The model cottages were to be practically free, with only a nominal rent; old people were to be kept by the parish; sick people were to be tended gratis; young people were to be encouraged to marry early and bring into the world large families for their neighbours to keep; chance immorality was to be avoided at all costs, and punished mercilessly; large broods of infants, no matter from what drunken,vicious, idle parents, were to be favoured and cared for out of the money of the honest and sober, provided only the brood was born in wedlock, and the father and mother had the sanction of the Church.
Finally he gleefully totted up the subscriptions he had dragged out of the unwilling hands of the hard-working and thrifty portion of the villagers, for his doors, his windows, his model baths, his new sinks, and only lamented that he was still short a hundred pounds for finishing the hearths.
Everest, to whom this exposition of views had been intensely repellent, felt relieved that the point of asking for charity, up to which he felt sure the Rector was slowly working, had been reached at last, and said immediately:
"Oh, well, you must count on me for the remaining hundred for the fireplaces. I will give you the cheque after luncheon."
The Rector flushed with pleasure. How convincing his arguments had been!
"My dear Everest, it's most good of you. I assure you it will take a load off my mind. I really feel ashamed to go and beg any more from my parishioners, though I must say, hard pressed for money as they are, and hard as they have to work for it, they seldom refuse me."
Regina, sitting opposite them both, and watching the pale, severe gravity that had come over the handsome countenance, knew that Everest was giving that hundred, not because he cared whether the very unmodel cottagers in their model cottages had hearths or not, nor whether the tribes of sickly infants that they had no right to bring into the world at all,since they could not keep them, were warmed by his fires or not, but simply because it was Regina's father who asked him, and because Regina herself sat opposite him, and another link was looped up in that golden chain that was slowly forging in life's furnace to bind her to him.
"All the same you know I don't think you are right, John," Everest answered easily, in his light, polished tones. "You think you are alleviating poverty, but in reality you are creating it. The dread of dying in the workhouse when they are old is the only stimulus to a great many to work at all while they are young; take that away, and put old vagabonds in free model cottages, what inducement do you give to the young vagabond to work? And what reward have you for the honest, sober hard worker if you take his savings to help keep his idle and drunken brother? It seems to me you actually put a premium on idleness and vice, and rob honesty and virtue to do it. Then as regards your idea of morality, I think that the poor, hard-working, healthy girl, who, without marriage, brings one healthy child into the world, and works all her life to keep it, as many of them do, is a less deadly enemy to society than those wretched, improvident couples who rush into marriage and keep producing more and more unfit humanity, for which there is no use, and which other people at their own self-sacrifice have to support."
The Rector's large face gradually grew purple as he listened; he was a very heavy eater and drinker, and all his superabundant blood went up to his head in boiling wrath if anyone attacked his particular andexceedingly narrow outlook upon sexual subjects. Here, he had to choke down his feelings as best he could, for he would not, on any account, quarrel with Everest. Moreover the cheque was promised but not yet written. He cleared his throat many times, and nervously broke up the toast crusts lying at his left hand, before replying.
"I know your views are peculiar," he said at last; "they were at Oxford; I am afraid you hardly give due importance to the Sacraments of the Church. Er ... have we all finished? Then let us say grace."
Everest's eyes met Regina's and a little flash passed between them, an instant's glance that was very dear to them both. She loved him for every word he had uttered, and Everest knew that his views were hers, by the glad eager look on her face as she listened to him.
He knew each time he sat down to the table that his host was opposed to him in every opinion, and that the others had no opinions at all. It was only Regina, with her quick, active mentality, her rapid perceptions, that was with him, on every subject, and somehow the knowledge seemed very sweet to him, and to draw them very closely together.
Luncheon over, the elder girls went up to change their toilettes, and Everest and Regina stepped through the long windows out upon the lawn. It was a wonderful day. After a cold and stormy spring, summer had come in with that perfect glory, that golden radiance, that rescue England's reputation from entire ruin.
The sky, of the palest, most delicate blue, showedtiny dapplings of pearly white against its sapphire clearness; all the air seemed dancing with a golden sheen, and in it seemed to hang, like a canopy, the scent of flowers, of the pink and white snow of the May not yet over, of the laburnum already in blossom.
"What a heavenly day!" Everest exclaimed. "I wish you were coming with us this afternoon."
"So do I, as you are going," she answered, looking up at him, delighting in the sensation of walking beside him and seeing that dark brilliant face above her. "But I know my sisters will like it best as it is. I shall go to the garden and think about you instead."
"Of me? A poor subject, I am afraid. You were better off with theCyclops."
"I can't get interested in it now. Do you know, I tried everything this morning: Greek and Latin and painting, and I tried to play; it was all no good. I had to just sit still and think about you."
Everest looked at her, but she met his gaze quite openly and simply. Her eyes were innocent, frank, ingenuous. There seemed no design on her part to flatter him. She merely appeared to feel no necessity for concealing what she thought. She admired him and said so, she thought about him and said so. That was all. There was none of the veiled would-be seduction of the women he was accustomed to.
Praise and adulation so absolutely transparent, so obviously honest, has an irresistible power. It ceases to be flattery; it becomes homage, and has its effect on the recipient, as incense has upon the senses.
"I shall be sorry if my coming here hasinterrupted your work and lessened your powers," he answered, and his voice had grown suddenly so sad and grave that Regina exclaimed:
"Oh, never be sorry for me that you have come! If you knew how perfectly happy I am. Your visit here and your companionship is to me just as if the sun or moon had come down to walk about with me."
Everest laughed outright.
"Either might be a most dangerous companion, it seems to me," he answered, and Regina laughed with him.
"But think of the honour and the experience, the novelty, the joy of it! It would be well worth being burned alive for, I think!"
Everest did not answer for a moment. His laugh died away, and she thought his face looked pale and grave in the sunlight. Just then the Rector's voice came to them calling Everest, and Regina drew away towards the copse.
"Good-bye, then. I am going to the garden. I hope you will enjoy your afternoon." And as he turned back to his host, she disappeared in the soft green shadows of the wood.
She walked quickly, and could have well run or danced, she felt so full of life and joy; the breeze was soft, it came to her cheek like a caress. The wood seemed full of music; small birds were warbling in it everywhere and calling to each other across the leafy screen of green; the leaves themselves quivered and rustled and murmured in the warm and scented air.
Regina for the past few years had been happy in the knowledge of her youth and power to please, andnow that love had come to her also, it seemed as if her heart, her whole system, could not contain her delight. For she knew within herself that though nothing had been said, and though his acquaintance with her could be measured by hours, Everest was going to love her just as the doctor and the master and the assistant master and the curate had done. There was the same curious softening of all his face when he looked at her as she had seen in theirs, the same velvet edge to his tones when he spoke to her, as she had heard from them. And while their love was useless to her, because she could not return it, for this man she felt she could, and was ready to feel a passionate adoration, to pour out her life in love for him, and so know the supreme happiness that Nature holds in this life for a woman. To be loved is nothing, to love is something, to love and be loved is everything. Critical and sensitive about every point in another, as she was, so that the least deviation from her standard of beauty or intellect would have spoiled the perfection of her feeling, she could find nothing wanting in Everest; in all her dearest dreams and visions no ideal had ever been invested with greater charm than the living man now had for her. And it seemed to her like a miracle in her favour that, of all the men that might have come to her home, he had been the one to do so.
To be merely in the same room with him, to see and hear him talking to another, to study him as he leant back in an arm-chair, reading, and watch the slender brown hand, that she knew had such power, hold a book or newspaper, seemed to make her whole being vibrate with delight; and he admired her,wondered at her, liked to match his learning and his talk with her, was interested in, sought her; soon, she knew, he would desire and love her. And the price of it all? What would it be? Her feet, that had been dancing so merrily over the green moss, stopped suddenly; a trembling seized all her limbs and a chill came over her in the soft sunny air. She sank on an old log, by the winding path, both hands pressed over her heart to still its beating. In these moments she knew, whatever the price, she must pay it.
When the time came for him to ask anything from her, she must give it. She knew beforehand she could not resist him, could not refuse or deny to this man anything, because of the glorious pleasure of the giving, pleasure that would compensate her for everything, for life itself, if won....
She was very pale as she sat there and shivered, for love is absolutely merciless and inexorable, and counts out its moments of supreme delight against the drops of its victim's life-blood, and she knew this. All in a moment, in the midst of her happy triumph, the thought of his wealth and position, so far above her own in its powers and possibilities, had reared itself up in her mind, like a great wall towering over her, menacing to crush her. She hated it; it separated him from her. If he had only been poor, like the young master, who had had nothing but his life, which he had laid down at her feet! How perfect then her happiness might have been! The meanest, commonest existence, shared with Everest, would have been as if it were wrapped in cloth of gold to her. Tiny rooms, poor living, hard working, what would she have cared? Had he said: "Marry me andcome to a lonely tent in the burning Soudan," she would have said: "Yes," oh, how gladly! As she would have said it had he asked her to marry him and share a prison, or hell itself. But some instinct told her that Everest would not want to marry her, that a man with that accumulated wealth and vast inheritance would not enter marriage merely for the sake of passion; that he would need other conditions, which she vaguely felt she did not fill.
And even if in the blindness of love he offered it, would it be her part, would it be right to accept it?
Suppose in the awakening, after, from that blinding dream that passion is, she saw that he regretted?
How it would rend her, heart and soul, to think that she, who would cast down her life like a mantle, for him to walk over, did he wish it, had brought him a burden of regret!
The thought hurt and stung her; it bit deeply into her brain. She rose and hurried on with quick steps to the garden, as if seeking its protection from these thoughts, that pursued her like living things.
Whatever happened, she thought, she would be content as long as no suffering through her fell on him. Nothing would she take, nothing would she accept from him, that meant loss or sacrifice to himself. On that she was quite resolved.
To a woman's passion is always added the wonderful instinct of maternal love. In all its wildness, in all its demands, there is still that guiding, underlying impulse to shield, to protect, to guard, to encircle with tender care the man she loves, and in Regina, now that she loved, this instinct rose to its full strength, and pervaded all her heart and soul. Sheherself and all that happened to her was of no moment. At all costs Everest was to be considered; his happiness kept safe and sacred in her hands.
Her quick walking soon brought her to the garden and the sea. As she unlocked the gate she noticed how the summer heat of the last twenty-four hours had called the laburnum into bloom. The whole garden glowed golden with it! On every side it gleamed and shone like amber rain, falling amongst the other foliage. Never had she seen it look so beautiful in its contrast with the pale blue of the sky, never had the rich yellow tint of it been so perfect. Rejoiced, she walked round all the narrow winding paths. She longed to show the garden to Everest, and it seemed as if it had arrayed itself in its most radiant and glorious dress in honour of his coming.
The standard rose-trees made of the centre a mass of vivid colour; the May was all in bloom, and the wild tamarisk threw up against the azure light a perfect foam of pink blossom. The perfumes from all the different flowering plants and trees floated mingling in the still and sheltered air like the strains of melody, wandering through and interwoven in a musical harmony; and the hum of the happy bees, the call of the nesting birds, the coo of the doves, rose and fell sweetly above the low murmur and ripple of the sea. Anxious and foreboding thoughts slipped from her mind; as always here, she relapsed joyously into reflecting simply upon Everest, upon his personality that so called to her own, upon the delight of his having come there, and all that wonder and rapture lying hidden in the heart of life to which her eyes were being opened.
She found her way to a little rustic seat beneath the palm at last, and there sat down, amongst the maze of roses, only wanting one thing to complete her happiness—his presence there.
The hot hours of the noonday went softly past, and the day hastened to array itself in fresh beauty to meet the sunset; the light began to deepen, the sky to flush with rose, the air to grow heavier with fragrance.
Those birds that were still singing, not yet exhausted by their nesting cares, gave out their last floods of melody before the approach of evening.
Suddenly as she sat there she heard a step on the gravel, and started. This was her sacred ground; no one had a right to come there; but she guessed whose step that was, firm and light and springing like the tread of a deer.
She sprang up, her heart leaping with joy, and through the drooping, swaying palm branches saw the slim figure she expected approaching, and the light falling sideways across the dark and handsome face.
She went forward to meet him, making no effort to conceal the joy and pleasure shining in her eyes.
"How lovely this is! I am so glad you have come! How did you get in?"
"By the gate."
"But I locked it."
Everest laughed. "Locked gates are nothing to me. I jumped over it!"
"How splendid!" she said, gazing at him, her softazure eyes full of admiration. "That high, spike-topped gate! I wish I had seen you. And how did you get here? How did you find the garden?"
"I walked here from the Delameres'."
"Walked! It's fifteen miles to their house."
"Well, what is fifteen miles?" he answered, smiling down into her upraised face. "Nothing, after fifty miles a day of cross country, as I have often had to do; and as to finding you, in comparison with the interior of Africa, Stossop's geography is pretty easy."
"How wonderful you are," she said softly, "and I am so glad you are here. I wanted to show you my garden. What do you think of it?"
"It is a beautiful place. It seems like those magic gardens one reads of. One can't believe it's just ordinary England."
"It is perfect to me now you are here. I was wishing so much for you to come."
"It must have been that which drew me here to you—darling."
He had not meant to use that word, nor any endearing term, but it passed his lips almost unconsciously; she did look such a darling in her pretty summer dress, with her fresh, pink-tinted face all aglow with her ardent, enthusiastic welcome of himself. And he knew, as he looked at the lovely, youthful form, that there was the spirit of a lioness within. She was a thing of life and light and fire; full to the brim, like himself, of ardent energy and power. There was no doll-like, sawdust body here, with brains of wool, as many of the women had had whom he had known, lovely though their outsides had been.
She attracted him violently, irrepressibly; there was an all-compelling magnet in each slender finger, as he touched her hand.
Nature does not take long in setting up her wondrous all but unbreakable current of electricity when she has brought together two individuals suitable to mate with each other, and just like that other common form of electricity which holds the hands relentlessly to a battery so that their owner has no power to lift or stir a finger, so does this other magnetic current sweep round its two captives, binding them together without will or power to move asunder.
At the word "darling" a quiver passed over Regina's face and she looked away as if she had not heard.
It is the part of virginity to flee from passion, and instinctively it fulfils its part as long as passion pursues. If there is any pause in the chase, virginity kindly stops and waits, till passion is ready to take up the pursuit, when it promptly flies again.
So Regina, with her pulses leaping with joy and her feet on air, and seeing the garden about her, all transfigured with a new glory, at the sound of that word in his voice looked away instinctively and seemed not to have heard.
They walked round the green turf, the roses nodding in the gently moving air and throwing their perfume on to it, under the thick wild unpruned tamarisk, that looked like the softest feathers against the glowing sky, under the swaying palms that threw shadow and sunlight alternatively down on them, and then on by those little dark green winding paths where the air was still and warm and dusk laden with the scentof the rose and the vital life-giving salt breath of the sea.
They spoke a little, mostly in praise of the beauty around them, or of the doves flying in circles overhead, or of the wild calling note of the nightingale that came from the thickets, and both were intensely happy in the beauty and proximity of the other and because of the magic steel-like ring that nature was drawing tighter and tighter round them, each moment forcing them towards each other.
As last, before them, through the crossing and re-crossing of delicate lines of branch and leaf, they saw the gleam of purple and the glitter of the sea. Regina quickened her steps a little and reached first the porphyry balustrade and leant over with a little cry of delight as her eyes caught all the radiance gathering in the western sky and all the jewelled light flung on the opposite coast, where peak and headland lay in lines of velvet blue under a golden haze.
"Oh, look how lovely this is," she said, as Everest came and stood beside her. "I have a painting of it that I did on an evening like this. I should like to show it to you."
"Did you paint this?" he said. "It is a difficult subject. What a lot you have learnt in your few short years of life! You seem to know so much, and then to be only eighteen; you are a revelation to me."
A little smile played over her face, irradiated by the mellowing light as she looked up at him.
"I am so glad," she said simply. "I should like to please you. To me you are the most wonderful, beautiful and perfect person I have ever seen."
"Regina." He was very near her now, one armcame round her shoulder. Ah, that touch, how it moved her, the first touch of that being she so admired, how it vibrated through her, body and mind, from head to foot. She recognised the strength and force of the arm, yet how gentle and reverent its contact was with her now. How strange it is that amongst a hundred men who might touch a woman and leave her wood and stone to them there is perhaps just one whose slightest contact may give her that extreme ecstasy!
She did not move from him, only looked up with all the fires of the sunset in her eyes. The face that she would have chosen out of all the world hung just above her; the man that she would have chosen out of all the world was there beside her, seeking her. She had no other thought than to please him, to yield to his empire. At any cost, at any sacrifice of herself, at the price of her life, if necessary, she was dedicated, consecrated to him; worship, adoration was in her face and in her heart as she looked up at him. It is the spontaneous impulse in all virgin love, and those women who have not felt it for their lovers have missed love's soul.
Everest bent down and kissed her, and in all her after years Regina could never recall a higher pinnacle of joy to which she had climbed than was reached in that first kiss. The very purity of it, the first expression of her whole ardent, unstained soul, the etherealised emotions of awe and wonder of devotion that went through it, lifted it out of the range of earthly things. Regina's kiss, full of passionate enthusiasm as it was, was still like the burning kiss of the young nun upon her rosary, as the strains of theanthem bear away her soul to heaven. Everest understood her perfectly, practised as he was in these matters, and being himself of that sensitive timbre that made him respond easily to and comprehend every grade of varying emotion in another.
People had called him dissipated and reckless, simply because he had always been unconventional and lived according to the laws of his own conscience instead of the laws of the world. But all his pleasures had been of the refined and delicate order, things of the mind and soul as well as the body—the pleasures of the wild poetic Celtic nature rather than of the coarse and brutal Saxon. The mere wallowing of the body in physical indulgence, whether of drunkenness, overeating, or other vice, was unknown to him. The excitable brain, the refined and sensitive mind, in his case must be charmed and captured before pleasure could begin.
It was to these that Regina in her innocent and unveiled admiration so appealed, and his touch was very tender and gentle as he drew her wholly into his arms up against his breast, and the girl yielded, silent, submerged in that overwhelming first delight of love, that no after one can wholly surpass. So they stood for a few minutes in the light, both feeling the happiness of the world was absolutely complete.
Then the man relaxed his clasp suddenly and put her away from his arms in the same decisive way he had drawn her into them. His face was very pale and set as he turned from her and leaned over the balustrade, looking away to the gorgeous fires of the west.
Regina stood quite silent, passive, shaken with happiness, voiceless.
He had put her away from him, swept over by some feeling she did not understand, but she yielded to that as obediently as when he had drawn her to him. It was a delight to watch him, and her fascinated eyes strayed over him as he leant beside her; and behind him, growing deeper and fiercer every moment, burned the red flare of the sunset.
After a long silence, in which Regina had studied the fine outline of his head and neck, the small ear, the dear arm in the light grey sleeve, the fine linen of the cuff enclosing the smooth and supple wrist, he said:
"I should be so interested in your paintings, when may I see them?"
"It is rather difficult," she answered, in a low tone. "I don't think my people would like me to bring them to the drawing-room, they don't really care about any of those things."
There was a pause for a moment, then he said, turning to her:
"Would you like to bring them to my sitting-room after dinner, some time when the others are gone to bed?"
"Yes, I could do that," she answered simply. He saw she was thinking at the moment only of her work, and the unconventionality of such a visit did not oppress her, was not even near her mind.
"We must go now," she said regretfully, "or we shall be late. I think," she added slowly, "we had better not go back together. Will you go home and I will follow by the short cut to the house. Mysisters know that I spend a great deal of my time here, but they would not like it if they thought that you came. They would want to come here too, and then all the peace and beauty I enjoy would be spoiled. Do you see?"
"Perfectly," said Everest, smiling, as they turned from the sea to the scented shades of the garden.
"This place has always been for you alone and now it is to be for us alone. We will share it with no one and tell nobody of our comings and goings."
He spoke lightly, jestingly, but both felt that the pact they had made was a serious one, a pact for companionship in hidden solitude in this magic, intoxicating place.
The paths were very narrow between the encroaching foliage of flowering shrubs on every side, and they had to walk closely together, sometimes touching each other in the soft violet shade beneath the overhanging trees, and each time her fair head and rose cheek moved near him he longed to draw her into his arms and kiss her again, but he would not yield to the impulse, and almost in silence they passed on through the groves till they were near the high gate by which he had entered.
"Will you jump it again?" she said, smiling up at him.
"No; I have no inclination now," he answered. "There is nothing I want on the other side."
The girl coloured and laughed at the implied compliment. Bending down and putting the key in the gate, she opened and pushed it. It swung wide, giving access to the quiet road, full now of a luminous rose dusk beneath its arching trees.
"Shall I see you and the pictures this evening?" he asked.
"Yes, I will bring them," she answered, and just at that moment, over their heads in the thickets of climbing rose, a nightingale burst into its loud throbbing, commanding call. They listened, hesitating, while the mad, impatient beat of it vibrated through the quiet air, and far off somewhere in the woods, after an interval, came back an answering call.
Then he passed through the gate and the girl stood watching him, delighting in the beauty of his quick and easy walk down the shadowy road. When he had vanished she turned back and went by the winding path to the centre palm, and there, beneath its protecting boughs, she threw herself down, laying her face against the bosom of the springing turf.
"I was right, I was right," she murmured to herself. "It is more beautiful than music, than the sunset skies, than the golden light on the palms, than the play of the moonbeams; and it is like them all. Bright as the sunlight, mysterious as the ocean, wonderful as the fragrance of the rose, that is what they call love, and I have it, I have found it in its perfection. What happiness! What good fortune!" She lay still and silent, wrapped round and round in a strange soft delight, lulled as if in some half-waking dream by the cooing of the doves above her, the wave of the tamarisk in the hot air, the low murmur of the sea.
The doves came down near her, finding her so still. They were very tame, for she came there to feed them all through the winter, and she heard the twinge of its lovely wings as one almost brushed her cheek.
She turned and stretched out her hand to it. "Bird of Venus," she said softly, "Erasmie peleia, come and talk to me." And the dove let her gather it up to her breast and put her lips on its sleek head. "Born of love and for love, I love you," she murmured to it. "Did you see him kiss me this evening? Oh, dove! how wonderful that was." She pressed her warm hands on the shoulders of the bird and kissed it again. Then she opened her clasp and let it go, for she could not bear to constrain it, but the bird only fluttered as far as her feet and stayed there beside her, pecking in the grass.
Regina looked up to the sky through the palm leaves. It was deeply flushed now, even to the zenith, and strangely luminous.
"For their paradise, the Mohammedans thought of beauty and women—that is, love—and the Christians thought of the rapture of music and the ecstasy of adoration, and that is love too; the idea underlying both is the same, and neither could think of anything better than that."
She was a little late for dinner, but everybody else was the same, and the Rector never stormed nor swore at his family before strangers. Moreover he was in a particularly good temper, as in addition to Everest's cheque he had picked up another good donation for the cottages from Lady Delamere. So the dinner was quite a cheerful meal and passed over in good temper and gaiety.
At ten-thirty Everest was sitting in his sitting-room expecting Regina. The room was lighted by large swinging lamps depending from the ceiling, so that the light was good and well diffused; on thetable stood a spray of white roses in a vase, for Everest was fond of flowers, and as he had not found any put in his room he had gathered some in the Rectory garden and brought them in himself.
The window stood open and the scent of the climbing flowers all around the sill filled the air with fragrance.
He sat idle, thinking of Regina and the strong, fearless, self-reliant sort of character she had. How simply and easily she had assented to his invitation to come to his room to show her pictures! Just as a man would do. She seemed to be entirely without that mincing, mawkish way so many girls and women have, that silly, hesitating questioning about every trifle. Shall I? Ought I? Is it proper? Will it seem this or that?
Regina gave him the idea of being absolutely innocent and upright, and therefore candid and fearless; never accustomed to consider or trouble about the opinions of others. He felt that about her own actions she would only ask herself, Is it right? Whereas most people do not care in the least about that, all they ever ask themselves is, What will others think? How will it seem? Will it be found out? And this attracted him in her greatly.
At a little after the half-hour he heard her step outside and went to open the door for her. She came in with a smile, both hands full of her paintings, clasping them to her.
Everest pulled forward some chairs, and together they set the sheets up, leaning against the backs where the light fell best upon them. There were about twenty paintings in water-colour and theyfound places for most of them. Then Everest retreated to the point from where he could see them best and considered them in silence.
He was surprised. He had expected something more of the ordinary young lady's drawing-room decorations, though he felt sure that all Regina created would be artistic and beautiful. But here he saw at once it was a special talent that he was looking at, that here was no question of a little skill acquired with a drawing-master's aid. Here were no copies of rustic cottages, nor yet the inevitable mill, water-wheel and bridge.
Each picture was strong, vivid, with its own marked stamp upon it, and a challenging originality was in them all. The tones of colour, the effects of light were marvellous; sunset and dawn, the radiance of the late afternoon, the deep shades of approaching night—all were here rendered in their idealised, sublimated form, showing, as the artist always seeks to show, the essence of beauty.
Regina stood beside him, also looking at the pictures. He divined that she was quite lost in their contemplation, that his own presence for the moment was a secondary thing. This also proves the artist, for to him even the height of passion is less than the height of his artistic attainment.
"What do you think of them?" she asked, after a silence.
"I think they are quite beautiful; they are surprising. You have a magnificent gift."
Regina flushed and trembled with pleasure. Hitherto her art had given her intense joy as she recognised the worth in her creations. But now shefelt that intenser joy of bringing it forward to another and seeing its effect on him, for the first time. The praise that we know ourselves is true! What a delight it brings with it. That this man whom she so admired and longed to please should be interested in her work, surprised at its excellence, made her heart beat and her eyes dance.
Everest was greatly interested. An artist himself, he saw directly the difficulties of the subjects she had chosen, and the talent that was necessary to overcome them as she had done. He picked up first one and then another, looking at them from a distance to see the general effect and examining them closely to consider the workmanship, and the girl sat silent, watching him, as he handled her sacred work that was so dear to her and that had never been before any eyes for judgment until now. Her sisters and mother knew that she painted, and had seen her work occasionally in her room, but knowing and caring nothing about such things they had not heeded it.
Now she sat absorbed, watching him and the beautifully coloured work glowing in his hands.
"They are all wonderfully done. As you have had no lessons, and never been taught, it simply means you have a great genius for it," he said, laying down the last sheet and looking over to where she sat, a sweet picture herself in her white dinner dress, gazing so earnestly at him with her lustrous eyes, her rose-hued face supported on her hand, her milky, dimpled elbow leaning on the chair arm.
"I am so glad," she said softly. "I hoped it might be so, for when I go to Exeter and seeexhibitions of painting there, and the things they sell in the shops, somehow I feel that mine are—well, different."
"They are quite different, and very much better than the ordinary water-colour—this is a most difficult subject, and perfectly done." He lifted a painting of the enchanted garden. All across the foreground waved boldly the mass of wild flowering tamarisk; admirably thrown back, the garden and its wealth of roses was seen behind and beyond, far off across the hazy blue of the sea burned the sunset sky in softest crimson.
"I should like to have that in my gloomy London rooms."
"Would you really?" she answered, all her face glowing. "Do then accept it. I am so proud and honoured and delighted. Do, please, choose any one you like, or more than one. They would all be yours if you wished it."
"This one appeals to me specially, and I shall never part with it, because it is the scene of our first kiss," Everest said, in a low tone, and rose with the picture in his hand to make space for it on the mantelpiece. As he did so he took a velvet case from before the glass and laid it on the table. It was just by Regina, and she glanced at it.
"What a beautiful face," she said, as the miniature of a girl's head with a delicate, cameo-like profile met her eyes.
"That? Yes; it's my cousin. She is considered very pretty," answered Everest from the mantelpiece; where he was installing her painting.
A little chill came over Regina as she looked; thecold, perfect face seemed to hold her gaze. His cousin's! Her portrait here! Suddenly his life, his far-off existence that was all so vague to her, had put out a hand and claimed him.
She sat silent, and Everest turned from the hearth, closed the frame and laid it on a side-table. Regina's painting now sat enthroned before the glass. The whole room was bright with pictures. Windows seemed open everywhere in the walls through which one saw vivid skies and seas and waving trees. They spoke about them all in turn; two artists together with fresh work to view will sit and talk all night over it if left undisturbed.
It struck twelve by her sister's silver clock on his table, before either of them noticed how the time had gone.
She sprang up from her chair and gathered the paintings together.
"How wrong of me to stay so late! And you came here to get well and keep early hours; I am so sorry."
She was going, and Everest rose from his seat and saw her flushed with excitement and pleasure, a joyous, shining vision in the lamplight. The colour came suddenly to his own face, the dark eyes lit up, he made a movement towards her.
"Regina, one good-night kiss."
She looked back at him standing under the light. Just behind him, near the closed panels of the door into his room, over his shoulder she saw the open casement standing wide to the mysterious, all-sheltering night. She hesitated, and suddenly Everest turned aside.
"No, it is better not; you are my guest this evening. Good-night, my sweet."
Regina backed towards the door and softly, silently vanished through it. With flying, noiseless feet she ran up the stairs to her own room and there, laying the paper sheets on the bed, threw herself on her knees beside it with her head on her outstretched arms.
For some days Everest and Regina had no opportunity of meeting in the enchanted garden. The family had the idea that their guest was to be entertained and amused, and set themselves to their self-imposed task with commendable thoroughness. He was driven out to afternoon teas, escorted to flower-shows, taken to garden-parties; lawn-tennis was arranged for the morning; rides in the wood or motorboat excursions on the sea for the afternoon; and though Regina took no part in a great many of these various diversions, still the same roof was sheltering them both, they saw each other constantly, and almost always at breakfast the conversation was entirely theirs. In this way the passion between them grew and grew; all the more steadfastly as it was impossible for them to gratify their strenuous wish to be alone in each other's society, to know the joy again—the "divine joy," as Plato describes it, "of the kiss and the touch."
Regina grew to admire him more and more as their talks together revealed his views and opinions; his wonder at the logical clearness of her mind, the extent of her reading, the leaping quickness of her intellect, increased with each day, and as his passions had always a large share of mentality in them this brilliance of her brain attracted him as much asher soft colour or her waving hair. Every day as she talked with him across the breakfast-table, or listened to him, with wide, interested, reverent eyes, he longed to press those bright lips and draw the dear clever head down on his shoulder.
At last, after some days of unintermittent social gaiety, he said to the Rector, when they were alone: "Look here, John, I don't want you to exert yourself to provide these sorts of amusements for me. I can have all this in town. You know I came here to rest and be quiet and get rid of the fever. I like it best when I can just stroll about in the woods and have nothing to do."
"You're perfectly free to do just what suits you best," returned the Rector, "don't let anyone worry you. The girls are going to some garden-party this afternoon, I believe, but don't let them drag you there if you don't care about it."
"I think I will really stay away this time," Everest answered. "I should like to stroll somewhere in the country this afternoon and so get some exercise."
It fell out accordingly that the feminine portion of the family, exclusive of the youngest daughter, drove away to the garden-party after luncheon, the Rector went to the village to inspect his schools and Everest was left alone to walk down to the sea, to the enchanted garden, to Regina.
She was there waiting for him under the blossom-laden trees, in her prettiest of pale green dresses, and without any speech at all they rushed into each other's arms, and kissed, driven by a wild instinctive, self-preservative longing to make an exchange of that electricity, that had been stored up in each ofthem for many days, increasing every hour, and, since it was denied any outlet, burning into their own heart and brain, and consuming their vitality.
Those sweet, glad kisses restored the balance of electricity between them and seemed to fill them with new life and energy. It was such a lovely day, where should they go, what should they do? And when Everest suggested walking somewhere, the girl was ready with ideas and plans, like an orderly laying the new route before the colonel.
"Let us walk if you like along the sands to the next village. There is a dear little inn in the bay where we can have tea and then come round by the wood home. Would you like that?" she asked, gazing up to his handsome face, the skin of which looked so cool and clear in the green light of the garden—green light which intensified the darkness of his eyes in their downward gaze upon her.
"Very much," he answered simply; and so they started, descending from the garden by a little gate in the porphyry balustrade, and a steep flight of steps to the hard glistening sands, to walk to Heddington, a small sunlit village lying far back in the bay. That walk, how it remained always in the girl's memory!—that happy walk along those glittering sands, at the border of the purple sea. How her dancing feet carried her along beside him! She felt so joyously conscious of her youth and health. She knew that the sloping sunbeams turned her hair into gold beneath her straw hat, that the purple of the sea and the blue of the sky got into her eyes, and that he was pleased with her as his gaze met hers. And their talk; what a splendid thing it was; itsnewness, its range over so many themes delighted her. The talk of Stossop always stayed in Stossop, and wearied the girl to death by its inane repetitions, but their talk wandered all over the world and took them with it and up and down the centuries from Palæolithic times, and sometimes it called up visions of Indian coral and they almost looked to see it in the Devon sea, and sometimes it made a distant group of black rocks seem like an ancient caveman fighting a bear. And yet it was all so light and laughter-filled, with none of the pedagogic solemnity of the half-educated person, trying to show the half of him that knows and keep concealed the half which is ignorant.
Everest never talked like a schoolmaster, but as an artist—in pictures; and Regina had nothing of the schoolmistress in her, only that true, deep thirst for knowledge, that had carried her down into the depths of the heaviest learning and from which she had emerged, her brain brilliant and shining, her language full of beauty and supple and keen.
To both, the moments seemed to race by like a golden stream. They hardly seemed to have left the red steps of the garden before they found themselves at Heddington, and Everest ordered tea for them to be brought out on the creeper-covered terrace, that hung over the shining sea.
When they first turned the angle of rock, and came into the small, white-sanded bay and saw the inn just in front of them, in its bridal veil of white roses, the girl sighed and stayed still.
"Oh, I am so sorry to think our walk is over!"
Everest came close to her, slipped his hand through her arm and pressed it.
"Why should you be sorry, darling?" he asked. "We are not going to part here. We shall still be together."
There was a tender accent, a stress of deep feeling in his voice. Her eyes looked up to his face, her breath came and went quickly. She was not to be sorry—and he was not—because they were still together.
So the great fact was voiced between them, and they became aware of the pressing desire, the colossal wish, beside which everything else became insignificant, the wild, passionate longing in each—to be together.
"I know," she said falteringly, after a pause, "but I am so sorry to think that half the time is gone. We are that much nearer to it being over," and from that minute she felt inclined to catch at each moment going by; all of them were wonderful, precious moments, and they shone in her memory afterwards, like golden stars, in the dark nights of her future.
The moment when they entered the cramped dark hall of the inn, where a mysterious blue light reigned, owing to the blue paper covering the glass of the end window, and giving effectively, yet economically, the idea of a stained-glass casement. This blue light, in its novelty, called fresh pleasure to her mind, as she saw the reflection of her own face in the hall mirror float mistily and lily-like in it.
The moment when, emerging on the terrace, they sat down under the canopy of rose, looking out towards the sea, now calm, only slightly tremulous, all pink and silver in the quiet bay, and she heardEverest ordering tea for them, with every luxury imaginable added for her, she knew for her, since he rarely took cakes and chocolates and strawberries and cream; and the moment when they sat silent and very near together, looking at each other over the empty tea-cups, and drinking in the peace and sweetness, the calm of all about them.
What a pity to have to go back to the Rectory. Overhead a little window, embowered in roses, looked out upon the sea. That window belonged to a room that the voluble innkeeper had offered Everest if they wanted to stay the night. What a pity that they couldn't stay at the little inn and sit side by side on its terrace, looking out to a pink and silver distance for ever and ever! Such thoughts were in their minds, equally in the man's as in the girl's; with such little simple pleasures does cunning Nature amuse her cleverest children, for these little things, these tiny golden seconds, are bridges leading over to the great, the greatest things in life.
And the walk back inland, through the great green woods, was a rapture too, though pierced by pain, as each step brought them nearer home.
Their talk went on, bright, inspiring talk, never personal, never petty, but always on the wide, open fields, in the broad plains of thought and intellect; for these two were absolutely alike in their abhorrence of the common and the commonplace, the mean, the small and the trivial, and they were also very singularly akin in all emotions and modes of thought, in their estimation of man, in their view of him as the blot upon creation, as Nature's mistake, in their estimation of his rapacity and cruelty, his infinitelittleness and stupidity. They were alike too in their love for the animal world, for all the gracious, sweet and lovely lives about us on this earth, that man, in his stupendous imbecility, dares to say were created for him to trample upon.
In this connection, the girl asked him suddenly if it were true that he had shot much in Africa, and Everest replied: "I used to shoot a good deal, but I never liked it, except as an exhibition of skill, and as one gets older one sees more and more into the horror of taking innocent and beautiful lives for one's own amusement." And Regina loved him more than ever for this speech.
Their minds in their kinship were like two eagles, that, flying from different quarters, had suddenly met and, happy in companionship, after lonely travel, soared upwards to the blue zenith together.
The difference in age was hardly perceptible between them. Everest had been at eighteen just like Regina now, and Regina at forty-six would be like Everest now, and so they met and talked on equal ground, as a man soliloquises with himself.
Everest did not seek to kiss her until they came to the border of the home copse where they must part. There he drew her into a close, long embrace and she threw her arms about his neck and kissed him back as she had not ventured to do till now—their talk had drawn them so near to each other. Then white and breathless she ran from him through the mossy copse and so home and upstairs, and Everest later slowly crossed the lawn to the Rectory and his own rooms, entering by the long French windows.
For many days after this, they met in the enchanted garden, and Regina lived in paradise.
Everest was supposed to need exercise, and every afternoon took a walk to the sea unaccompanied. The two elder girls were not good walkers enough to be able to go with him, and after a hint from their father forbore to press their own or other society upon him, but, as he spent the entire morning and evening in their company, left him undisturbed in the afternoon, to sleep if he felt touches of fever returning on him, or to walk where the fancy took him.
Though they did not know it, it always took him to the Chalet and its garden. Every day the girl in her new-found emotions, in her joy and pride and innocent happiness, grew more lovely. Her eyes shone more brightly, her skin grew more exquisitely transparent; but it was not the same with Everest; the sense of the Future gripped him too strongly, and sleepless, troubled nights brought back the fever. Daily his cheek grew paler, and except when talking, or under the influence of some emotion, his face did not have the same animation, nor his eyes the same brilliance, as when he came.
One afternoon when they met in the garden she saw at once that something was oppressing him. His face was white, and the usually calm lines of the brows were contracted with pain.
"My darling, I cannot stay here," he said, after their first long kiss. "You must not ask me, sweetest one. It is killing me, and it is too dangerous for you. This garden seems to alter everything.... When I am here, I forget the world of men outside, inwhich, after all, vile as it is, we have to live. I must go, Regina, before it is too late."
"It is too late," she answered, in a low voice. "Oh, Everest, if you knew what I shall feel when you go. It is so dreadful, so impossible, to give you up.... All the rest of my life must be wretched.... I have only this time, these wonderful days, while you are here, to be happy in.... Don't shorten them. Stay with me a little longer...!"
And in the still magic shade of the garden, Everest promised to stay, because it seemed to him, too, that it was impossible to leave her, and all the world, the hateful, ridiculous, jarring world, seemed far away, non-existent, under those fragrant roses, where the nightingales sang and Nature held full sway.
But that same night, at home, in his room, the idea came again very sharply before him that his duty was either to go away or to offer to marry Regina.
It was treacherous, cruel, dishonourable to stay any longer, unless he did that; he had stayed too long as it was, he knew; but that was done now. He could not help it, all he could do was to go at once, before things were still worse. Mechanically, he began to put a few things together that he always packed himself. Then he stopped, and sat down again. Suppose he just followed his own desires, and did not trouble about anything else?... Suppose he married Regina, and gave himself up to golden weeks of wandering with her?... There was no reason why he should not. He was free to marry if he chose. But the permanence of it, the insane laws of the thing frightened him, as it had done all his life.
He sat silent, looking down at the floor, thinkingdeeply; everything grows so much more complicated and difficult to decide as one grows older. One loses that saving narrowness of view that, in youth, prevents one from seeing more of a project than the side presented to one, and so simplifies one's course of conduct. In youth, too, everything seems so permanent; that clears away another difficulty. In love matters it makes everything remarkably easy.... We love, and our passion is certain to last for ever and ever. Then, it is fairly easy to arrange for it. But as we grow older we see that nothing is permanent. Everything is moving, shifting, changing, and the whole difficulty of man arises from the fact that he will shut his eyes to this universal truth. He makes institutions and laws, which would only be good and serviceable if our emotions, our passions, ourselves were lasting and changeless instead of being the victims of constant metamorphoses, and consequently man's life is a perpetual and fruitless struggle to adapt these solid, permanent and unelastic inventions to the restless varying of his life and his being.
Thus do we bid him build the solid rock house of marriage—where?—upon the shifting sands of his passions and emotions.
Can we expect it to be a success?
Everest knew that he loved Regina now, that he passionately longed for and desired her; and the feeling seemed so strong, so deeply rooted that it might well last for the traditional "ever." ... But experience told him that, of the many, many passions and loves he had felt before, all had varied, and shifted, and changed, and in due course, from one ailment or another, languished, sickened and died.
And on their death he had been free. But in this case he was considering, when they died, he would be enveloped, shackled in the chains of marriage! He thought of all his married friends.... There was not one who did not envy him his freedom, and yet most of them must have felt at some time that same stress of emotion for their wives as he felt for Regina now. He sprang to his feet suddenly.
"No! No! I will not be so foolish as to be led into it! In town, in a few weeks, I may have forgotten her altogether."
He recommenced collecting his letters and papers with feverish vigour. He knew he must go, and he would do so the day after to-morrow. His resolve was quite genuine, and he looked out the up-trains himself in Miss Marlow's ready laid hand-book, and packed his writing-case and small trunks.
But Nature, who doesn't mind in the least about marriage, but is very keen on carrying out those matters which really concern her, is not to be put off by a human being just packing his suit-case.
The following afternoon, when Everest started from the Rectory for his walk seawards, as he left the grounds, he met the curate coming up from the village, and as he greeted him the young man joined him.
"I'm going to visit a parishioner who lives in a little cottage on the beach. Are you going that way? If so, we might walk down together."
Everest assented pleasantly, though on that particular day no man's company was particularly welcome to him. His whole excitable nature was now strung up to one painful and horrible duty: the wrenching himself away from a woman that he lovedwith certainly the best and highest passion he had ever felt in his life. His blood seemed all on fire, and running the wrong way in his veins; his teeth seemed on edge; all his nerves shaken. But he showed none of this: he looked to the curate singularly calm, quiet and self-possessed.
For a few minutes they spoke on indifferent subjects, and then the young man said suddenly:
"You are making quite a long stay in Devon?"
There was a sort of questioning note in his voice, and Everest, not having spoken to anyone yet of his resolved departure, merely answered:
"Yes; it is very lovely here."
There was a silence, in which Everest felt sure the curate was gathering strength to address him on some subject of special import, and his mind went immediately to village schools, the poor and subscriptions, but, to his amaze, when the curate spoke, it was of—Regina!
"I expect you have great opportunities of talking with her, have you not?"
To which Everest replied frankly, wondering what was coming:
"Yes, we have talked a great deal."
"Has she ever," the curate coughed nervously, "told you about me?" he said at last.
Everest's surprise grew.
"Not beyond mentioning your name and your services to her father, I think," he answered.
"She never mentioned, I suppose, that I ... I was anxious ... I proposed to marry her?"
"No; certainly not. I never heard it," returned Everest promptly and emphatically.
A wave of hot emotion, he could not tell exactly of what kind, but certainly surprise and anger mixed in it, came over him as he heard another man speak of Regina, and reveal his attitude towards her, speak of marriage with her! She was his ... his ... his.... How dare the curate talk of her!... She was wholly Everest's, his own property. She belonged solely, utterly to him, and then the memory came: he was going to leave her,hewas going away, he was leaving her to herself, to Stossop, to the people here, to this ... curate!
In a whirl of anger he heard the next words:
"She refused me," uttered the young man faintly. "You see," he continued, "she is so very young, I think perhaps she hardly knows her own mind, and I, of course, have no chance of being very much with her or pleading my cause. I thought it was just possible, since you are with her so much, you could put in a word for me. A girl is so much influenced sometimes by what an older man says. He has the weight of a father, and yet more than the influence of a father, because he comes from the outside. He's a stranger. Regina would listen, I think, to all you said.... I want her to consider things a little, to consider how lonely a woman's life is, unmarried...."
The curate's voice went on, but Everest lost what he was saying in the angry maze and swirl of his own thoughts.
So this was what he was driving at! It was not flannel clubs, nor coal tickets, nor choir classes now; it was not subscriptions this time. He was being asked to persuade Regina—his Regina—to marryanother man, this man—this limited, narrow-minded, microscopic curate!
Then he became aware that the man was talking of Regina herself, telling him how wonderful she was, so unlike the other sisters, so unlike anyone he had ever known, and drawn on by Everest's quiet, apparently sympathetic attention he began to dilate on his own love for her, his ardent desire for her happiness.
"And do you think a girl like Regina Marlow would be happy as a clergyman's wife?" interrupted Everest mildly.
Inwardly he was furious at the tone of proprietorship that unconsciously crept into the curate's voice.
"I think she would when she had settled down," he answered. "I know she is very original, and has all sorts of fancies, now, but that soon disappears. When once a girl is married, and face to face with her duties in life, her children, her home, her regular employment steady and settle her."
A silent rage consumed Everest as he heard this speech, delivered in the rather pompous tones that the curate, without meaning to be offensive, generally slipped into.
That morning, when he had been thinking of that alternative to his going—marrying Regina—deep in his heart had been the idea of children. Never before in his life had he met a woman by whom he would so gladly have had sons as by her. It was just that steel-like sharpness of the brain, that clear, unclouded intellect, that swiftness of motion, that agility of limb, that vital force of energy in body andmind, that he would like to see in his sons—if he had them. That soul of a lioness, that frank, brave, upright nature she had revealed to him, is not a very modern type. It reminded him more of the old Roman spirit that lived in Regulus and Lucretia, and this thought had swayed him very near indeed to the idea of marriage. Only again, to his sensitive, comprehensive brain, the thought of maternity brought the idea of sacrifice, and it showed how deeply really his love for the woman had gone, that he shrank from anything which would involve her in suffering and danger. He felt he could not bear the thought of this gay, beautiful, radiant creature, risking, and perhaps giving up, her life, so full of powers for artistic creation, for his sake, through the gratification of his passion in bearing children to satisfy his ambitions.
And this had carried his mind away again from marriage; it made the matter more complex still. If he married, it was essential for his property that his wife should have children, but he saw suddenly now, and for the first time, what an ordeal loomed before him in giving over a woman, whom he loved as much as he loved Regina, to suffering and to danger.
Perhaps the ancient Greeks were influenced by this same feeling when they married women merely to have and rear their children, while giving their love and devotion and life companionship to others.
And now, here, when he, Everest, whom the girl loved, and who had such great compensations to give in return for all he asked from a woman, hesitated and contemplated the extreme of sacrifice, that thissacred life might be left undisturbed, while he was planning to leave her, to tear himself from her, for her sake, this wretched man at his side was quietly talking of her duties, the tasks she was to be forced into, the quiet, humdrum, irksome life she was to be bound to, the risks of maternity she was to face, to gratify him, that he might enjoy to the full this lovely flower, which Everest held too sacred to gather himself! It was no use to leave her! If he did, this man, or some other like him, would force her into an odious existence, such as was here sketched out.
His heart seemed to swell with fury, as he thought of it, dark mists of rage rose over his brain, darkening his mental vision.
"I am sure I shall win her in time," the voice went on at his side. "All that is wanted is persistence, determination.... That young Markham, who shot himself in London, it was a wrong thing to do, of course—and so foolish! If he had come back here, and persisted, he might have won her, just as I firmly believe I shall win her."
And in answer to a question of Everest's, he was taken through the history of Regina's refusal to Markham, and the tragedy which followed, and the other histories of the refusals, and all this talk went to Everest's brain like corroding fire. It awoke and inflamed all that selfishness of his love which, with Regina, and for her sake, he had kept suppressed, and controlled. It rose up now to its full power and fought with his reason. It filled him with rage. He longed to take the curate up by his neck, and throw him over the hedge.
At last the waving trees of the garden came insight, and he was now all impatience to get away from him, but he felt bound to accompany him to the cottage, and see the door shut upon him, before turning to the garden.
"A clergyman wants a wife for all this sort of thing," the latter remarked plaintively, as they neared the dirty little hovel on the beach; "these people must be visited, especially when they are sick, and it's a woman's work: it takes too much of a man's time."
Everest ground his teeth silently. He would not trust himself to speak. Another moment, and they were at the door.
A filthy woman, followed by a crowd of still filthier children, opened it. The sound of coughing and a baby crying came from the dark interior.
"You won't come in?" said the curate.
Everest declined, the curate disappeared, and the door was shut.
Feeling mad, like one who has drunk vitriolised brandy, his nerves exasperated and his control all gone, Everest turned and walked back rapidly towards the garden, with the swift, eager step of the thirsting wolf scenting water. He came to the gate and laid his hand on it. It was locked. He called her name. There was no answer. Each little thing, each resistance made his anger mount higher, augmented the state of turmoil he was in. He drew back a little from the gate, then jumped over it, feeling he could have leapt over one a hundred times higher, and began to scour the silent, scented ways of the garden.
The birds called over his head, the fragrance came in clouds to meet him, he noticed nothing.
Suddenly, as his quick feet carried him down one of the darkest rose alleys, he came upon Regina. She was asleep on a little bank, in the deep shade, almost invisible under the drooping boughs of a laburnum, that poured its golden treasure to the ground.
With a single step he was beside her, he had caught her into his arms. She awoke to find herself clasped to his breast, her face being covered with wild, fierce kisses.
"You are mine. You cannot and shall not belong to anyone else ...!"
The garden held them—that magic garden that waved and bloomed in quiet peace, far from the riot of the hard and noisy world. Far more beautiful than any cathedral's were its green and shaded aisles; more beautiful than the anthem's roll its exquisite melody of rejoicing birds; more sweet its perfume than incense, and Nature breathed over her children there a greater blessing than man can ever give.
Three hours later Everest came back to the Rectory; he went straight up to his room, turned the key in his door, and threw himself face downwards on his bed.
He knew he ought to feel regret, to wish his action undone, to feel fear of future ill, but he could not; still less was any sense of reaction, of revolt, familiar to him in similar situations, near him now.
From head to foot, one great pulse of elation, satisfaction, joy and triumph beat through him. She was his, and those moments had been his—moments unequalled before in all his life of varied success with women. He recalled the scene with wondering ecstasy:the beauty of the garden, the transfigured face of the girl, the pure, unclouded rapture of those lustrous eyes, as she yielded to his arms, the radiant glory of all the air about them, its intoxicating, fragrant stillness. Was the garden really enchanted, as she called it. What was she, this girl? Was she a goddess who had descended to his embrace? In the proud joy of her self-surrender, in the ecstatic passion of her kiss, in the glamour of poetry and beauty she threw over every action which with other women was so commonplace, she seemed to be.