whose multiplicity of previous loves must lessen the value of each
succeeding one. My work, which had been Lucia's successful rival, had
protected her from lesser ones.

Nothing, except the possession of this woman, had ever been a synonym
of pleasure with me, and therefore its expectation had a stronger hold
over me than it could have had over a man who was accustomed to
acknowledge and recognise pleasure under a hundred names. I felt the
impetus of this undiffused, undissipated passion, in its undivided
strength, stir and vitalise all my energies, and its power over my own
frame made me involuntarily, instinctively confident of the power it
would have over hers.

"We will see how long it is before you capitulate, oh my fortified and
arrogant city!" I thought, as I finished dressing and went downstairs.
My father was reading the paper, apparently waiting breakfast for me.
We were on the very best of terms now.

He felt convinced of my capability to work, and assured of my success.
With that surprising tendency of the human mind to delegate its own
powers to another, he accepted completely the verdict of the Parisian
publisher upon qualities he had had under his own observation for an
odd twenty years. Now, forsooth, because another man had told him so,
he took it for granted that I had some talent. And all the time we had
lived together he had hesitated to form that opinion from first-hand
knowledge. Extraordinary trait in human nature, this liking to be
thought for, instead of thinking for yourself! This waiting to take up,
second-hand, ready-made, the views of another man, even when the fresh
materials are at your hand, and you may examine them and form your own.
It is a universal tendency, of course, and displays itself everywhere;
in religion, in morality, in fashions, in vices, in simple
conversation--everywhere.

The glorious and free gift of Nature to every man, the capacity for
perception and judgment, he shamefacedly, as if it were a disgrace,
tries to shift off upon another. It always amuses me immensely when
brought before me, and it did now in my father's case. He assumed, as
innumerable people do, that success or failure proves or disproves
merit, which is such a curious opinion, as remarkable as if a person
believed the absence or presence of the hall-mark proved or disproved
the identity of gold. On no point did he and I differ more widely than
on this.

It has always seemed to me that the formation of a judgment and opinion
is an involuntary function of the mind, not a matter of effort, as
others seem to regard it. Your judgment may be wrong, so may your
opinion; your perception may be misled. I understand that. But can you
exist without judgment, without opinion, without perception, till
another man hand you his? This is hard to realise.

My father in all these years had not said my son is a fool and will not
succeed, nor had he said my son is clever and will succeed, but what he
had said was this, he may be a fool or he may be clever, we will see
what the publishers say. And this attitude of mind, which repeated
itself in different forms in half the men one meets, is fascinatingly
incomprehensible to me. If I have the opportunity of seeing a man or
testing a ring, what do I care, what does it matter to me, whether he
is successful or unsuccessful, whether the ring is hall-marked or not!
I have my own eyes, ears, and intelligence at command. What more do I
want? Give me the man or the metal: in a very short time I have decided
their worth to my own satisfaction. I may be wrong in my estimate, of
course, but that is another matter.

If my brain is in a healthy state, I can do more avoid its forming an
exact, personal opinion of the man, and a computation of his powers,
than I can avoid my eye spontaneously taking his shape and muscles into
its vision. In their natural, unimpaired state, neither organ should
need artificial aid. But my father was looking at me now through the
mental spectacles of my success, which made to him hugely big that
merit which, before, he could not see at all. Thanks to those
spectacles, an easy indulgence was granted me. Little that I could do
now was wrong. Another man had thought fit to pay me for my powers.
That elevated me in his estimation as the powers themselves never had
done. He had no longer any wish apparently to oppose me. Since my
brains were now authenticated by the seal of a publisher, he was
sufficiently satisfied that they might be trusted to decide my own life
and conduct. However, besides all this, he was strictly a man of his
word, and having promised that, with my success, all opposition to my
marriage would cease, he kept his conditions, as I had kept mine.

"I am very sorry to be so late," I said, as we drew our chairs to the
table. "I am afraid you have waited for me."

"My dear boy, a few minutes are of no consequence!"

"I had rather a stiff headache last night, and only got to sleep when
it was nearly time to get up. I hope I didn't wake you coming home last
night? That idiot Walters must needs turn out the gas and go to sleep
in the hall. Of course I kicked him over. Did it disturb you?"

"I should think it was calculated to disturb Walters more than me!" he
returned. "No; I didn't hear you. Were you late? Will you have sole or
bacon?"

"Sole, please," I said. "Yes; Dick and I walked back from Lucia's
place."

"How did you find her?" he asked, stirring his tea I had just handed
him, and looking at me. "Don't you think she has deteriorated in looks
very much?"

"Enormously," I replied, without hesitation.

There is nothing like conceding at once to your opponent any point that
you admit yourself. It saves discussion being wasted upon that which
you are really agreed about, and gives more weight to all you refuse to
relinquish to him afterwards.

My father looked a little surprised, and did not answer immediately,
and I continued,--

"She was always, as far as I remember, a girl who could look
exceedingly pretty and positively plain, and all the intermediate
gradations, within twenty-four hours, but really," I added, meeting his
eyes across the breakfast table, and the full blaze of the sunlight
falling into my own, "to me, in any one of them, she is equally"--

I hesitated a second, and he put in--

"Attractive?"

It was not the word I should have used, but it served, and I let it
pass.

"I suppose it's really her talent that fetches you as much as anything,
eh?" he said, after a few minutes.

"And her character," I answered; "her whole personality. I suppose all
those things weighed at first, but, as a matter of fact, now it is
quite enough that she is the woman I have determined upon."

"An admission of your own obstinacy," he answered, tartly.

"That may be the right term for it," I returned, "but I hardly think it
is. Theoretically, Lucia has belonged to me the past four years. An
idea, a habit of the mind, is full grown and has some strength at four
years of age."

My father said nothing, but lapsed into the silence of defeat or of
contempt, and we pursued our breakfast.

"Will you let me have the victoria this morning?" I said, after a long
silence. "She wants me to drive her to the Academy."

"Of course; I'm glad you can find something to do here. I'm afraid of
its seeming dull to you after Paris."

I looked up with elevated eyebrows.

"And wherein do you imagine the gaiety of Paris consisted?" I asked.

"Oh, I've no doubt you found plenty of amusement there," he answered,
with an indulgent smile.

"I assure you there was not one single hour of the whole time that was
not spent in work or thought," I said, seriously.

He laughed.

"I am delighted to hear it, I'm sure, Victor," he said, with the air of
a person who accepts the general truth of a statement with a large
reservation of their own opinion on the details of it. However, I did
not care. I had worked for my own sake; lived correctly for my own
sake--and whether another knew it or not mattered to me not at all.

"No; on the contrary, I am very pleased to be back," I said. "I always
look upon the place where you are as home."

A pleased expression came over his face as I spoke. We were sincerely
attached to each other in spite of the jarring dissonance of character.
Later that same morning when I was sitting beside Lucia as we drove to
the Academy, I studied her closely in the sharp morning light, and I
was alarmed at the pallor and exhaustion of her face. I am not an
admirer of ill-health in any form. The hectic flush of phthisis, even,
dear to the poets, has positively no charm for me; and Lucia's illness
was not phthisis, and certainly did not enhance her looks.

"Who is your medical man, Lucia?" I asked.

"Why do you wish to know?"

"That I may be satisfied that he is a good one."

"I should prefer not to tell you his name."

"Why?"

"Because I object," she said simply, in her coldest tone.

"That is not a sufficient reason."

"I am of opinion that it is," she returned frigidly, with a
supercilious accent.

I leant back in the carriage without answering, and looked away from
her. How I hated her in that moment! After all, I thought, why do you
trouble to get this particular woman above everything? Fifty women that
you meet in the course of a week are as pretty--possibly of more
worth--probably more civil. Why not select a more accessible divinity?
Or else content yourself with Horace's parabilem venerem facilemque?

Then I glanced involuntarily at her, and I knew it was impossible. My
eyes swept over the form beside me, as she sat cold, impassive; her
attitude one of quiet ease, her whole mien the essence of calm
self-possession. That excess of pride and dignity and supercilious
arrogance that in Lucia replaced, at times, her seductive plasticity at
others, had always exercised a violent attraction over me. And now,
when this pride seemed joined with a positive hostility to myself, it
failed to repel; it simply raised to its highest pitch a savage and
acrimonious determination to subdue it.

As I sat silent, with my eyes turned away from her to the blaze of
glaring pavement and roadway, and noted mechanically the crush of
traffic on ahead, Dick's remark on my brutality recurred to me, and I
forced the most good-natured smile to my lips, and the quietest tone to
my voice, as I turned to her and said,--

"Of course, dearest, I will consider it sufficient if you say so."

Perhaps she expected farther opposition, and my yielding surprised her.
She looked at me full for a minute in silence, then, failing to
discover a trace of the savage irritation I was feeling, she laid her
hand impulsively on mine, and said with a smile,--

"You are a dear, good-tempered fellow, Victor!" at which I laughed--
considerably.

The Academy is a place of all others, I should think, most calculated
to fatigue and oppress a person in nervous ill-health. It was just
twelve when Lucia and I arrived. The sun was at its hottest, and the
crowds within the rooms at their thickest. The air seemed lifeless and
laden with dust, swept up by the women's dresses, and filled with a
mixture of scents from White Rose to Eau de Cologne. The daylight was
harshly bright, and the unbroken lines of pictures in their glaring
gilt frames, annoyed and jarred upon the eye.

We moved very slowly with the rank of people passing down our side of
the gallery. Lucia never removed her eyes from the walls, except to
glance at me and make me refer to a name in the catalogue, and the
women who passed her were able to scrutinise her dress and face without
a return glance. This they did to the utmost limits of good breeding,
for both were sufficiently worthy of notice.

Whether Lucia looked pretty or plain, at her best or her worst, she
always looked more or less striking. Some women are like this; they can
appear everything but quiet and common-place. Lucia would be noticed
everywhere, sometimes favourably, sometimes the reverse; but noticed
she must infallibly be. An exceptionally beautiful figure, a certain
extravagance in dress, and an unusually fair skin made her conspicuous
where far more regular faces and straight profiles passed unnoticed.
She herself was absolutely indifferent to everything save the
paintings. Twice I called her attention to men who saluted her without
being seen by her as she passed close to them.

"I am very sorry," she said in answer. "It is a stupid fashion to
notice one's friends here. One should not be supposed to recognise them
at the Academy any more than in church!"

We drifted on slowly with the mass, and at last came to a standstill
before a wedge of figures in front of a prominent canvas. A nude female
figure stood upright, facing the spectator, with both arms upraised to
fasten a pomegranate blossom in the tightly twisted hair: an indefinite
heap of sketchy clothing lay upon the ground.

"The title?" murmured Lucia; and I pressed my way a little forward to
see the number, looked it up in the catalogue, and read to her "The
Toilette." "Before the toilette! I should think," said Lucia, in a
satirical whisper. I nodded and laughed.

We could not move on till the circle before us moved, and we stood
silent looking at the shadowy representation of human flesh and blood
smiling with fixed inanity from the canvas.

"The most successful picture of the year!" remarked one man just in
front of us.

"Eminently artistic!" murmured another, stifling a yawn.

"Did you ever see such a thing?" said Lucia. "No living woman ever
looked like that!"

"No," I answered, unguardedly.

Lucia threw a sudden, brilliant, mocking glance over my face.

"Come, Victor! you ought to have said you didn't know!"

I coloured, and then laughed.

"Ah, yes; so I ought. Well, really, I answered you in absence of mind."

"Oh, don't apologise! Let's sit down."

I glanced at her face. It was white to the lips which laughed so
readily. I looked round desperately. The lounge behind was filled
completely before the most successful picture of the year.

"Let us try another room," I said, hastily drawing her arm more through
mine. It leant heavily there, and she grew more pallid.

"They are all alike--I can't stand the heat--we must go, I think," she
murmured.

"It doesn't seem very easy," I said.

Lucia threw a helpless glance round on the crown pressing up eagerly to
catch a glimpse of the popular painting, and some one in artistic
circles recognised her.

A whisper went from one to the other of the little sets within the
crowd, and they fell back from us; heads were turned from the canvas
towards Lucia. There was an exit made, and I walked determinedly
through the staring loungers, who yielded before us.

A voice said behind us,--

"They say she'll be the greatest artist of the times!"

"How I envy her!" came a girl's answer.

Lucia's blue-white lips smiled mockingly.

"Take me home, Victor," she said, faintly.

The hot summer days dragged slowly by.

The Grants did not leave town, and I hesitated to do as my father
suggested, and go myself. I waited, and saw Lucia daily, and hoped
daily to hear the words I thirsted for, but she persistently refused to
say anything of herself or her health or her wishes. I might see her as
often as I liked, go and come to and from her house as I pleased, but
speak of our marriage or allow me any of the privileges of a fiance she
would not.

As the weeks passed the life became intolerable for me. I could not
expect my book to be produced till the autumn. There was no fresh
impetus in my brain toward writing another. All my thoughts centred now
round this woman, whom I saw apparently growing more listless, languid,
and indifferent to myself every day.

The nervous strain told upon me. Night followed night in which I got no
sleep, and which left me with a blinding headache to commence the day.
Gradually these headaches lengthened, till they stretched throughout
the tedious, desultory hours; and one stifling August afternoon, lying,
dizzy with pain, on the couch, I determined to win an answer from her
or cut all the ties, dear and clinging though they might be, and leave
her finally.

To-morrow! What was to-morrow? My brain went round when I tried to
think of the simplest thing. We had some men coming in to luncheon, I
remembered, but I would go and see her early in the morning. We were
generally alone with each other in the morning. This evening I should
have no chance of speaking as I meant to speak. When the evening came,
I felt unfit even to go and see her, and it was later than I intended
the next morning when I reached the house. I had made myself later,
too, by stopping on the way to get her some flowers. There was little
in the shop worth having but some lilies, all price, scent, and
brilliance. I took these and hurried on. They were very fine specimens,
certainly, I thought, as I glanced over them. I care very little for
flowers; they are useful, of course, sometimes, as a present for women,
and a button-hole; but there, for me, their merits cease. Howard would
have sentimentalised into two or three verses over these.

I found her in the drawing-room, as usual now, for the studio was
rarely ever visited, except when she went to gaze in an abstracted way
on the finished work. She was doing nothing--as usual now--she who
formerly worked without ceasing every hour of daylight. Nor was there
anything near her that suggested or made possible the supposition of
work or even occupation. Every book was ranged in different cases in
remote corners of the room. Not a newspaper, nor blotting-book, nor
pen, lay on the table. She was sitting in an armchair facing the
window, her knees crossed idly, her elbow leaning on a table beside
her, her head resting on her hand; idle, listless. Perhaps her toilette
alone, as an elaborate work, might excuse her from any other for
several hours. She looked round with a smile, and even that was tired,
as I entered and crossed to her.

"How are you, dearest, to-day?" I said, as I took her hand. "No, pray,
don't get up," I added, as she made a movement to rise, and to obviate
her doing so, I dropped into a low wicker chair, which I drew up close
to hers, and laid the lilies on her lap.

"I am as well as usual, thanks, Victor. These are lovely! Where did you
get them?"

"At a shop in Regent Street. I wanted something extraordinary, but they
had nothing."

"What could you have more beautiful than these?"

"Beautiful? Yes; but there is no worth in beauty unless there is some
peculiarity about it to attract one. May I do that for you?"

She had lifted the flowers and begun to fasten them into the front of
her bodice, a difficult work, covered, as it was, with an intricate
maze of lace.

"Thank you! I am perfectly capable of achieving it myself."

The familiar, cold pride in the tone brought an ironical smile to my
lips--suppressed, however, before she saw it.

"You are afraid of the risk of my hand touching your breast
accidentally in fastening a flower!" I thought, satirically, as I
watched her in silence, and remembered the mission with which I had
come. I glanced at the clock and saw it was later than I thought.

"Do you know what I have come for this morning, Lucia?" I asked,
leaning my elbow on the arm of her chair, and looking into the soft
blue eyes that seemed to have a sort of timidity in them of me now.

"To torment me as usual, I suppose," she answered.

"That depends upon how you take it," I said, with a slight laugh.

"I have come to say Good-bye."

I watched her keenly as I spoke, and I saw she was perceptibly
startled. She fixed her eyes upon me, and the colour began to recede
visibly from her face. However, she only said calmly after a moment,--

"Well, if you are going away, I shall have peace at any rate."

"Yes, dear," I answered gently, "you will have peace certainly as far
as I am concerned, for if I go now I shall consider our engagement
terminated."

Lucia started into an upright position in her chair.

"Victor!" she exclaimed, fixing two widely-dilated eyes upon me, "what
are you talking about? What have I done? What do you mean? You must not
go!"

And her hand sought mine and closed over it with an appealing, seducing
touch. It went through my nerves and frame like flame. It seemed to
confuse and scatter speech, sweep it from me as some useless trifle,
and wake one intolerable burning desire for action.

I withdrew my hand suddenly, unbent my arm, and leaning over the
intervening chair side, put it round the low exquisite waist and tried
to draw her towards me. But this most irritating of women resented
immediately that which she had just invited.

"You must not!" she said, vehemently, trying with both hands to
disengage her waist from my arm, her face changing uncertainly from
white to scarlet, her eyes meeting mine with a fugitive alarm, which
nearly, but not entirely, overwhelmed a furtive transitory look of
pleasure at the contact.

I had not mistaken her, I thought, she was both weak and sensual. I
must conquer the first quality, and seduce the second, and the battle
was won. But it was hard to prevent my own self-command slipping from
me, and if I did not keep that, my real object would be lost in this
useless sort of coquetry, or possibly a quarrel. I wanted all my own
judgment--and it was difficult to summon it and keep it--to tell me
exactly how far to push matters to excite her, without driving her to
get up and leave me altogether.

"Nonsense!" I said, looking down into the changing face and on to the
heaving, panting bosom; "if we are engaged, you know, I have a right to
do much more than put my arm round your waist."

"Right!" she repeated, scornfully, "there is no right except what I
choose! Take your arm away!"

"Listen to me," I said quietly, paying no heed to her request, except
to tighten my clasp just so much as I dared.

Such a waist it was, yielding, supple, and warm; it was maddening to
have to restrain the muscles in my arm and regulate their pressure. The
blood went to my brain, and it was with a severe effort I collected my
thoughts.

"You say," I continued, "that I must not go. Lucia, there is only one
single condition on which I will stay."

"What is it?" she murmured.

She had ceased to resist my arm now. The colour was hot in her face,
and her eyes confused.

"That you name some definite and definitive date for our marriage."

"This question again! How you do torture me! It worries me to have to
think about it!"

"I know, dearest; that is why I say, settle something, and don't think
about it any more."

"How can you be so absurd!" she answered, leaning her head back against
the chair, and averting her soft, flushed face as far from me as she
could, so successfully that there was little view of anything except
the white throat and under-part of her chin as she strained her head
back from me.

"Please let things go on as they are."

The words were a positive entreaty, but they fell upon ground where
passion had blocked access to any of the tenderer, impersonal feelings.
I only felt a rage of impatience as I heard her.

"No, dearest," I said very gently; "that is just what they cannot do;"
and I looked at the swelling neck with the faint blue veins visible in
its transparency, and thought, "You must be my own, or I must cease to
see you, otherwise I shall strangle you."

"I cannot stand this sort of thing any longer. Not even for you, Lucia,
can I run the risk of losing the little brains I possess, which is
extremely likely to happen if I let things, as you say, go on as they
are."

"Why?" she said, fretfully, turning her head from side to side. "What
do I do to you?"

I did not answer this, but I raised myself so that I could look into
her face, and our eyes met. She flushed crimson, and did not repeat the
question.

"You will kill me if you worry me like this!" she said, evasively, and
she did actually look very ill at the moment.

"My sweet, why do you not trust me with the cause of all this
hesitation? Are you afraid of me, or do you misunderstand me? Lucia,
the woman I have once loved is the woman I must always love. Whatever
had happened, whatever she had done, whatever I had heard of her or
from her, I should love her still. Has anything occurred since you were
with me in Paris that you are afraid to tell me of? Has anyone else
come between us? If so, tell me. I shall understand everything. If
there is anything to forgive, I will forgive everything. I swear there
is nothing that can make any difference to my love for you."

Lucia looked me steadily in the face now. A contemptuous smile curved
her lips, all the confusion died out of her eyes, and they filled with
a limitless arrogance and self-reliance. I had my answer in her face.
It was the face of a woman whose virtue is absolutely invulnerable, and
whose honour is unshadowed, and who has suffered too acutely in the
maintenance of both to hear the faintest hint of weakness without a
smile. A fierce, delighted satisfaction ran through me before she spoke.

"What do you insinuate, Victor?" she said, lightly, but with pointed
directness. "That I have been in love with two men at the same time?
No; nothing of my own will nor my own action stands between us.
Forgive, forsooth!" and she gave a delightful, mocking laugh.

"You are the person to be forgiven, if anybody, for inflicting this
year upon me! Now, I ask you to wait a little and you won't!"

"Because I don't see any adequate reason," I returned. "Last year I
told you mine, now I demand yours."

I kept my arm round her, and could feel the pulses in her waist throb
under it, but I turned my eyes away from her and stared fixedly at the
carpet, waiting for her to speak, with the best patience I could
command.

"I have told you till I am tired of telling you I must get better
first," she said, pettishly.

"But you are not getting better," I persisted.

"On the contrary, all these four months you have been getting steadily
worse."

So long a silence followed this that I looked into her face again
suddenly, the lips were quivering, and the eyes brimming with tears.
She turned her head away, but not before I had seen them.

"Dearest, would you rather I released you from your promise to me?" I
said, bending nearer over her. "Do you wish that?"

One single, violent sob shook the lovely breast beneath me and swelled
the throat.

"No," she said, passionately; "you know I don't!"

"There is no alternative between that or our marriage," I said, quietly.

I was not trying to be inflexible, nor to harden my heart against her.
It was hardened by passion, which at no time is an inspirer of
tenderness, and mine had been sufficiently irritated through four
months of alternate excitation and resistance to be determined now. My
difficulty was not to avoid being too tender, but to check myself from
being too harsh. Had I heard my own words in cool blood they might have
seemed hard, and my insistence inconsiderate and blamable, but my calm
was only artificial, and my judgment little else than a blind clinging
to the object with which I had come.

"Why can't you go away for a time and then we can marry later, when you
come back?" she answered, in a weak, evasive tone.

"It is not wholly a question of being away from you," I returned. "So
long as I am engaged to you, Lucia, my whole life is totally different
from that which it would be if I were not."

"I give you permission to lead any life you please," she said
vehemently.

"Thank you!" I thought, sarcastically; "but your permission has nothing
to do with it."

"It is useless to discuss the matter," I said aloud. "I cannot argue
the point with you; I have said there is no third alternative."

"I think you are most unkind," and Lucia let two lovely arms and hands
sink over the sides of the chair in gesture of weak despair.

I noticed, indifferently, that she was unnaturally pale.

"If you consent to our marriage, Lucia," I urged, pressing that
alluring waist, "I will promise this, if it will simplify matters--you
shall continue to live as if you were unmarried until you yourself put
things on another footing."

She glanced at me quickly, as I spoke, with an unexpressed surprise.

"Then what would you gain?" she said, coldly, and the unveiled cynicism
in the words went home.

I flushed.

"The certainty," I answered, briefly. "This indefinite state of things
is simply intolerable."

She was silent for a second; then she said violently, the scarlet
flowing over her face up to her eyes--

"No! It would be impossible to maintain such relations as those after
marriage, and you know it! That is quite out of the question!"

I merely shrugged my shoulders in silence.

"I am waiting for your answer, Lucia," I said, after a few moments.

"And if I cannot give you one?"

"Then I leave town to-morrow morning."

She gave a fleeting glance into my face, and then suddenly burst into a
passion of convulsive sobs and tears--sobs that seemed to tear her
breast asunder, and tears that started in a blinding torrent, drenching
her eyelids and eyelashes and pale cheeks.

"It is most unkind, it is horrible, it is cruel of you to press me in
this way!" she sobbed, trying with both hot, trembling hands to push my
arm away and to free herself from my clasp.

The sight of her tears hurt me, the pain stamped on the soft face, and
the tumultuous rising and falling of her breast in those agonised sobs,
reproached me, but the hurt and the reproach were dull. If she thought
her tears would induce me to hesitate or to desist, she was wrong. They
were to me simply a favourable sign of her weakness, and urged me to
press my advantage. I felt instinctively that it would not do to fail
now; having gone so far, I must go farther, and be successful. Probably
I should be much sooner forgiven by Lucia herself. Nothing is less
pardonable, either in love or war, than an unsuccessful attempt.

Her resistance was nothing but nervous folly and weakness, and I
believed she herself would be glad to be forced to give it up. Besides,
even if my reason had not told me all this, my own feelings would have
been enough to make me relentless.

"You may cry," I thought, looking at her as she sobbed with her head
strained away from me, "but before I go you shall speak."

"What is your decision?" I said.

"What am I to say?" she murmured, in a voice choked by tears.

"Promise me some fixed date."

"I can't--now--like this. I will tell you to-morrow."

"No; to-day. You have deferred it from week to week. You must tell me
now."

Silence, broken only by the sound of tears.

I waited, determined not to lose my patience.

"Tell me," I repeated after a pause.

"Victor, you must lend me your handkerchief," she said, turning her
streaming eyes towards me.

The tears rained down over her lips and chin, and fell on the silk
collar round her neck. She could not take her own handkerchief from her
pocket, sitting as she was with my arm round her. I drew out mine and
dried the wet eyes, and then pressed the soft reluctant head against my
shoulder. Once there, it remained, too weary to lift itself again.

"Tell me, dearest."

"What, Victor?"

"The date."

"What date?"

"The thirteenth of next month," I said, decidedly.

I felt a startled quiver shoot through her.

"Oh, I could not really settle it without--without--thinking."

"Yes, you can, and must."

"But I don't know how long that is."

"It is exactly three weeks from now."

"But why the thirteenth?"

"We must appoint some date, and that is when my book appears in Paris,
that's all; but choose another, if you like."

"The thirteenth is unlucky."

"What do you gain by all this trifling, Lucia?"

Some slight accent of all the angry surge of feelings within me crept,
perhaps, into my tone. She did not answer, but began to cry again, not
passionately this time, but in a weak, enervated listlessness.

"You are most unkind, Victor!"

"Is it to be the thirteenth?"

"I never knew you to be like this before."

"May I count it as the thirteenth?"

Silence. I waited and glanced at the clock again. The whole morning had
slipped away. I should infallibly be late for that luncheon, but I
could not help it.

"Lucia!"

"What, Victor?"

"Is it the thirteenth?"

"I don't know."

"Then I tell you that it is."

Almost beside myself with irritation, and uncertain whether I most
loved or detested her, I drew her violently round towards me, bent over
her and pressed my lips on hers, wet, ice-cold, and quivering. If there
is anything in magnetism, or power to subdue another's volition, it
ought to have acted fully then. I myself was at that moment the
incarnation of will. My whole system was bowed to the intense effort to
make her, by force, say what I desired.

"Say yes," I insisted.

She struggled violently, and the lips fluttered dumbly under mine; her
breast swelled against mine; her soft hand tried to push back my
shoulder.

"Say it," and I pressed her lips harder.

Either the force of the stronger will, or mere passion--and I am
inclined to think the latter--had its influence.

"Yes, then, yes," she said, in a faint convulsive murmur, that was only
just audible, but with the whole accent of assent in it.

"You promise?"

"Yes, I promise, absolutely. Oh, let me go. I am suffocated."

I released her instantly. I had no desire to keep her now that the
point was gained, and I did not believe from her character that once
having spoken she would retract. She started up, rose from the chair
apparently with difficulty, made a few steps as if to cross the room,
staggered, and, before I could reach her, fell heavily her full length
along the floor. Her head, with its soft mass of bright hair, struck
the ground almost at my feet, the pale face, drenched with tears,
turned upward to the light. God! what a brute I felt! What had I done?
I felt as if I had struck her. The first impulse of tenderness towards
her welled up over my passion and turned it to a desperate
self-reproach. A second later, Mrs. Grant came into the room.

"What has happened?" she said quickly, and then, as her gaze took in
Lucia's figure, she turned to me with a blaze of anger in her eyes.
"What have you been saying?" she exclaimed. "I will not have these
scenes, Victor! I shall forbid you to see her!"

She fell on her knees beside Lucia, and unfastened the collar of her
dress, still wet and stained with tears.

"Shall I not lift her up?" I asked, and Mrs. Grant raised her face
again to me, white with suppressed anger.

"No," she answered, curtly. "Will you kindly leave this room. Your
presence here is not needed."

I looked towards the fallen figure on the rug. The light head and the
stone-white face seemed to multiply into a thousand replicas, and eddy
round me. I walked out of the room.

"It will never be," I thought over and over to myself as I went down
the stairs.

I turned into the dining-room, and flung myself into an armchair and
waited there. Everything but Lucia herself was forgotten. My
consciousness seemed suspended almost as completely as hers. At last
the door opened, and Mrs. Grant herself came in. She started on seeing
me.

"You still here, Victor," she said coldly.

"How could I go?" I murmured. "Is she better?"

"Yes; she is better."

Mrs. Grant's face was white and composed, her tones like ice. I saw she
was unwilling to trust herself to speak to me even.

"May I not speak to her for one minute?"

"Certainly not. Are you not satisfied with the mischief you have done
already?" Her voice shook with suppressed indignation. "She tells me
she has fixed the thirteenth for your marriage. So that is the subject
you came to press to-day! I think your conduct is most disgraceful."

My attitude of mind was--I don't care two d---s what you think.
However, I merely said,--

"I think you do me an injustice. I did not mean to distress Lucia
to-day; but what is the use of this sort of thing going on as it has
been doing? I have offered to release her from the engagement if she
wishes, and in that case, I should go away altogether. I don't see that
to keep up our present relations is any benefit to either of us."

Mrs. Grant's eyebrows relaxed a little.

"Perhaps you are right, Victor," she said, with a sigh. "Only we must
be careful, or we shall lose her altogether."

Her voice shook now with something that was not anger. I held out my
hand.

"I will come in the evening," I said, gently, "to hear of her if I
cannot see her. May I?"

Mrs. Grant smiled, we shook hands, and I went out. I walked absently up
the pavement, and then stood looking out as absently for a hansom. Now
I had pushed matters to the point, I had not delayed nor put off action
in this case, and I had attained the object with which I had come, but
somehow I did not feel so satisfied as I had anticipated I should when
I came away victorious.

Things were so different now from what they had been a year ago, and as
I stood there looking up and down for a crawler, above the noise of the
London thoroughfare, her own words to me in Paris rang with terrible
distinctness, that prophecy wrung from her in the agony of her woman's
longing--"I shall never be your own."

I almost believed it now.

"Looks like it," I thought, as I hailed a coming crawler and got in.

I said nothing to the man, but I suppose he had noted my glance at my
watch before I got into the cab, and, in the hopes of an over-fare, he
began lashing his horse across the head and neck. It was this that
roused me out of a gloomy reverie, and I pushed up the trap.

"If you touch that animal again I'll get out," I said, angrily, as the
poor brute tossed his head from side to side.

"Beg pardin', sir! Thought you was in a 'urry, sir!" came through the
roof.

"Drive decently, and don't think," I muttered, relapsing into my own
thoughts, cutting as the lash on the chestnut's neck.

I had stopped the lash, but I could not stop my thoughts. After dinner
that evening I went to see her again. In this I did not succeed. I was
told she had already gone to bed, but she had left a message for me,
and not a word was said about rescinding the promise that had been
forced from her in the morning. On the whole I went away satisfied and
relieved.

"She will be all right," I thought, "now she has once made up her mind.
It is extraordinary; women seem to have as great an aversion to forming
a decision as children have to taking medicine."

"What should I do with myself now?" I questioned, standing idly in the
hot, dusty London street. It was too early for me to go to bed, and I
knew the pater would have turned in before I got back. I sauntered down
two streets, and then drove to the Club. In the card-room I found Dick
and two other fellows, one of whom was a stranger to me. As I made the
convenient fourth, we played a rubber at whist. After this it seemed
generally voted that the weather was too fatiguing for the strain of
whist, and an adjournment was made to an open window, chairs, and
drinks. I was preoccupied with my own thoughts, and I sat listening
fitfully to the other men's gossip. Sometimes a sentence came to me; at
one moment I was listening without hearing, the next I was hearing
without listening. At last the phrase struck me--"Yes; dying horribly,
like a rat of phosphorus."

I looked across to the man sitting opposite me. He was a young fellow,
and I had gathered from to-night's conversation that he was studying
medicine.

"Who is that?" I asked, with a sort of idle curiosity.

"Oh, only a fellow in the hospital," he answered with a cigarette
between his teeth. "A paying patient. D. T., you know. I saw him last
night in the ward. Shan't see him there to-morrow night, I expect," he
added with a laugh, bringing down his rocking, tiled chair on its four
legs, and determining at last to light the cigarette.

"You wanted to see the death, I thought," remarked Dick.

"I did; but, hang it, the fellow's been dying so long, my curiosity's
worn out. However, I may come in for the show to-morrow morning if I am
down at the hospital in time."

There was rather a cold silence after this remark, which made the young
fellow look up and then add, hastily.--

"He's such an awful coward, you know, one can't feel much sympathy for
him. 'Oh, it's so hard to die,' he goes on, 'at twenty-three! Can
nothing save me? It seems so hard at twenty-three!' Well, I suppose no
one does like going out, but still if a fellow knows he's got to"--

He paused. No one spoke for the minute, and then he went on,--

"Brought it on himself, too; I never saw a fellow so thoroughly knocked
out! And now he does nothing but whine over it--'Oh, I'd do so
differently if I had my time over again!' I said to him last night,
'Now, look here, Johnson, why don't you try and console yourself with
thinking you enjoyed life at the time?'"

"Did you say Johnson?" I asked. "What is his Christian name?"

"Howard," he answered.

The two other men started, and looked at me. The speaker glanced at
them, and then added hastily to me,--

"Do you know him?"

"Slightly," I answered, coldly.

He coloured.

"I am sorry if I"--

"Not at all," I said. "All that concerns him is quite a matter of
indifference to me."

There was a pause, and then, by tacit mutual consent, the topic was not
renewed. The men spoke of other things, and I sat in silence.

So Howard had killed himself--was dying in this way, like a poisoned
rat. It was, as I had said, a matter of indifference to me. I did not
feel one pulse of sorrow or regret. It is strange how completely and
entirely these emotions of love, affection, friendship, hate expire,
and leave no trace of their past existence.

I hear and read much of "lingering memories," "clinging remembrance,"
but for me the tender track of a past affection does not exist. He had,
as I had told him, cut out our friendship by the roots, and I heard now
of his approaching death as that of an absolute stranger.

I wondered idly where was that softening influence, and on what sort of
natures did it act, that is supposed to survive all dead attachments,
all broken friendships. Certainly, according to tradition, it seemed as
if I ought now to feel some sort of emotion at hearing the fate of a
man who had once held so large a share of my affections.

There ought to have been some touch of sentimental sadness in my
thoughts, some recollections of first days together, and so on. But
there was none. By that night's work he had made himself as nothing to
me henceforward.

I wondered in a desultory way whether the sudden complete annihilation
of an emotion in the human heart in this way showed the hardness of the
heart, or the magnitude of the offence, or the poor quality of the
emotion itself; and then I was roused by Dick's voice saying Good-night
to the other fellows, and he and I were left by the window alone.

He looked across at me, and said.--

"If you would like to see Howard, I believe Thompson could get you
admission any time."

His voice was low and sympathetic.

I raised my eyebrows and said,--

"What should I want to see him for?"

Dick looked surprised, and then said, hesitatingly,--

"Surely you were very great friends at one time!"

I laughed.

"Yes," I answered, "but there is a great deal in that at one time!"

A few days later my father pointed out the announcement of Howard's
death in The Times as we sat at breakfast.

I nodded.

"Yes; I heard at the Club he was dying."

"What was it? They don't say here."

"No," I said; "they would not."

"What was it?"

"Excess."

We neither said anything further with reference to it, but Howard's
death was in both our thoughts, and as we got up from the table he
said, suddenly,--

"There's a great thing in having a quiet, moderate nature, or at least
self-control," and then he added afterwards, as if struck by a sudden
amending thought, "Well, of course, that comes virtually to the same
thing."

"Does it?" I thought. "By Jove, not to the man himself!"

"Would you think, then," I asked, with a smile, looking across the rug
at him as we stood by the fire, "that the existence of a lion-tamer was
quite the same as that of a maiden lady who kept cats?"

He laid down his paper suddenly and stared at me.

"I don't understand--I--you don't mean that you"--

"I mean," I said, "that it's extremely difficult to see the best
course. Howard has just died, raving mad, for giving way to his
impulses; I may die, raving mad, for controlling mine."

He looked at me apprehensively. "I am sorry, Victor, if--You don't
think you have overworked, do you?"

I laughed as I met his eyes scanning my face anxiously for traces of
the possible insanity.

"No; none of the slates are loose at present," I said. "That's all
right, but I am seedy altogether; out of sorts all round--that's all."

CHAPTER VII.

One unbroken flood of golden sunlight lay like a fallen silken veil
over the points and peaks of the downs, over the swelling sides and the
soft rolling dip of the valley, and the still September blue stretched
cloudless overhead. It was the late afternoon of the thirteenth, a day
that had been hot, oppressive, stifling in town, but here was simply
warm, still, and tranquil.

All through the early hours of the day a parallel--if one may use the
idea--oppression to the heat in the stirless air had weighed upon me.
We had been married that morning, and before the ceremony my one
sensation had been that of strain, during it tense anxiety, and
afterwards reproach, and none of these are pleasant emotions. When I
looked back to the morning, now, it seemed to be in the far distance; I
don't know why, but ages seemed to have elapsed in the hours of this
day.

Lucia had come up to the altar, her face whiter, more absolutely
colourless than the veil over it, and my heart sank with apprehension
as I first caught sight of her. Never, except in death, and already
with the coffin enclosing it, have I seen a face so pallid. She walked
steadily--she was a woman who always walked well, as a swan swims well,
by nature--and the graceful figure passed on calmly towards us.

She kept the lids drooped over her eyes, and her white lips were closed
firmly in repose. It seemed like a statue moving, and for a second I
felt as if the church, the people, she, I, the whole scene were unreal,
and my own blood changing into stone. The next second she was beside
me, and then she suddenly lifted her eyes.

They glowed upon me as if there were actual fire stirring in the
lustrous black pupils, and they gave back the joyous beat to my pulses,
and sent my blood flowing onward again. The glance made us both human
directly. But how anxious I felt all the time. Would she faint? I asked
myself, desperately, over and over again. The colour of her face was
terrifying, and the hand she gave me for the ring was cold as the touch
of snow, and trembled convulsively. How long it all seemed! and how I
loathed the prayers and the hymns, and sickened at the address! What
earthly good is it to match words against a man's passion? As it is, it
is, and no admonitions will alter it. However, all was over at last,
and we were in the vestry. Lucia could not write her name; she tried,
for no woman had less affectation and more self-command than she had,
but the tremulousness of the fingers would not be controlled, and the
mere effort agitated her so that she fell back in the chair, quivering,
till each point of lace in her dress shook, and every eye could see the
violent heart-beats under her bodice.

"Don't sign it, dearest!" I exclaimed, feeling like a murderer as I
looked into the blanched, nervous face, and widely-dilated eyes.

There was a blank pause for a moment of sympathy and apprehension, as
her shaking hand dropped the pen, and then the clergyman picked it up
and finished the half-written name. I felt a sharp self-reproach, and
Dick did not mend matters as he turned from her to me and said, in an
indignant mutter,--

"She is not in a fit state to be married at all, Victor!"

He looked at me as if I were committing a crime, and I coloured and
felt like a brute. Then there was the long breakfast, and the
reception, and, as I say, it seemed as if centuries were rolling over
my head in each five minutes, but now it was all done with; the burden
of other's society had slipped from us, and the weight of my own
oppression I seemed to have left, together with the sullen heat of town
air. In all the journey down Lucia had been recovering. The scarlet had
been coming back to her lips, and as the first breath of air came to
us, straight from the heart of the smiling, sun-lit valley, they parted
in a laugh, the light leapt up in the soft azure eyes, the rose-colour
under the skin, and she bent forward to me and said, impulsively,--

"Victor, if you want to know, I feel perfectly happy!"

"And I, too, you darling!" I said, smiling back into the brilliant face.

"It seems quite a new thing to feel. I don't ever remember feeling
happy until now, and I am five-and-twenty. Think, a whole third of an
ordinary lifetime passed before I have known it!"

I laughed.

"Well, you are going to begin now, at any-rate," I said.

"Yes; I think so," she answered, both the carmine lips still curved in
smiles. "But still it is late to begin. It is not wise; one should
begin at fifteen--ten years back."

"Begin what?" I said, laughing.

"To be happy."

"By all means," I answered. "Begin as soon as you get the chance; but I
think most people do. Only it is the chance that is generally wanting!"

"I don't know," Lucia said, looking away from me through the window,
where the flying sunny slopes of the valley sped by. "People muddle
away their chances of happiness in life. Ten years ago, when I was
fifteen and you were twenty--well, we might have married then, and felt
all that we feel now a whole ten years ago, which I have passed without
a single happy day."

A shade of sadness came into the eyes, and darkened them as she spoke.

"But why do you think of that now?" I asked. "It is no use. The ten
years have gone beyond recall, and, if you have not been happy, you
have something to show for the time. You have been working."

"Yes," Lucia repeated; "I have been working."

There was silence. I hoped I had recalled to her thoughts the great
canvas that stood complete in her studio. For myself, I knew that the
keenest touch of pleasure that stirred my frame now was held in the
ever-present thought that this day saw the birth of my work in Paris.
Not for worlds would I have hinted this to Lucia. To have breathed a
word that assigned even a part of my pleasure at the moment to anything
but the possession of herself was the last thing that I would have done.

Every pleasure is kin to every other, and they each tend to enhance and
strengthen another, so that in reality this inner pleasure of my
thoughts that reverted constantly to the Paris publishers was no enemy,
not even a rival, but rather a coadjutor of the passionate, personal
pleasure in the woman beside me. The brain already intoxicated with one
pleasant emotion lends itself more, not less, readily to another, just
as a brutal lover inflames his love with wine. In precisely the same
way, my passion for Lucia was inflamed by the wine of gratified
ambition. All the same, I said nothing touching on the book for fear
lest she should misunderstand me, nor hinted--that which I felt
myself--that this scene put back ten years, when I was full of vague
ambitions and unaccomplished plans, would not have possessed the zest
it had for me now.

Man, unfortunately, is not the desirer of one thing at a time, but of
many things, and the gratification of a single desire is not enough to
content him. If a person is both hungry and thirsty, you cannot satisfy
him, however kindly you may supply him with bread. Another line of
thought that ran side by side with this in my brain, as I watched the
shadow pass over the girl's face as she thought of her ten lost years,
was, that had we had these sensations at fifteen and twenty they would
certainly not have out-lasted us till now! But this also I would not
say. The passing of our passions, however we may recognise it as
philosophers, is not pleasant to us as lovers.

"Oh! there is our house, I believe!" said Lucia, suddenly, as we neared
the station.

"Yes; you can just see it from the line, I know," I answered, looking
through the window. "What a glorious evening!"

All before our eyes lay in the still, liquid golden light, and through
the burnished haze that seemed to slope obliquely between us and it we
saw the square white house, lying a little blow the level of the line,
and all but hidden behind a delicate, intricate profusion of light
green foliage. Behind it rose a rolling slope, clothed half-way up with
a copse of young larch trees, whose slender stems sent long shadows
down the whole length of its side, falling across the sun-baked,
waving, brown-and-yellow grasses, and the red cows, lying lower down
the slope, drowsy, as all else seemed in the mellow sunlight.

At the side of the house stretched a lawn, shaded-in from the carriage
drive by a fringe of larch and spruce, and on this lawn, innocent of
tennis-courts and similar abominations, were planted here and there
single trees. It had been the fancy of the owner that not one of these
on the lawn should be indigenous, and almost every country out of
Europe was represented by one lovely forest denizen.

The crytomera, the cedar of Japan, raised its delicate rosy crest here
under the blue of an English sky; a young Turkish cypress shot like a
dart from the ground and threw its narrow shadow straight as a spear
across the emerald turf; and farther on a small squat tree, from China,
unfurled smooth, glossy, polished leaves of lightest green, and
thick-lipped succulent scarlet flowers, indolently to the kiss of the
British sun. We caught a passing glimpse of it, and Lucia drew in her
breath softly, with pleasure.

"How lovely! What a pretty house, Victor!" she said.

"Yes; I know it is supposed to be a very charming place."

"And don't you think so, too?" she asked, turning to me, and the side
light from the window caught the curly hair under the velvet hat brim
and turned it into gold.

"I haven't got a very keen artistic eye, Lucia, I think. Certainly not
for houses," I answered, laughing, and looking straight into those eyes
of lapis lazuli and then away. "But I adore this one, as it is going to
give me the happiest hours in my life!"

And I met her eyes. A slow flush mounted into Lucia's face, and then
she seemed to tear her gaze from mine with difficulty and turned to the
window, so that I could not see her face; her ear, however, betrayed
her all the same, for the painful blush reached even there, and flooded
its white, pink-tinted porcelain with scarlet.

A second after, the train was at a standstill, drawn up at the platform
of the station. It was very quiet, and even the train coming in hardly
seemed to disturb the sleepy stillness that hung over the strips of
asphalt, the beds of hollyhocks and lilac bushes against the
whitewashed walls, where the rural fancy of the stationmaster had gone
so far as to range a row of straw bee-hives.

There were few passengers by the train, and little luggage except our
own. The single porter, the stationmaster, some workmen, and a few
market women, with white aprons and baskets of eggs on their arms,
stared wonderingly at Lucia as she stood with the golden sunlight
pouring down upon her light hair and brilliant face, and the glory of
Parisian fashion embodied in her dress.

My friend's carriage had come to meet the train, and I left her for a
moment to speak to the footman about our luggage. As I walked back up
the platform she was standing three-quarter ways towards me, the
attitude which displays best that most alluring line in a woman's
figure, the line from under the arms to the waist.

In Lucia it was specially striking, not straight, but like the back of
a Z, a sharp, smooth slope to the low waist, and formed a perfect
harmony with the two curves of the hips, and the long fall of the skirt
beneath. All my frame--every limb and muscle--quickened with keen
pleasure as my eye met the familiar lines, as yet familiar to one sense
only, and then followed the inevitable, involuntary rush of exultant
remembrance of my absolute possession now.

I let it come and flood my brain with a half-drunken satisfaction, and
the phrase formed itself on my lips, "Well, hang it, my to-morrow has
come at last!" As I came up to her I saw her eyes were fixed upon me
with a searching gaze. I thanked heaven Lucia was not one of the
horrible, modern women, if indeed they exist outside a lady's novel,
who are always analysing you and your emotions, and testing the depth
of your inferiority to themselves. I believed she was only studying and
weighing my outer appearance, of which I was far more confident than of
the inner personality. So I met the blue, soft-shaded eyes in the flare
of the sunlight without embarrassment, and smiled back into them as I
joined her.

"Well, darling, now come," I said; "I think I have made that idiot
understand your hand-bag is not to be shaken!"

Lucia pushed a little pale gloved hand through my arm, impetuously, and
said, as we turned to follow the decline of the platform towards the
carriage,--

"Victor! you are so good-looking!"

I laughed. I was right, then. She had only been thinking of the
exterior. What a comfort! A few steps had brought us to the carriage
door, and the servant was holding it open. I waited to answer her till
we had started, but when she had got in, and I had followed, she threw
herself back on the cushions and put one hand on my shoulder, and
before I could speak she went on in a low voice,--

"Yes! It is very charming now, of course; but all the same you have
nearly killed me!"

The words were spoken with such a bitter, tremulous vehemence, that I
turned and looked at her in startled silence. Her eyes still passed
keenly backwards and forwards over my face.

"Oh, yes! if you knew one-tenth of what I have suffered this last year!
how I have coveted--longed. It doesn't matter what I say to you now,
does it! Oh, I am so glad that all this terrible repression and
restraint is done away with, and that we are free to do and say what we
like! I am so glad I am your wife at last!"

The trembling, excited accents, springing straight from her thoughts,
and poured into my ear from her warm, parting lips, stirred my own
tolerably well-governed feelings to a painful intensity, and I felt
only too sharply that I, at any rate, had not done with self-restraint.
I said nothing. I was rendered dumb by the riot within me, but I pushed
my arm round her waist and drew her against me.

The violence and want of tenderness in the action pleased her, perhaps,
being a woman. The waist yielded gladly, and the whole form sank
against me with relaxed and satisfied pleasure.

We neither of us spoke again until the carriage drew up between the
bright green of the larches, stabbed through with long shafts of light,
and before the shallow steps and open windows of the house. On each
side of the steps stood, not classic urns to remind one irresistibly of
graveyards, but honest, bright, terracotta, human-looking flower-pots,
from which rose or trailed the loveliest plants a skilful gardener
could wrest from September. A white peacock paced majestically across
the red gravel towards the larches, and underneath these, swinging
exuberantly on suspended perches, with the strips and bars of sunlight
flashing on their glittering feathers, chattered together nearly a
dozen Oriental parrots.

Lucia looked at the scene with an artist's quick eye, and I heard an
instinctive murmur about its making a pretty sketch.

I told her she would be otherwise occupied now than in making sketches,
and we both laughed as we passed up the steps together.

In the hall hovered, like two evil shadows, her maid and my valet,
lying in wait for us to remind us of clothes and the serious duties of
life. I saw Lucia carried off from me with despairing eyes, knowing it
would be ages before I saw her again.

It did not take me long to get into another suit, and then I returned
to the dining-room, and roamed about from end to end, too restless to
sit down to glance at the papers that lay on the different tables, or
even to light up a cigar. I walked about aimlessly, longing for the
woman's presence beside me again.

It was a very large room--two, properly, knocked into one--with a
window looking to the front and the carriage-drive, and another at the
side, opening, with French glass doors, on to the low stone terrace
which overlooked the lawn.

Through these I wandered at last on to the terrace, and rested my arms
on the low balustrade, looking with unseeing eyes across the lawn, with
its tropical trees standing motionless in the golden haze. Everything
around me was very still, and a peculiar strained calm seemed to be
upon me also--the calm of an intense desire, hushed and expectant, in
all the blood.

A swift, hurried step came on to the terrace, and I turned instantly.

The light fell all over her, the living incarnation of my long drawn
out hopes and dreams. She had changed her dress to a light dinner-silk.
The bodice was modest--I mean by that, it was unobtrusive--very. Excess
of nervous excitement, the wealth of evening sunlight, and her fashion
of dressing made her dazzling to look upon, and I stood for a second in
silence.

She misunderstood my pause and glance, and a rush of hot colour came
into her face, and the tears suddenly started to her eyes.

"You don't like my dress," she exclaimed. "I told Celine she was
cutting it too low!"

A step forward and I had her in my arms. Ah! what were dreams to the
keen, sharp delight of feeling her there--alive, and in the
flesh--throbbing and pulsating against me? I declared the dress was
perfect, that I would not have the bodice half an inch higher for
anything, that she looked adorable, and so on, until she was comforted.
The tears passed into laughter, and the flush died away; but she
trembled against me distressingly, and her lips quivered nervously.

I held her to me, but she seemed to flutter uncertainly in my clasp,
just as a bird flutters wildly without aim at the limit of its
tethering cord, and when I released her she sank into the wire chair at
our side with a look of exhaustion stamped on the soft, delicate face.
I saw that it would require all my tact and care to make this evening a
success, and I determined that it should be one for her. Standing there
beside her, looking down on her light head, I made a rough, mental
examination of my thoughts. I seized those that had anything of self in
them, rolled them hastily together, and thrust them into an obscure
corner of my brain out of hearing, to leave the better part of my love
for her free to guide me.

I drew a chair close to her and sat down, letting my arm rest along the
top rail of hers, behind the soft head, which, after a minute, sank
gently back upon it with a movement of tired relief. We neither spoke,
and the perfect, sunny calm of the evening air, the silence, and the
physical rest seemed to soothe her. When the servant came on to the
terrace to announce the dinner, she had recovered, and her arm on mine
was warm and firm.

As soon as we had finished dinner, she rose restlessly from the table
and looked at me with a hesitating air. I smiled back at her, but it
hurt me inwardly this want of confidence, this lack of familiarity she
seemed to have. This sort of hesitation before she made the simplest
request, the start and flush when I spoke suddenly to her, this
timidity of me now, hurt and puzzled me. I, who had taught my dog
implicit trust, seemed to have missed the way with the woman.

I remembered Paris: my own harshness to her there came back upon me
like a blow. The indelible impression of my hardness had been given
then, and she dreaded it now. She had been conquered then; her will and
desire had been broken down to mine; she had been forced to yield and
to suffer; she had appealed to me and found me inflexible, relentless;
and now I had the fruits of my victory. The woman I loved, though she
might love me, feared me instinctively, as the once well-beaten dog
ever afterwards fears its master.

To me, who hated victory, who loathed subduing others, and the price
they bring of fear and shrinking, the realisation of her feeling
towards me was like a sudden physical pain. I got up from the table
feeling my face grow white with sharp distress. I hardly knew at the
moment how to express my thoughts; besides, I knew words would be of no
avail. An impression given is a scar upon the mind like a scar upon the
flesh. She fixed her eyes on my face with a sort of apprehension in
them, that was extremely bitter to me.

"What were you going to say, dearest?" I said, merely, with a faint
smile; "go on."

"Oh, nothing much!" she said, hastily, flushing and paling almost in
the same moment; "only I feel so restless. Come and show me all the
rest of the house, will you?"

I assented, and we passed out of the dining-room into the hall and up
the shallow flight of stairs. I put my right hand on the banister and
my left arm round her waist, and the whole sweet figure beside me, and
the white neck and ear so near me, drove out the thoughts of a minute
back, and I only laughed as I felt her waist contract convulsively as I
touched it.

"Would you like to take my arm better?" I said, mockingly, and drew her
round to me so that the soft face was just beneath my own. In the
subdued light of the staircase she lifted her lids, and I saw her eyes,
gleaming and sparkling, brimming over with gaiety and pleasure, and the
arm next me she raised and twisted close round my neck.

"No, Victor; here is the place for my arm now! You won't push it away
as you did in Paris, will you?"

The words hurt cruelly. Could I never obliterate that wretched memory?
It was vivid with her; it clung to me. It seemed a shadow dogging my
present pleasure. I stopped suddenly on the staircase and took her
wholly into my arms. All the supple form yielded at my touch, till it
leaned hard against my own; the face, pallid with excitement, was
raised to mine; the glitter of her eyes swam before my vision as I
caught it from beneath the half-drooped lids; the lips, parted in a
faint breath, then closed as mine joined them. As they touched, no
consciousness was left except that both our lives seemed mingling,
panting, fainting on our lips.

The pain that is pleasure, and the pleasure that is pain, thrilled and
pierced every nerve as I held her and felt those lips under mine, her
heart beat under my heart, her weak arms twisted round my throat. When
at last my lips set hers free, on fire with the passion of my own, they
moved in a half-delirious murmur,--

"Victor, you don't know how I love you!"

I have no distinct recollection of passing up the remaining stairs, but
we did reach the landing, and a second or two later were standing in
the drawing-room. I think she said it was pretty, and so on, but I
hardly heard, my head was reeling, and all my senses dull, her figure
leant a little against me, and the pressure of her arm was upon mine.
After the drawing-room, the reading-room, and a breakfast-room, all
opening from the same corridor, had been passed through, there were
still two rooms unexplored on that floor. I turned the handle of the
nearer door, and then pushed it open.

Lucia stepped on to the threshold, and then I felt her arm start
violently in mine, and she drew back with a sharp, instinctive movement.

I looked down upon her and murmured,--

"Our room, dearest."

The colour blazed all over the fair skin, till it seemed scorching it,
and tears startled into the dismayed eyes, which she turned from me
confusedly, as she shrank back into the passage.

I was startled, and a chill seemed to fall upon me, and penetrate
deeper as a grey pallor succeeded to the burning flush, and she had to
lay one trembling hand on my arm again for actual support.

"Victor, it is nothing!" she said, hurriedly, forcing a smile to her
lips.

"It--it--startled me."

She made a nervous step forward, as if she would have forced herself to
enter the room with me, but I collected myself with a great effort, and
gently drew the door shut.

"There is another sitting-room a little farther on; come and look at
it," I said, quietly, in a light, indifferent tone, as if we were
meeting in society for the first time.

I drew her on past the door, feeling her hand fluttering on my arm, and
her feet uncertain beside my own. Inwardly I was alarmed--dismayed. Her
extreme nervousness, and the physical effect upon her, frightened me.
With crushing force and clearness came back to me the remembrance of
the fearless, eager, unrestrained abandonment of body and mind, the gay
exuberance of careless passion, with all the vigour of youth and health
in it, that had leapt up to meet my caress a year ago,--and been
refused. We passed on to a door on the other side of the corridor,
which opened to another sitting-room. A lovely evening had given way to
a lovelier night. Beyond the long window panes, set open to the still
air, we caught sight of the sinking golden crescent of the moon towards
the south; above and all round, to the low horizon, the sky was
crowded, sparkling, and brilliant with stars. I moved two chairs close
up to the open window, but she stood by the sill and leaned forward to
the night air.

"You think me very silly?" she said, with her head turned away from me.

"I think you are not well, dearest," I said, gently.

There was silence. Words seemed frozen on my lips. A sort of terror
filled me of exciting or embarrassing her. I stood beside the window
frame watching her. After a minute or two she dropped back into a chair
and looked up at me with a laugh.

"I think I am all right, only you startled me! By the way, Victor, if
anything ever does happen to me, you will remember you have your work
and your talent to turn to, won't you? I mean you would not do anything
desperate. I want you to promise me that."

She lay back in the easy chair, burying her light head and polished
white shoulder in the velvet cushion, and swinging one little foot idly
as she looked up smiling for her answer. The bright light in the room
fell full upon her, and I looked down upon this brilliant piece of
life, full of glowing tints and warm pulses and subtle powers, and my
brain flamed with the pleasure of the senses. I hardly noted her words.

"Dear little girl!" I said, smiling back into her eyes. "I refuse to
think of such things at all!"

"Oh, well, it doesn't matter! I don't expect you would," she said,
laughing, the colour leaping up in her cheeks, and the vivid blue
deepening behind her lashes. "Come and make much of me now while you
have got me."

Her whole face and form were instinct with a delicious invitation, and
I bent down to and over her, filled with the delight of the moment. We
made one chair do for both of us, and looked through the window at
intervals to escape each other's eyes, and laughed at nothing, and
talked a very extraordinary astronomy. At last, with her soft fingers
in my hair and on my throat, and her white arm above the elbow clasped
in my hand, speech, even laughter, grew choked in dense feelings for
all the command I kept upon myself; and we sat in silence, hearing each
other's breath, feeling each pulse that beat in the other's throat and
breast.

There had been a long silence when the last star of Orion slid over the
horizon, followed by my impatient eyes. I looked at my watch. I hardly
know why I did it then. It was an involuntary action rather than a
conscious one. I did not say anything as I replaced it, but she glanced
sharply at me, and I saw her lips whitened.

I knew the intense excitement that was moving her, it spoke to me in
every line of her form--in her eyes, torn wide open by it, in the faint
gleam of sweat that showed on the white forehead. I was not blind to
it, but the tumult within me, made all the greater by the sight of it,
left me insensible to its danger for her.

She got up from where we were sitting, and began to walk restlessly
round the table. I wheeled my chair slightly round so that I could
watch her. Nothing struck me particularly as I did so except the
extreme grace and attraction in the moving form. The heavy silk skirt
dragged backwards and forwards over the carpet almost soundless, the
moonlight and gaslight alternately gleaming on its folds. Each time
that she came between me and the table my eyes followed with dizzy
delight the soft side curve of her breast, the lines of the exquisite
waist, the white idle hand that sometimes touched the edge of my chair
arm, sometimes not, as she passed. One of these times I caught it and
detained her, and looked up at her face, but the light was behind her,
and only fell on the bright hair.

"Why do you walk about so?" I asked.

"I don't know. Victor, I feel very strange. I hope nothing is going to
happen. I never felt quite like this before;" and she broke her hand
loose from me and passed on.

I sprang up and followed her, and put my arm round her.

"Going to happen, dearest! What do you mean? Do you feel ill?"

I looked at her. She was very white, and her lips were parted and pale.
There was a distressed and strangely absent look upon her face which
startled me, though I had no clue to its significance.

"Yes, very ill," she answered, her eyes wandering away from my anxious
ones looking down at her, as we stood for a moment together.

Then she gently pushed away my arm and continued her walk.

"You know my heart always does beat and hurt if I am very happy, or
very excited, or any thing, but it's never been quite so bad as this
before." And then, catching the distress upon my face, she added, "I
daresay this is nothing. It will go off. I think it is only hysterical.
Don't look so unhappy!" And a faint smile swept over her pallid face.

She made her way to the sideboard and drank some water standing there.
Then she continued to move slowly round the room, both hands pressed
beneath her left breast, and her delicate eyebrows contracted into one
dark line across her colourless face.

"I overworked myself so tremendously just lately," she said, after a
minute, "after--well, after I came to you in Paris. I shall take a long
rest now. I hope I shall get strong again. When one is as delicate as
this, life is not worth having."

And then, before I could answer, she stopped suddenly, and looked
across the room at me with dilated eyes.

"Is there any brandy I could have?" she asked, abruptly.

My handbag stood in the corner of the room. There was a flask of brandy
there. In two seconds I had got it out and was beside her with the
traveling-glass half filled.

She took it with a fluttering, uncertain hand, and drank a little, but
not even then did the colour come back to her lips--they were apart and
grey. She set the glass down on the table with a wandering, undecided
movement, and then turned towards me and linked two ice-cold hands
round my neck,--

"Hold me up! I am sinking!" and her head fell heavily against my
shoulder.

I clasped my arm firmly round her waist. I was startled, distressed,
alarmed, but still, even then, I did not think there was any serious
danger. I thought she was hysterical, as she had said; over-strained,
and over-excited. I thought at most this was a fainting attack. I
thought--God knows what I thought. I must have been blind.

She put her hand to her throat, and I saw she wanted air. Supporting
her, I crossed to the window, and stood where the cool night breeze
came blowing in upon her face. My hand followed hers to her bodice, and
I loosened all the delicate lace ruffles round it that it had never
been my privilege to touch till now, and that were no whiter than the
lovely breast from which I unloosed them.

So we stood for a few seconds, her lids were drooped over her eyes. At
intervals, it seemed to me, her heart gave great single, convulsive
throbs that thudded through both our beings.

Then suddenly she tore her eyes wide open, and fixed them in an
unreasoning agony upon me. A straining, fearful effort seemed in them.
I pressed her to me.

"What is it, dearest?" I said quietly, trying to recall her to herself.
"Why do you look at me so?"

"Because I cannot see you! I have lost my sight! Oh, Victor, I am
DYING!"

The words were a strained cry of terrified anguish, and they cleft
through my brain like the stroke of an axe. With blinding suddenness I
knew then what was coming. My heart seemed turned into stone. Only
Reason rejected the truth. The gong stood on the table close beside us.
I stretched out my arm and struck it furiously, my eyes fixed in terror
on her face. The Great Change was there; the shadow already of
dissolution. The door was thrust open and a servant hurried in.

"A doctor!" I said to him, "quick for your life."

But I saw, before any doctor could reach us, she would have gone from
me. I strained my arms round her.

"Speak to me, my darling, speak," I said wildly, raising the dying head
higher on my breast.

Both her hands were clasped hard upon her heart. A frightful agony was
reflected in the bloodless face, but for the moment death retreated.

"Victor! To think I am dying! I shall never paint again! Oh, don't let
me go! Keep me! oh, keep me with you!"

My brain seemed bursting as I heard her. The only prayer of my life
broke then in a frenzy from my lips, "Great God! spare her!"

"Hold me up! oh, keep me, Victor! I am dying."

"Dearest, you are fainting!"

There was no answer. Heavier and heavier the pressure grew on my
breast, the arm slid heavily from my shoulders, the head fell slowly
backwards on my arm. I looked into her eyes. They were black as I had
seen them long ago in the studio. Fearfully, terribly dilated they
were, and in their depths was that look as if the soul were listening
to a far-off summons, calling, calling to it, to depart.

"My life! Speak to me once more! One word!"

Probably my voice did not reach her. For her already the silence held
but that one imperious command. My brief rule of this spirit was over.
It no longer heeded me. She no longer answered me. Her eyes were still
fixed upon me in helpless horror, terror, and despair; but they knew me
no longer. The unwilling soul had already started on its journey, and
its earthly love was no more to it than its earthly form. I held her
motionless, my eyes on hers, then I saw a glaze, a slow glaze fit upon
them, they set in it, and it told me she was dead.

Without a struggle, without a spasm, without a deeper breath to mark
the severance, her soul had drifted away from me, out of her body that
I held in my arms. Without a farewell, without a word, without any
knowledge of the second when the life had fled, without a sound beyond
that despairing, terrified appeal to me to keep her. I stood rigid,
petrified, my arms locked round her like iron bands. I heard the door
open and steps. Then I saw the doctor before me. He gave one glance at
the drooping head.

"Lay her down flat," he said.

I lifted her into my arms wholly, and walked through the door into the
corridor to the opposite room--our room, and laid her on the bed. He
followed me to the bedside and bent over her. I drew back and stood
beside the curtain motionless. Everything was swaying before my eyes in
darkened confusion. Was this my wedding night? There was the room, full
of warm, shaded light; there was the bed, and on it a passive woman's
figure, and another man bent over it and tore aside the bodice and
unclasped the white stays.

I watched his hand part them and pass indifferently beneath them, and
beneath the linen, and rest over the left breast and then beneath it.
The shade grew colder on his face. There was an intense silence in the
room, then the words came across it, "Quite extinct." My ears seemed to
fill with sounds, the ground to rise upward, the bed to heave, and I
went forward blindly and tore his hand from her breast and pushed him
from the bed.

"Then go and leave us," I said, and I heard my own voice as from a
great distance.

He looked at me, and his face and everything around was dark before my
eyes.

"Will you kindly go out of this room?" I repeated, and he walked to the
door.

I opened it, he passed out, and I shut and locked it, and came back to
the bed. The weight of nerveless, passive beauty on it had crushed a
depression in its whiteness, the head had sunk down sideways to the
pillow as in tired sleep. Across the throat and breast, over and
amongst the disturbed laces of her dress, and on the parted gleaming
satin of her stays fell a flood of rose-coloured light. One shoulder
rose from it and caught a shadow; another shade lay lower in the
dimples of the elbow; the inside of the arm looked warm. The throat,
the round soft throat, seemed glowing; the fallen head, the passive
arms, the whole outstretched form seemed relaxed in the abandonment of
sleep. Had I often seen her in my dreams like this? This was but the
realisation of my dreams. I bent over her, then threw myself wildly
upon the bed beside her, and drew her into my arms.

"Lucia! my Lucia!" The sweet face almost seemed to smile as I drew the
head to me, and a soft curl of hair fell upon my arm as I pushed it
round her neck and pressed her breast to mine. It came softly and
unresistingly, just so much as my arm pressed it, with terrible
compliance. The throat chilled through my arm to the bone, numbed it.

I laid my other hand upon her neck, pushed it lower till it rested
above her heart, and enclosed one breast, nerveless, pulseless, and
cold, colder than any snow. Slowly it chilled through my fingers. I
smoothed one passive arm--how cold. Then my hand sought her waist, and
my arm leant upon her hip--as once in Paris--and here the coldness held
and froze me.

Through her silk skirt it penetrated; the damp, eternal coldness
pierced through my quivering, living arm; it seemed dividing my veins
like steel.

It was a dead woman that I clasped: a corpse. I strained my eyes down
upon her face, that seemed but asleep.

"Lucia?"

And the word was one frenzied, senseless question; and the sweet mouth
seemed to smile back, in its last eternal smile, my answer,--

"Yes, I am Lucia, and you possess me now."

Like a torrent dammed up for a moment, the flood of insensate, impotent
desire flowed again, raging through all my veins, and engulfed me; my
burning arms interlaced her, my weight pressed upon her, my trembling
lips, full of torturing flame, sought hers, met, closed upon them in a
frenzy of vain, fruitless longing and stayed--frozen there.

When I was hardly well from weeks of raving illness that followed, but
yet well enough to walk and go about like a rational being, I went to
the cemetery to see all that now remained to me beyond my own fearful
memory. Dick was beside me. He had insisted on coming with me, and,
when we reached the grave, he stood beside me at its edge, as he had
stood beside me at the altar.

A huge slab of white marble lay horizontal upon the narrow, single
grave. Fools! They should have made it a double one. A heavy iron
chain, swinging great balls, studded with spikes, was linked from post
to post round the tomb. At its head rose a cross, extending its arms
against a background of cypresses.

I looked at it all with dry and savage eyes. The illimitable regret,
the boundless, hopeless remorse for the irrevocable that has been
shaped by our own heedless hands, the unspeakable yearning for that,
once more, which has been freely ours and we have flung away, rose like
a swelling tide within me, and rolled through me in thundering,
deadening waves standing at her grave. I stared half blindly at the
words on the stone--"Wife of V. Hilton." Wife! What a mockery!

I looked, and that slab of white marble--spotless and relentless--that
barred her into the grave, seemed to my still half-unstable brain
symbolical of that last year of virgin purity of life that had broken
her strength to bear. That spiked iron linked round the helpless dust
seemed like the chains of repression that had tortured and crushed the
soft ardent nature. That arrogant cross, stretching its arms
threateningly above the lonely tomb, seemed the cross upon which we had
crucified--she and I--the desires of the flesh. And at its foot, I
read,--"She sleeps to waken to a glad to-morrow." And then a bitter
laugh burst from my lips.

"Who put that?" I asked. "Great God! that that word should follow me
even here!"

Dick took my arm.

"We know nothing. There may be a to-morrow;" at which I merely laughed
again.

"Wife of V. Hilton!" I repeated, reading from the stone. "If she had
been, Dick, it would not have been so hard."

Dick said nothing. After a time he urged me to come away from the grave.

"Where? To what?" I asked him; and we both stood silent, gazing upon
her cross.

Months have passed by, and Dick consoles me still, and tells me I shall
refind the zest of life by and by, later on, in the future, to-morrow.