He found her the next day in a pretty morning-room, dressed in a long white gown, with a single great yellow rose at her throat. She had a piece of tapestry in her hand, and as she rose to greet him, the plain, heavy folds of her gown clinging about her, and her dark hair bound closely around her head with a simplicity that was almost severe, Dartmouth again felt a humorous sense of having suddenly stepped into a page of a past century.
"What are you doing?" he said, as he took a chair opposite her. "Women never make tapestry—real tapestry—in these days. You remind me of Lady Jane Grey. Shall I get a volume of Greek and read it to you?"
She laughed. "I fear it would literally be Greek to me. Latin and I had a fierce and desperate war, but I conquered in the end. With the Greek, however, the war was extremely brief, and he marched off with colors flying, and never condescended to renew the engagement."
"For all mercies make us duly thankful. A woman who knows Greek is like a hot-house grape; a mathematically perfect thing, but scentless and flavorless."
"You are consoling; and, indeed, I cannot see that it would have done me much good; it certainly would not have increased my popularity among your exacting sex. You are the first man to whom I have dared acknowledge I know Latin. Lady Langdon was kind enough to give me elaborate warnings and instructions before she launched me into society. Among other things, she constantly reiterated, 'Never let a man suspect that you know anything, my dear. He will fly from you as a hare to cover. I want you to be a belle, and you must help me.' I naturally asked her what I was to talk about, and she promptly replied 'Nothing. Study the American girl, they have the most brilliant way of jabbering meaningless recitativos of any tribe on the face of the earth. Every sentence is an epigram with the point left out. They are like the effervescent part of a bottle of soda-water.' This was while we were still in Wales, and she sent for six books by two of those American novelists who are supposed to be the expounders-in-chief of the American girl at home and abroad, and made me read them. It nearly killed me, but I did it, and I learned a valuable lesson. I hated the American girl, but I felt as if I had been boiled in soda-water and every pore of my body had absorbed it. I felt ecstatically frivolous, and commonplace, and flashing, and sizzling. And—I assure you this is a fact, although you may not give me credit for such grim determination and concentration of purpose—but I never eat my breakfast before I have read an entire chapter from one of those two authors, it adjusts my mental tone for the day and keeps me in proper condition."
Dartmouth threw back his head and gave vent to the heartiest burst of laughter he had indulged in for years. "Upon my word, you are original," he exclaimed, delightedly, "and for heaven's sake, don't try to be anything else. You could not be an American girl if you tried for a century, for the reason that you have too many centuries behind you. The American girl is charming, exquisite, a perfect flower—but thin. She is like the first fruit of a new tree planted in new soil. Her flavor is as subtle and vanishing as pistachio, but there is no richness, no depth, no mellowness, no suggestion of generations of grafting, or of orchards whose very sites are forgotten. The soda-water simile is good, but the American girl, in her actual existence—not in her verbal photographs, I grant you—is worthy of a better. She is more like one glass of champagne-frappe, momentarily stimulating, but quickly forgotten. When I was in America, I met the most charming women in New York—I did not spend two weeks, all told, in Washington—and New York is the concentrated essence, the pinnacle of American civilization and achievement. But although I frequently talked to one or another of those women for five hours at a time without a suggestion of fatigue, I always had the same sensation in regard to them that I had in regard to their waists while dancing—they were unsatisfactory, intangible. I never could be sure I really held a woman in my arms, and I never could remember a word I had exchanged with them. But they are charming—that word describes them 'down to the ground.'"
"That word 'thin' is good, too," she replied; "and I think it describes their literature better than any other. They write beautifully those Americans, they are witty, they are amusing, they are entertaining, they delineate character with a master hand; they give us an exact idea of their peculiar environment and conditions; and the way they handle dialect is a marvel; but—they are thin; they ring hollow; they are like sketches in pen-and-ink; there is no color, no warmth, and above all, no perspective. I don't know that they are even done in sharp black-and-white; to me the pervading tone is gray. The American author depresses me; he makes me feel commonplace and new and unballasted. I always feel as if I were the 'millionth woman in superfluous herds'; and when one of those terrible American authors attacks my type, and carves me up for the delectation of the public, I shall go back to Wales, nor ever emerge from my towers again. And they are so cool and calm and deliberate, and so horribly exact, even the lesser lights. They always remind me of a medical student watching the workings of the exposed nervous system of a chloroformed hare."
Dartmouth looked at her with some intensity in his gaze. "I am glad your ideas are so singularly like my own," he said. "It is rather remarkable they should be, but so it is. You have even a way of putting your thoughts that strikes me as familiar, and which, out of my natural egotism, I find attractive. But I wish you would go back to your old castle; the world will spoil you."
"I shall return in a month or two now; my father is lonely without me."
"I suppose he spoils you," said Dartmouth, smiling. "I imagine you were an abominable infant. Tell me of some of the outrageous things you used to do. I was called the worst child in three counties; but, I doubt not, your exploits discounted mine, as the Americans say."
"Oh, mine are too bad to relate," she exclaimed, with a nervous laugh, and coloring swiftly, as she had done the night before. "But you were ill for a whole week, were you not? Was it anything serious?"
Dartmouth felt a sudden impulse to tell her of his strange experience. He was not given to making confidences, but he felten rapportwith this girl as he had never felt with man or woman before. He had a singular feeling, when talking with or listening to her, of losing his sense of separateness. It was not that he felt de-individualized, but that he had an accession of personality. It was pleasant because it was novel, but at the same time it was uncomfortable because it was a trifle unnatural. He smiled a little to himself. Was it a case of affinity after all? But he had no time to analyze. She was waiting for an answer, and in a moment he found himself yielding to his impulse and giving her a graphic account of his peculiar visitation.
At first she merely dropped her tapestry and listened attentively, smiling and blushing a little when he told her what had immediately preceded the impulse to write. But gradually the delicate pink left her face, and she began to move in the spasmodic, uncontrollable way of a person handling an electric battery. She clasped the arms of her chair with such force that her arms looked twisted and rigid, and finally she bent slowly forward, gazing up into his face with eyes expanded to twice their natural size and not a vestige of color in her cheek or lips: she looked like a corpse still engaged in the mechanical act of gazing on the scene of agony which had preceded its death. Suddenly she sprang to her feet and threw out her hands. "Stop!" she cried; "stop!"
"What is it?" he demanded, rising to his feet in amazement; he had been watching her with more or less surprise for some time. "I am afraid I have frightened you and made you nervous. I had better have kept my confidence to myself."
"No, no," she cried, throwing back her head and clasping her hands about it; "it is not that I am frightened—only—it was so strange! While you were talking it seemed—oh! I cannot describe it!—as if you were telling me something which I knew as well as yourself. When you spoke it seemed to me that I knew and could put into words the wonderful verse-music which was battling upward to reach your brain. They were, they were—I know them so well. I have known them always; but I cannot—I cannot catch their meaning!" Suddenly she stepped backward, dropped her hands, and colored painfully. "It is all purest nonsense, of course," she said, in her ordinary tone and manner, except for its painful embarrasment. "It is only your strong, picturesque way of telling it which presented it as vividly to my mind as if it were an experience of my own. I never so much as dreamed of it before you began to speak."
Dartmouth did not answer her for a moment. His own mind was in something of a tumult. In telling the story he had felt, not a recurrence of its conditions, but a certain sense of their influence; and the girl's manner and words were extraordinary. It could hardly be possible, even in cold blood, to understand their meaning. She was indisputably not acting. What she had said was very strange and unconventional, but from whatever source the words had sprung, they had not been uttered with the intention premeditated or spontaneous of making an impression upon him. They carried conviction of their sincerity with them, and Dartmouth was sensible that they produced a somewhat uncanny but strangely responsive effect upon himself. But what did it mean? That in some occult way she had been granted a glimpse into the depths of his nature was unthinkable. He was not averse to indulging a belief in affinity; and that this girl was his was not a disagreeable idea; but his belief by no means embraced a second, to the effect that the soul of one's antitype is as an open book to the other. Could her mind be affected? But no. She was a very unusual girl, possibly an eccentric one; but he flattered himself that he knew a lunatic when he saw one. There was left then but the conclusion that she possessed a strongly and remarkably sympathetic nature, as yet unbridled and unblunted by the world, and that he had made a dangerous imprint upon it. He was not unduly vain, but he was willing to believe that she would not vibrate so violently to every man's touch.
This point settled to the best of his capabilities, he allowed a second consciousness, which had been held under for the moment, during the exercisings of his analytical instinct, to claim his consideration. He was sensible that he was attracted as he had never been attracted by woman before. He had felt something of this on the night he had met her, and he had felt it more strongly on the occasion of their second interview; but now he was aware that it had suddenly taken the form of an overmastering desire for possession. He was by nature an impulsive man, but he was a man of the world as well, and he had his impulses pretty well subordinated to interest and common-sense; nevertheless he felt very much like doing a rash and impulsive thing at the present moment. He was a man of rapid thought, and these reflections chased each other through his mind much more quickly than I have been able to take them down, and Miss Penrhyn had averted her gaze and was playing nervously with some flowers in a basket on a pedestal beside her. She was acutely aware that she had made a fool of herself, and imagined that his hesitation was due to a polite desire to arrange his reply in such wise as not to make his appreciation of the fact too crudely apparent. At the same time she was a little exhausted under the reaction of a short but very severe mental strain. As for Dartmouth, he hesitated a moment longer. He was balancing several pros and cons very rapidly. He was aware that if he asked this girl to marry him and she consented, he must, as a man of honor, abide by the contract, no matter how much she might disappoint him hereafter. At the same time the knowledge that he was in love with her was growing more distinct every second. Doubtless the wisest course would be to go away for the present and postpone any decisive step until he knew her better. But he was not a patient man, and he was not in the habit of putting off until to-morrow what he could do to-day. (He considered that certain of the precepts instilled during childhood were of admirable practical value). The best thing in life was its morning: he did not like evening shadows and autumn twilights. There was nothing that could compare with the sweetness and fineness of the flavor of novelty. When it was practicable to take advantage of one's impulses one had a brief draught of true philosopher's happiness. And, at all events, this girl was a lady, high-born, high-bred, intellectual, and unique. She was also plastic, and if she had a somewhat too high-strung nature, love had been known to work wonders before. He had mastered the difficult art of controlling himself; he was not afraid of not being able to control any woman who loved him. He went over to her and took her hands in his strong clasp.
"I have known you a very short—" he began, and then paused abruptly.
He had meant to speak calmly and not frighten her by the suddenness of his love-making, but her touch fired him and sent the blood to his head. He flung down her hands, and throwing his arms about her, kissed her full on the mouth. The girl turned very white and tried to free herself, but his arms were too strong, and in a moment she ceased to resist. She made no attempt to define her feelings as Dartmouth had done. She had felt the young man's remarkable magnetism the moment she had met him: she had been aware of a certain prophetic instinct of it some hours before, when he had stood in the window of a crowded café above a crowded thoroughfare and speculatively returned her gaze. And the night before, she had gone home with a very sharply outlined consciousness that she would never again meet a man who would interest her so deeply. To-day, this feeling had developed into one of strong reciprocal sympathy, and he had exerted a psychological influence over her as vaguely delightful as it was curious and painful. But all this was no preparation for the sudden tumult of feeling which possessed her under his kiss. She knew that it was love; and, that it had come to her without warning, made the knowledge no less keen and sure. Her first impulse was to resist, but purely out of that pride which forbids a woman to yield too soon; and when his physical strength made her powerless, she was glad that it should be so.
"Will you marry me?" he asked.
"Yes" she said; "I will marry you."
Two weeks later Dartmouth had followed Weir Penrhyn to Wales. He had written to her father at once, and Sir Iltyd had informed him in reply that although aware of his rank and private fortune, through Lady Langdon's intimation, and although possessing a high regard and esteem for his father, still it was impossible for him to give any definite answer until he had known him personally, and he therefore invited him to come as soon as it pleased him and pay Rhyd-Alwyn a visit. Weir accordingly, and much to Lady Langdon's disgust, had returned to Wales at once; Dartmouth insisted upon an early marriage, and the longer they delayed obtaining Sir Iltyd's consent the longer must the wedding be postponed.
Dartmouth arrived late in the afternoon at Rhyd-Alwyn—a great pile of gray towers of the Norman era and half in ruins. He did not meet Sir Iltyd until a few minutes before dinner was announced, but he saw Weir for a moment before he went up-stairs to dress for dinner. His room was in one of the towers, and as he entered it he had the pleasurable feeling, which Weir so often induced, of stepping back into a dead and gone century. It looked as if unnumbered generations of Penrhyns had slept there since the hand of the furnisher had touched it. The hard, polished, ascetic-looking floor was black with age; the tapestry on the walls conveyed but a suggestion of what its pattern and color had been; a huge four-posted bed heavily shrouded with curtains stood in the centre of the room, and there were a number of heavy, carved pieces of furniture whose use no modern Penrhyn would pretend to explain. The vaulted ceiling was panelled, and the windows were narrow and long and high. Sufficient light found its way through them, however, to dress by, and there was a bright log-fire in the open fire-place.
"Jones," said Dartmouth, after he had admiringly examined the details of the room and was getting into his clothes, "just throw those curtains up over the roof of that bed. I like the antique, but I don't care to be smothered. Give me my necktie, and look out for the bed before you forget it."
Jones looked doubtfully up at the canopy. "That is pretty 'igh, sir," he said. "Hif I can find a step-ladder—"
"A step-ladder in a Welsh castle! The ante-deluge Penrhyns would turn in their graves, or to be correct, in their family vaults. No true Welsh noble is guilty of departing from the creed of his ancestors to the tune of domestic comforts. It is fortunate a man does not have to marry his wife's castle as well as herself. Get up on to that cabinet—it is twice as high as yourself—and you can manage the curtains quite easily."
Jones with some difficulty succeeded in moving the tall piece of furniture designated to the bed-side; then with the help of a chair he climbed to the top of it. He caught one of the tender-looking curtains carefully between his hands, and was about to throw it over the canopy, shutting his eyes and his mouth to exclude the possible dust, when the cabinet beneath him suddenly groaned, swayed, and the next moment there was a heavy crash, and he was groaning in the midst of a dozen antique fragments. Harold sprang forward in some alarm and picked him up. "By Jove!" he exclaimed, "I am afraid you are hurt; and what a row I have made! I might have known better than to tell you to trust your weight on that old thing."
Jones shook himself slowly, extended his arms and legs, announced himself unhurt, and Dartmouth gave his attention to the cabinet. "I shall have to initiate myself in my prospective father-in-law's good graces by announcing myself a spoiler of his household goods," he exclaimed, ruefully. "And a handsome old thing like that, too; it is a shame!" He thrust his hands into his pockets and continued looking down at the ruins with a quizzical smile on his face.
"By every law of romance and of precedent," he thought, "I ought to find in that cabinet the traditional packet of old letters which would throw a flood of light upon some dark and tragic mystery. Else why did I tell Jones to stand upon that particular cabinet instead of that one over there, which looks as if iron hammers could not break it; and why did Jones blindly obey me? That it should be meaningless chance is too flat to be countenanced. I should find the long lost Mss. of that rhymer who took possession of me that night, and so save myself the discomfort of being turned into a Temple of Fame a second time. Truly there has been an element of the unusual throughout this whole affair with Weir. Once or twice I have felt as if about to sail out of the calm, prosaic waters of this every-day nineteenth-century life, and embark upon the phosphorescent sea of our sensational novelists—psychological, so-called. It is rather soon for the cabinet to break, however. It suggests an anti-climax, which would be inartistic. But such material was never intended to be thrown away by a hero of romance."
He kicked about among the fragments of the ruined cabinet, but was rewarded by no hollow ring. It was a most undutifully matter-of-fact and prosaic piece of furniture in its interior, however much it may have pleased the æsthetic sense outwardly. He gave it up after a time, and finished dressing. "Nothing in that but firewood," he announced to Jones, who had been watching his researches with some surprise. "Pile it up in a corner and leave it there until I have made my peace with Sir Iltyd."
He gave his necktie a final touch, then went down to the drawing-room, where he found the candles lit and Sir Iltyd standing on the hearth-rug beside his daughter. The old gentleman came forward at once and greeted him with stately, old-fashioned courtesy, his stern, somewhat sad features relaxing at once under Dartmouth's rare charm of manner. He was a fine-looking man, tall and slim like his daughter, but very fair. His head, well developed, but by no means massive, and scantily covered with gray hair, was carried with the pride which was the bone and fibre of his nature. Pride, in fact, albeit a gentle, chastened sort of pride, was written all over him, from the haughty curve of his eyebrow to the conscious wave of his small, delicate hand—pride, and love for his daughter, for he followed her every movement with the adoring eyes of a man for the one solace of a sad and lonely old age.
"It is so awfully good of you to let me come up here so soon," exclaimed Dartmouth. "But what do you suppose I have done to prove my gratitude?"
"Made the castle your own, I hope."
"I have. I proceeded at once to make myself at home by smashing up the furniture. One of your handsomest cabinets is now in ruins upon my bedroom floor."
Sir Iltyd looked at him with a somewhat puzzled glance. He had lived in seclusion for nearly thirty years, and was unaccustomed to the facetiousness of the modern youth. "Has anything happened?" he demanded anxiously.
Dartmouth smiled, but gave an account of the disaster in unadorned English, and received forgiveness at once. Had he confessed to having chopped his entire tower to pieces, Sir Iltyd would have listened without a tightening of the lips, and with the air of a man about to invite his guest to make a bonfire of the castle if so it pleased him. As for Weir, her late education made her appreciate the humor of the situation, and she smiled sympathetically at Harold over her father's shoulder.
They went into dinner a few moments later, and Sir Iltyd talked a good deal. Although a man of somewhat narrow limitations and one-sided views, as was but natural, taking into consideration the fact that his mental horizon had not been widened out by contact with his fellow-men for twenty-five years, he was, for a recluse, surprisingly well-informed upon the topics of the day. Dartmouth could not forbear making some allusion to the apparent paradox, and his host smiled and told him that as history had been his favorite study all his life, he could hardly be so inconsistent as to ignore the work which his more active contemporaries were making for the future chronicler. He then drew from Dartmouth a detailed account of that restless young gentleman's political experience in Russia, and afterward questioned him somewhat minutely about the American form of government. He seemed to be pleased with the felicity of expression and the well-stored mind of his would-be son-in-law, and lingered at the table longer than was his habit. There were no formalities at Rhyd-Alwyn. Weir remained with them, and when her father finally rose and went over to the hearth-rug, as if loth to leave the society of the young people, she went and stood beside him. He laid his arm across her shoulders, then turned to Dartmouth with a sigh. "You would take her from me," he said, sadly, "do you know that you will leave me to a very lonely life?"
"Oh, you will see enough of us," replied Harold, promptly. "We shall be back and forth all the time. And Crumford Hall, I can assure you, is not a bad place to come to for the shooting."
Sir Iltyd shook his head: "I could not live out of Wales," he said; "and I have not slept under another roof for a quarter of a century. But it is good of you to say you would not mind coming once in a while to this lonely old place, and it would make the separation easier to bear."
He left them shortly after, and as he took Harold's hand in good-night, he retained it a moment with an approving smile, then passed a characteristic Welsh criticism: "It is a small hand," he said, "and a very well-shaped hand; and your feet, too. I am willing to acknowledge to you that I am weak enough to have a horror of large hands and feet. Good-night. I have to thank you for a very pleasant evening."
"Harold," said Weir, the next morning after breakfast, as the door closed behind Sir Iltyd, "I shall entertain you until luncheon by showing you the castle."
"My dear girl," said Harold, smiling, "let your role of hostess sit lightly upon you. I do not want to be entertained. I am perfectly happy."
"Of that I have no doubt. Nevertheless I want you to see the castle, particularly the picture-gallery, where all my ancestors be."
"Then, by my troth, will I go, fair Mistress Penrhyn, for a goodly show your ancestors be, I make no doubt;" and Dartmouth plunged his hands into his pockets and looked down at her with a broad smile.
Weir lifted her head. "My English is quite as pure as yours," she said. "And you certainly cannot accuse me of using what the London girls call 'slang.'"
This time Dartmouth laughed aloud. "No, my dear," he said, "not even Shakespearean slang. But let us investigate the mysteries of the castle by all means. Lead, and I will follow."
"There are no mysteries," said Weir; "we have not even a ghost. Nor have we a murder, or crime of any sort, to make us blush for our family tree."
"Happy tree! Mine has a blush for every twig, and a drop curtain for every branch. Thank God for the Penrhyn graft! Let us hope that it will do as much good as its fairest flower has already done the degenerate scion of all the Dartmouths. But, to the castle! I would get through—I mean, I would gaze upon its antiquities as soon as possible."
"This castle is very interesting, Mr. Dartmouth," replied Weir, elevating her chin; "you have nothing so old in England."
"True, nor yet in Jerusalem, O haughtiest of Welsh maidens! I esteem it a favor that I am not put below the salt."
Weir laughed. "What a tease you are! But you know that in your heart your pride of family is as great as mine. Only it is the 'fad' of the day to affect to despise birth and lineage. We of Wales are more honest."
"Yes, it is your sign and seal, and it sits well upon you. I don't affect to despise birth and lineage, my dear. If I could not trace my ancestry back to the first tadpole who loafed his life away in the tropical forests of old, I should be miserable."
He spoke jestingly, but he drew himself up as he spoke, his lip was supercilious, and there was an intolerant light in his eye. At that moment he did not look a promising subject for the Liberal side of the House, avowedly as were his sympathies in that quarter. Weir, however, gave him an approving smile, and then commanded him to follow her.
She took him over the castle, from the dungeons below to the cell-like rooms in the topmost towers. She led him through state bedrooms, in which had slept many a warlike Welsh prince, whose bones could scarcely be in worse order than the magnificence which once had sheltered them. She piloted him down long galleries with arcades on one side, like a cloister, and a row of rooms on the other wherein the retainers of ancient princes of the house of Penrhyn had been wont to rest their thews after a hard day's fight. She slid back panels and conducted him up by secret ways to gloomy rooms, thick with cobwebs, where treasure had been hid, and heads too loyal to a fallen king had alone felt secure on their trunks. She led him to chambers hung with tapestries wrought by fair, forgotten grandmothers, who over their work had dreamed their eventless lives away. She showed him the chapel, impressive in its ancient Norman simplicity and in its ruin, and the great smoke-begrimed banqueting-hall, where wassails had been held, and beauty had thought her lord a beast.
"Well," she demanded, as they paused at length on the threshold of the picture-gallery, "what do you think of my father's castle?"
"Your father's castle is the most consistent thing I have seen for a long time: it is an artistically correct setting for your father's daughter. The chain of evolution is without a missing link. And what is better, the last link is uncorroded with the rust of modern conventions. Seriously, your castle is the most romantic I have ever seen. The nineteenth century is forgotten, and I am a belted Knight of Merrie England who has stormed your castle and won you by his prowess. You stood in your window, high up in your tower, and threw me a rose, while your father stalked about the ramparts and swore that my bones should whiten on the beach. I raised the rose to my lips, dashed across the drawbridge, and hurled my lance at the gates. About my head a shower of barbs and bullets fell, but I heeded them not. Behind me thundered my retainers, and under their onslaught the mighty gates gave way with a crash, and the castle was ours! We trampled into the great hall, making it ring with our shouts and the clash of our shields. Your father's men fled before us, but he calmly descended the staircase and confronted us with his best Welsh stare. 'I fear ye not, villains,' he cried. 'Barbarians, English dogs! I defy ye. Do your worst. My daughter and I for death care not. The mighty house of Istyn-ap-Dafyd-ap-Owain-ap-Caradoc-ap-Iltyd-ap-Penrhyn knoweth not fear of living man, nor yet of death's mysterious charnel-house.' 'Wrong me not, gentle sir,' I cried, snatching off my helmet and trailing its plumes upon the floor; 'I come in love, not in destruction. Give me but thy daughter, O Dafyd-ap-Owain-ap-Istyn-ap-Caradoc-ap-Iltyd-ap-Penrhyn, and thy castle and thy lands, thy rocks and thy sea, are thine again, even as were they before the beauty of the Lady Weir turned my blood to lava and my heart to a seething volcano. Give me but thy daughter's hand, and wealth shall flow into thy coffers, and the multitude of thy retainers shall carry terror to the heart of thy foe. What say ye, my Lord Caradoc-ap-Owain-ap-etcetera?' Whereupon the lord of Rhyd-Alwyn unbent his haughty brows, and placing one narrow, white, and shapely hand upon my blood-stained baldric, spoke as follows: 'Well said, young Briton. Spoken like a brave knight and an honorable gentleman. My daughter thou shalt have, my son thou shalt be, thy friends shall be my friends, and thou and all of them shall be baptized Welshmen.' And then he himself re-ascended the staircase and sought you in your tower and led you down and placed your hand in mine. And the drums beat, and the shields clashed, and once more the mighty storm shook the rooks from the roof. But we heard it not, for on your finger I had placed the betrothal ring, then thrown my brawny arms about you and forgot that earth existed. Excuse my eloquence," he cried, as he lifted her up and kissed her, "but your castle and yourself are inspiring."
"That was all very charming, however," she said, "if you only had not such a reprehensible way of jumping from the sublime to the ridiculous, like a meteor from world to world."
"Prettily said, sweetheart. But, trust me, if I ever reach the sublime I will stay there. Now, to your ancestors! Great heaven! what an array!"
They had entered a long, narrow room, against whose dark background stood out darker canvasses of an army of now celestial Penrhyns; an army whose numbers would have been a morning's task to count. The ancient Penrhyns had been princes, like most of their ilk; and the titles which Weir glibly recited, and the traditions of valor and achievement which she had at her tongue's end, finally wrung from Dartmouth a cry for mercy.
"My dear girl!" he exclaimed, "keep the rest for another day. Those 'aps' are buzzing in my ears like an army of infuriated gnats, and those mighty deeds are so much alike—who is that?"
He left her side abruptly and strode down the gallery to a picture at the end, and facing the room. It was the full-length, life-size portrait of a woman with gown and head-dress in the style of the First Empire. One tiny, pointed foot was slightly extended from beneath the white gown, and—so perfect had been the skill of the artist—she looked as if about to step from the canvas to greet her guests.
"That is my grandmother, Sionèd, wife of Dafyd-ap-Penrhyn, who, I would have you know, was one of the most famous diplomatists of his day," said Weir, who had followed, and stood beside him. "She was the daughter of the proudest earl in Wales—but I spare you his titles. I am exactly like her, am I not? It is the most remarkable resemblance which has ever occurred in the family."
"Yes," said Dartmouth, "you are like her." He plunged his hands into his pockets and stared at the floor, drawing his brows together. Then he turned suddenly to Weir. "I have seen that woman before," he said. "That is the reason why I thought it was your face which was familiar. I must have seen your grandmother when I was a very young child. I have forgotten the event, but I could never forget such a face."
"But Harold," said Weir, elevating her brows "It is quite impossible you could ever have seen my grandmother. She died when papa was a little boy."
"Are you sure?"
"Quite sure. I have often heard him say he had no memory whatever of his mother. And grandpapa would never talk with him about her. He was a terribly severe old man, they say—he died long years before I was born—but he must have loved my grandmother very much, for he could not bear to hear her name, and he never came to the castle after her death."
"It is strange," said Harold, musingly, "but I have surely seen that face before."
He looked long at the beautiful, life-like picture before him. It was marvellously like Weir in form and feature and coloring. But the expression was sad, the eyes were wistful, and the whole face was that, not of a woman who had lived, but of a woman who knew that out of her life had passed the power to live did she bow her knee to the Social Decalogue. As Weir stood, with her bright, eager, girlish face upheld to the woman out of whose face the girlish light had forever gone, the resemblance and the contrast were painfully striking.
"I love her!" exclaimed Weir, "and whenever I come in here I always kiss her hand." She went forward and pressed her lips lightly to the canvas, while Dartmouth stood with his eyes fastened upon the face whose gaze seemed to meet his own and—soften—and invite—
He stepped forward suddenly as Weir drew back. "She fascinates me, also," he said, with a half laugh. "I, too, will kiss her hand."
With the exception of the time spent in the dining-room, the young people saw little of Sir Iltyd. That he liked Dartmouth and enjoyed his society were facts he did not pretend to disguise. But the habits of years were too strong, and he always wandered back to his books. He did not trouble himself about proprieties. Weir had grown up and ruled the castle all these years without a chaperon, and he had lived out of the world too long to suggest the advisability of one now. His daughter and her lover experienced no yearning for supervision, and the free, untrammelled life was a very pleasant one, particularly to Dartmouth, who always gave to novelty its just meed of appreciation. At this period, in fact, Dartmouth's frame of mind left nothing to be desired. In the first place, it was a delightful experience to find himself able to stand the uninterrupted society of one woman from morning till night, day after day, without a suggestion of fatigue. And in the second, he found her a charming study. It is true that he was very much in love, very sincerely and passionately in love; but at the same time, his brain had been trained through too many years to the habit of analysis; he could no more help studying Weir and drawing her on to reveal herself than he could help loving her. She was not a difficult problem to solve, individual as she was, because she was so natural. Her experience with the world had been too brief to give her an opportunity to encase herself in any shell which would not fall from her at the first reaction to primitive conditions; and above all, she was in love.
In the love of a woman there is always a certain element of childishness, which has a reflex, if but temporary action upon her whole nature. The phenomenon is due partly to the fact that she is under the dominant influence of a wholly natural instinct, partly to the fact that the object of her love is of stronger make than herself, mentally, spiritually, and physically. This sense of dependence and weakness, and, consequently, of extreme youth, remains until she has children. Then, under the influence of peculiarly strong responsibilities, she gives her youth to them, and with it the plasticity of her nature.
At present Weir was in the stage where she analyzed herself for her lover's benefit, and confided to him every sensation she had ever experienced; and he encouraged her. He had frequently encouraged other women to do the same thing, and in each case, after the first few chapters, he had found it a good deal of a bore. The moment a woman falls in love, that moment she becomes an object of paramount interest in her own eyes. All her life she has regarded herself from the outside; her wants and needs have been purely objective; consequently she has not known herself, and her spiritual nature has claimed but little of her attention. But under the influence of love she plunges into herself, as it were, and her life for the time being is purely subjective. She broadens, expands, develops, concentrates; and her successive evolutions are a perpetual source of delight and absorbing study. Moreover, her sense of individuality grows and flourishes, and becomes so powerful that she is unalterably certain—until it is over—that her experience is an isolated and wholly remarkable one. Naturally she must talk to someone; she is teeming with her discoveries, her excursions into the heretofore unexplored depths of human nature; the necessity for a confidant is not one to be withstood, and who so natural or understanding a confidant as her lover? If the lover be a clever man and an analyst, he is profoundly interested at first, particularly if she have some trick of mind which gives her, or seems to give her, the smack of individuality. If he be a true lover, and a man with any depth of feeling and of mind, he does not tire, of course; but otherwise he eventually becomes either oppressed or frightened; he either wishes that women would not take themselves so seriously and forget to be amusing, or her belief in her peculiar and absolute originality communicates itself to him, and he does not feel equal to handling and directing so remarkable a passion.
There was no question about the strength and verity of Dartmouth's love for Weir, and he had yet to be daunted by anything in life; consequently he found his present course of psychological research without flaw. Moreover, the quaintness of her nature pervaded all her ideas. She had an old-fashioned simplicity and directness which, combined with a charming quality of mind and an unusual amount of mental development, gave her that impress of originality which he had recognized and been attracted by. He was gratified also to find that the old-time stateliness, almost primness, which had been to him from the first her chiefest exterior charm did not disappear with association. She might sit on a rock muffled to her ears in furs, and with her feet dangling in the air, and yet manage to look as dignified as a duchess. She might race with him on horseback and clamber down a cliff with the thoughtlessness of a child, but she always looked as if she had been brought up on a chessboard. Dartmouth used to tell her that her peculiarly erect carriage and lofty fashion of carrying her head gave her the effect of surveillance over an invisible crown with an unreliable fit, and that she stepped like the maiden in the fairy tale who was obliged to walk upon peas. He made a tin halo one day, and put it suddenly on her head when her back was turned, and she avenged herself by wearing it until he went down on his knees and begged her to take it off. When she sat in her carved high-back chair at the head of her father's table, with the deep collar and cuffs of linen and heavy lace to which she was addicted, and her dark, sensuous, haughty, tender face motionless for the moment, against the dark background of the leather, she looked like a Vandyke; and at such times Dartmouth's artistic nature was keenly responsive, and he forgot to chaff.
Dartmouth had been at Rhyd-Alwyn two weeks, when Sir Iltyd turned to him one night as he was leaving the dining-room and asked him to follow him into the library for a few moments.
"I feel quite alarmed," said Harold to Weir, as the door closed behind her father. "Do you suppose he is going to tell me that I do not give satisfaction?"
"Harold!" exclaimed Weir, reprovingly, "I wish you would not talk as if you were a butler; you look much more dignified than you ever talk. You look like an English nobleman, and you talk like any ordinary young man about town."
"My dearest girl, would you have me a Sir Charles Grandison? The English nobleman of your imagination is the gentleman who perambulates the pages of Miss Burney's novels. The present species and the young man about town are synonymous animals."
"There you are again! You always make me laugh; I cannot help that; but I wish you would do yourself justice, nevertheless. You may not know it, but if you would only put on a ruff and satin doublet and hose and wig, and all the rest of it, you would look exactly like one of the courtiers of the court of Queen Elizabeth. You are a perfect type of the English aristocrat."
"My dear Lady Jane Grey, if you had been an American girl, you would have said a perfect gentleman, and I should never have spoken to you again. As a matter of fact, I always feel it a sort of sacrilege that I do not address you in blank verse; only my attempts thereat are so very bad. But it is never too late to mend. We will read Pope together, Shakespeare, and all the rest of the old boys. We will saturate our minds with their rhythm, and we will thereafter communicate in stately phrase and rolling periods."
"It would be a great deal better than slang and 'facetiousness,' as you call it. That is all very well for Lord Bective Hollington; it suits him; but you should aim at a higher standard."
Dartmouth, who was standing by the chimney-piece near the chair on which she was sitting, put his hand under her chin and raised her face, smiling quizzically as he did so.
"My dear child," he said, "you are too clever to fall into the common error of women, and idealize your lover. The tendency is a constituent part of the feminine nature, it is true. The average woman will idealize the old tweed coat on her lover's back. But your eyes are too clear for that sort of thing. I am a very ordinary young man, my dear. Becky is twice as clever—"
"He is not!" burst in Weir, indignantly. "A man who can do nothing but chaff and joke and talk witty nonsense!"
"If you knew him better you would know that under all that persiflage there is much depth of feeling and passion. I do not claim any unusual amount of intellectuality for him, but he has a wonderful supply of hard common-sense, and remarkably quick perceptions. And I have great respect for his judgment."
"That may be," said Weir, indifferently; "I care nothing about him." She rose and stood in front of him and leaned her elbows on his shoulders. "You may underrate yourself, if you like," she went on, "but I know that you are capable of accomplishing anything you wish, and of distinguishing yourself. I recall the conversations I have had with you in your serious moments, if you do not, and I expect you to be a great man yet."
Dartmouth flung his cigar impatiently into the fire. "My dear girl, my grandmother preached that same thing to me from the day I was old enough to reason, to the day she died. But I tell you, Weir, I have not got it in me. I have the ambition and the desire—yes; but no marked ability of any sort. Some day, when we are ready to settle down, I will write, and publish what I write. Men will grant me a certain standing as a thinker, I believe, and perhaps they will also give me credit for a certain nice use of words; I have made a study of literary style all my life. But that is the most I shall ever attain. I am not a man of any genius or originality, and you may as well make up your mind to the inevitable at once."
"Harold," said Weir, without taking the slightest notice of his outburst, "do you remember that extraordinary experience of yours that night in Paris? I believe you have the soul of a poet in you, only as yet your brain hasn't got it under control. Did you ever read the life of Alfieri? He experienced the same desire to write, over and over again, but could accomplish nothing until after he was thirty. Disraeli illustrated his struggles for speech in 'Contarini Fleming' most graphically, you remember."
"Neither Alfieri nor Contarini Fleming ever had any such experience as mine. Their impulse to write was not only a mental concept as well as a spiritual longing, but it was abiding. I never really experienced a desire to write poetry except on that night. I have occasionally wished that I had the ability, but common-sense withheld me from brooding over the impossible. The experience of that night is one which can be explained by no ordinary methods. I can make nothing of it, and for that reason I prefer not to speak of it. I abominate mysteries."
"Well," she said, "some day I believe it will be explained. I believe it was nothing more than an extraordinarily strong impulse to write, and that you exaggerate it into the supernatural as you look back upon it. I did not think so when you first told me; you were so dramatic that you carried me off my feet, and I was an actor in the scene. But that is the way I look at it now, and I believe I am correct."
"It may be," said Dartmouth, moodily, "but I hope it won't affect me that way again, that is all." He caught her suddenly to him and kissed her. "Let us be contented as we are," he said. "Ambition is love's worst enemy. Geniuses do not make their wives happy."
"They do when their wives understand and are in absolute sympathy with them," she said, returning his caress; "and that I should always be with you. But do not imagine that I am in love with the idea of your being a famous man. I care nothing for fame in itself. It is only that I believe you to be capable of great things, and that you would be happier if they were developed."
"Well, well," he said, laughing; "have your own way, as you will in spite of me. If ever the divine fire lays me in ashes, you may triumph in your predictions. But I must go and interview your father; I have kept him waiting too long already."
They went out into the hall, and Dartmouth left her there and went to the library. Sir Iltyd was sitting before a large table, reading by the light of a student's lamp, which looked like an anachronism in the lofty, ancient room. He closed his book as Dartmouth entered, and rising, waved his hand toward a chair on the other side of the table.
"Will you sit down?" he said; "I should like to have a little talk with you."
Dartmouth obeyed, and waited for the old gentleman to introduce the subject. Sir Iltyd continued in a moment, taking up a small book and bringing it down lengthwise on the desk at regular intervals while he spoke:
"Of course, you must know, Harold, that it has not taken me two weeks to discover my personal feelings toward you. I should have liked or disliked you on the first evening we met, and, as a matter of fact, my sensations towards you have undergone no change since that night. If it had happened that I disliked you, I should not have allowed the fact to bias my judgment as to whether or not you were a suitable husband for my daughter, but it would not have taken me two weeks to make up my mind. As it is I have merely delayed my consent as an unnecessary formality; but perhaps the time has come to say in so many words that I shall be very glad to give my daughter to you."
"Thank you," said Dartmouth. The words sounded rather bald, but it was an unusual situation, and he did not know exactly what to say. Something more was evidently expected of him, however, and he plunged in recklessly: "I am sure I need not say that I am highly honored by your regard and your confidence, nor protest that you will never regret it. To tell you that I loved Weir with all my heart would be trite, and perhaps it is also unnecessary to add that I am not a man of 'veering passions'—that is, of course when my heart is engaged as well."
Sir Iltyd smiled. "I should imagine that the last clause was added advisedly. I was a man of the world myself in my young days, and I recognize one in you. Judging from your physiognomy and general personality I should say that you have loved a good many women, and have lived in the widest sense of the word."
"Well—yes," admitted Dartmouth, with a laugh. "That sort of thing leaves a man's heart untouched, however."
"It may, and I am willing to believe that you have given your heart toWeir for good and all."
"I think I have," said Dartmouth.
And then the question of settlements was broached, and when it had been satisfactorily arranged, Dartmouth lingered a few moments longer in conversation with his host, and then rose to go. Sir Iltyd rose also and walked with him to the door.
"Do you mind our being married in a month?" asked Dartmouth, as they crossed the room. "That will give Weir all the time she wants, and we should like to spend the spring in Rome."
"Very well; let it be in a month. I cannot see that the date is of any importance; only do not forget me in the summer."
"Oh, no," said Dartmouth; "we expect you to harbor us off and on all the year around."
And then Sir Iltyd opened the door and bowed with his old-time courtier-like dignity, and Dartmouth passed out and into the hall.
He found Weir kneeling on the hearth-rug. The hall was an immense place with a vaulted ceiling upheld by massive beams; the walls were wainscotted almost to the top with oak which had been polished for many a century; and the floor, polished also, was covered with rugs which had been very handsome in their day. There were several superb suits of armor and a quantity of massive, carved oaken furniture, extremely uncomfortable but very picturesque. In the open fire-place, which would have held many more than Harold and Weir within its depths, great logs were burning. The lamps had been brought in but had not been turned up, and save for the firelight the great cathedral apartment was a thicket of shadows, out of which the steel warriors gleamed, menacing guardians of the girl.
Weir made a pretty picture kneeling on the hearth-rug, with the fire-light playing on her dark face and pliant figure, in its closely-fitting black gown, throwing golden flickers on her hair, and coquetting with the lanterns in her eyes. She rose as Dartmouth approached, and he gave her one of his brilliant, satisfied smiles.
"We are to be married a month from to-day," he said. "A month from to-day and we shall be knocking about Europe and pining for English civilization." He drew her down on the cushioned seat that ran along the wall by the chimney-piece. "We cannot go out to-night; there is a storm coming up. Ah, did I not tell you?" as a gust of wind shrieked and rattled the sash.
She gave a little shiver and drew closer to him. "I hate a storm," she said. "It always brings back—" she stopped abruptly.
"Brings back what?"
"Nothing," hastily. "So father has given his consent? But I knew he would. I knew he liked you the moment you met; and when he alluded that night to your small hands and feet I knew that the cause was won. Had they been at fault, nothing could have persuaded him that you did not have a broad river of red blood in you somewhere, and he never would have approved of you had you been the monarch of a kingdom."
Dartmouth smiled. "The men at college used to laugh at my hands, until I nearly choked one of them to death one day, after which they never laughed at them again. There is no doubt now about my having been destined at birth for a Welsh maiden, and equipped accordingly. But you know your father pretty thoroughly."
"I have lived alone with him so long that I can almost read his mind, and I certainly know his peculiarities."
"It must have been a terribly lonely life for you. How old were you when your mother died?"
She moved with the nervous motion habitual to her whenever her mother's name was mentioned. "I was about nine," she said.
"Nine? And yet you remember nothing of her? Weir, it is impossible that you cannot remember her."
"I do not remember her," she said.
"I saw her picture in the library to-night. She must have been very beautiful, but like you only in being dark. Otherwise, there is not a trace of resemblance. But surely you must remember her, Weir; you are joking. I can remember when I was four years of age perfectly, and many things that happened."
"I remember nothing that happened before I was nine years old," she said.
He bent down suddenly and looked into her face. "Weir, what do you mean? There is always an uncomfortable suggestion of mystery whenever one speaks of your mother or your childhood. What is the reason you cannot remember? Did you have brain fever, and when you recovered, find your mind a blank? Such things have happened."
"No," she said, desperately, as if she had nerved herself for an effort. "That was not it. I have often wanted to tell you, but I cannot bear to speak of it. The old horror always comes back when I think of it. But I feel that I ought to tell you before we are married, and I will do so now since we are speaking of it. I did not have brain fever, but when I was nine years old—I died."
"You what?"
"Yes, it is true. They called it catalepsy, a trance; but it was not; I was really dead. I was thrown from a horse a few months after my mother's death, and killed instantly. They laid me in the family vault, but my father had ice put about me and would not have me covered, and went every hour to see me, as he told me afterward. I remember nothing; and they say that when people are in a trance they are conscious of everything that passes around them. I knew nothing until one night I suddenly opened my eyes and looked about me. It was just such a night as this, only in mid-winter; the wind was howling and shrieking, and the terrible gusts shook the vault in which I lay. The ocean roared like thunder, and I could hear it hurl itself in its fury against the rocks at the foot of the castle. A lamp was burning at my feet, and by its flickering light I could see in their niches on every side of me the long lines of dead who had lain there for centuries. And I was alone with them, locked in with them; no living creature within call! And I was so deathly cold. There was a great block of ice on my chest, and slabs of it were packed about my limbs so tightly that I could not move. I could only feel that horrible, glassy cold which I knew had frozen the marrow in my bones and turned my blood to jelly; and the pain of it was something which I have no words to describe. I tried to call out, but the ice was on my chest, and I could hardly breathe. Then for a moment I lay trying to collect my thoughts. I did not know where I was. I did not know that I was in the vault of my ancestors. I only felt that I had been wandering and wandering in some dim, far-off land looking for someone I could never find, and that suddenly I had come into another world and found rest. But although I did not know that I was in the vault at Rhyd-Alwyn, and that my name was Weir Penrhyn, I knew that I was laid out as a corpse, and that the dead were about me. Child as I was, it seemed to me that I must go frantic with the horror of the thing, stretched out in that ghastly place, a storm roaring about me, bound hand and foot, unable to cry for help. I think that if I had been left there all night I should have died again or lost my mind, but in a moment I heard a noise at the grating and men's voices.
"'I must go in and see her once more,' I heard a strange voice say. 'It seems cruelty to leave her alone in this storm.' And then a man came in and bent over me. In a moment he called sharply, 'Madoc!—bring me the light.' And then another man came, and I looked up into two strange, eager, almost terrified faces. I heard incoherent and excited voices, then the ice was dashed off my chest and I was caught up in a pair of strong arms and borne swiftly to the house. They took me to a great blazing fire and wrapped me in blankets and poured hot drinks down my throat, and soon that terrible chill began to leave me and the congealed blood in my veins to thaw. And in a few days I was as well as ever again. But I remembered no one. I had to become acquainted with them all as with the veriest strangers. I had the natural intelligence of my years, but nothing more. Between the hour of my soul's flight from its body and that of its return it had been robbed of every memory. I remembered neither my mother nor any incident of my childhood. I could not find my way over the castle, and the rocks on which I had lived since infancy were strangers to me. Everything was a blank up to the hour when I opened my eyes and found myself between the narrow walls of a coffin."
"Upon my word!" exclaimed Dartmouth. "Why, you are a regular heroine of a sensational novel."
Weir sprang to her feet and struck her hands fiercely together, her eyes blazing. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself," she cried, passionately. "Can you never be serious? Must you joke about everything? I believe you will find something to laugh at in the marriage service. That thing I have told you is the most serious and horrible experience of my life, and yet you treat it as if I were acting a part in a melodrama in a third-rate theatre! Sometimes I think I hate you."
Dartmouth caught her in his arms and forced her to sit down again beside him. "My dear girl," he said, "why is it that a woman can never understand that when a man feels most he chaffs, especially if he has cultivated the beastly habit. Your story stirred me powerfully; the more so because such things do not happen to every-day girls—"
"Harold!"
"Do not wrong me; I am in dead earnest. As a plain matter of fact, I never heard of anything so horrible. Thank heaven it happened when you were so young! No woman's will and spirit could rise superior to such a memory if it were a recent one. But am I forgiven?"
"As you are perfectly incorrigible, I suppose there is no use being angry with you," she said, still with a little pout on her lips. "But I will forgive you on one condition only."
"Name it."
"You are never to mention the subject to me again after to-night."
"I never will; but tell me, has the memory of your childhood never come back for a moment?"
"Never. All I remember is that sense of everlasting wandering and looking for something. For a long while I was haunted with the idea that there was something I still must find. I never could discover what it was, but it has left me now. If you had not been so unkind, I should have said that it is because I am too happy for mysterious and somewhat supernatural longings."
"But as it is, you won't. It was an odd feeling to have, though. Perhaps it was a quest for the memories of your childhood—for a lost existence, as it were. If ever it comes again, tell me, and we will try and work it out together."
"Harold!" she exclaimed, smiling outright this time, "you will be trying to analyze the cobwebs of heaven before long."
"No," he said, "they are too dense."
It was eleven o'clock when they parted for the night. Dartmouth went up to his room and sat down at his desk to write a letter to his father. In a moment he threw down the pen; he was not in a humor for writing. He picked up a book (he never went to bed until he felt sleepy), and crossed the room and sat down before the fire. But he had not read two pages when he dropped it with an exclamation of impatience: the story Weir had told him was written between every line. She had told it so vividly and realistically that she had carried him with her and almost curdled his blood. He had answered her with a joke, because, in spite of the fact that he had been strongly affected, he was angry as well. He hated melodrama, and the idea of Weir having had an experience which read like a sensational column in a newspaper was extremely distasteful to him. He sympathized with her with all his heart, but he had a strong distaste for anything which savored of the supernatural. Nevertheless, he was obliged to acknowledge that this horrible, if commonplace experience of Weir's had taken possession of his mind, and refused to be evicted. The scene kept presenting itself in all its details again and again, and finally he jumped to his feet in disgust and determined to go to the long gallery which overhung the sea, and watch the storm. Rhyd-Alwyn was built on a steep cliff directly on the coast, and exposed to all the fury of the elements. In times of storm, and when the waves were high, the spray flew up against the lower windows.
He left his room and went down the wide hall, then turned into a corridor, which terminated in a gallery that had been built as a sort of observatory. The gallery was long and very narrow, and the floor was bare. But there were seats under the windows, and on a table were a number of books; it was a place Dartmouth and Weir were very fond of when it was not too cold.
It was a clear, moonlit night, in spite of the storm. There was no rain; it was simply a battle of wind and waves. Dartmouth stood at one of the windows and looked out over the angry waters. The billows were piling one above the other, black, foam-crested, raging like wild animals beneath the lash of the shrieking wind. Moon and stars gazed down calmly, almost wonderingly, holding their unperturbed watch over the war below. Sublime, forceful, the sight suited the somewhat excited condition of Dartmouth's mind. Moreover, he was beginning to feel that one of his moods was insidiously creeping upon him: not an attack like the last, but a general feeling of melancholy. If he could only put that wonderful scene before him into verse, what a solace and distraction the doing of it would be! He could forget—he pulled himself together with something like terror. In another moment there would be a repetition of that night in Paris. The best thing he could do was to go back to his room and take an anodyne.
He turned to leave the gallery, but as he did so he paused suddenly. Far down, at the other end, something was slowly coming toward him. The gallery was very long and ill-lighted by the narrow, infrequent windows, and he could not distinguish whom it was. He stood, however, involuntarily waiting for it to approach him. But how slowly it came, as one groping or one walking in a dream! Then, as it gradually neared him, he saw that it was a woman, dimly outlined, but still unmistakably a woman. He spoke, but there was no answer, nothing but the echo of his voice through the gallery. Someone trying to play a practical joke upon him! Perhaps it was Weir: it would be just like her. He walked forward quickly, but before he had taken a dozen steps the advancing figure came opposite one of the windows, and the moonlight fell about it. Dartmouth started back and caught his breath as if someone had struck him. For a moment his pulses stood still, and sense seemed suspended. Then he walked quickly forward and stood in front of her.
"Sionèd!" he said, in a low voice which thrilled through the room. "Sionèd!" He put out his hand and took hers. It was ice-cold, and its contact chilled him to the bone; but his clasp grew closer and his eyes gazed into hers with passionate longing.
"I am dead," she said. "I am dead, and I am so cold." She drew closer and peered up into his face. "I have found you at last," she went on, "but I wandered so far. There was no nook or corner of Eternity in which I did not search. But although we went together, we were hurled to the opposite poles of space before our spiritual eyes had met, and an unseen hand directed us ever apart. I was alone, alone, in a great, gray, boundless land, with but the memory of those brief moments of happiness to set at bay the shrieking host of regrets and remorse and repentance which crowded about me. I floated on and on and on for millions and millions of miles; but of you, my one thought on earth, my one thought in Eternity, I could find no trace, not even the whisper of your voice in passing. I tossed myself upon a hurrying wind and let it carry me whither it would. It gathered strength and haste as it flew, and whirled me out into the night, nowhere, everywhere. And then it slackened—and moaned—and then, with one great sob, it died, and once more I was alone in space and an awful silence. And then a voice came from out the void and said to me, 'Go down; he is there;' and I knew that he meant to Earth, and for a moment I rebelled. To go back to that terrible—But on Earth there had been nothing so desolate as this—and if you were there! So I came—and I have found you at last."
She put her arms about him and drew him down onto the low window-seat. He shivered at her touch, but felt no impulse to resist her will, and she pressed his head down upon her cold breast. Then, suddenly, all things changed; the gallery, the moonlight, the white-robed, ice-cold woman faded from sense. The storm was no longer in his ears nor were the waves at his feet. He was standing in a dusky Eastern room, familiar and dear to him. Tapestries of rich stuffs were about him, and the skins of wild animals beneath his feet. Beyond, the twilight stole through a window, but did not reach where he stood. And in his close embrace was the woman he loved, with the stamp on her face of suffering, of desperate resolution, and of conscious, welcomed weakness. And in his face was the regret for wasted years and possibilities, and a present, passionate gladness;thathe could see in the mirror of the eyes over which the lids were slowly falling…. And the woman wore a clinging, shining yellow gown, and a blaze of jewels in her hair. What was said he hardly knew. It was enough to feel that a suddenly-born, passionate joy was making his pulses leap and his head reel; to know that heaven had come to him in this soft, quiet Southern night.
* * * * *