hear Elizabeth's voice again, never look into her

eyes, never kiss her dear lips--but Elizabeth is still mine, and I am

hers, as in that morning when we kissed in that little chancel amid the

flickering light, and passed out into the sun and down the lanes, to

our little home among the meadow-sweet.

She is still as real to me as the stars,--and, alas, as far away! I

think no thought that does not fly to her, I have no joys I do not

share with her, I tell her when the spring is here, and we sit beneath

the moon and listen to the nightjar together. Sometimes we are merry

together as in the old time, and our laughter makes nightfaring folk to

cross themselves; my work, my dreams, my loves, are all hers, and my

very sins are sinned for her sake.

Two years did Elizabeth and I know the love that passeth all

understanding, and day by day the chestnut upon her head was more and

the gold less, till the day came that she had prophesied, and with the

day a little child, whose hair had stolen all her mother's gold, as her

heart had drained away her mother's life.

Ah! reader, may it be long before you kneel at the bedside of her you

love best in the world, and know that of all your love is left but a

hundred heart-beats, while opposite sits Death, watch in hand, and

fingers upon her wrist.

"Husband," whispered Elizabeth, as we looked at each other for the last

time, "let her be your little golden girl..."

And then a strange sweetness stole over her face, and the dream of

Elizabeth's life was ended.

As I write I hear in the still house the running of little feet, a

fairy patter sweet and terrible to the heart.

Little feet, little feet--perhaps if I follow you I shall find again

our mother that is lost. Perhaps Elizabeth left you with me that I

should not miss the way.

Tout par soullas.