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+Project Gutenberg's A Modern Chronicle, Volume 8, by Winston Churchill
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Modern Chronicle, Volume 8
+
+Author: Winston Churchill
+
+Release Date: October 19, 2004 [EBook #5381]
+[Last update: July 16, 2011]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A MODERN CHRONICLE, VOLUME 8 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+A MODERN CHRONICLE
+
+By Winston Churchill
+
+
+Volume 8.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+IN WHICH A MIRROR IS HELD UP
+
+Spring came to Highlawns, Eden tinted with myriad tender greens.
+Yellow-greens, like the beech boughs over the old wall, and gentle
+blue-greens, like the turf; and the waters of the lake were blue and
+white in imitation of the cloud-flecked sky. It seemed to Honora, as she
+sat on the garden bench, that the yellow and crimson tulips could not
+open wide enough their cups to the sun.
+
+In these days she looked at her idol, and for the first time believed it
+to be within her finite powers to measure him. She began by asking
+herself if it were really she who had ruined his life, and whether he
+would ultimately have redeemed himself if he had married a woman whom the
+world would have recognized. Thus did the first doubt invade her heart.
+It was of him she was thinking still, and always. But there was the
+doubt. If he could have stood this supreme test of isolation, of the
+world's laughter and scorn, although it would have made her own heavy
+burden of responsibility heavier, yet could she still have rejoiced. That
+he should crumble was the greatest of her punishments.
+
+Was he crumbling? In these months she could not quite be sure, and she
+tried to shut her eyes when the little pieces fell off, to remind herself
+that she must make allowances for the severity of his disappointment.
+Spring was here, the spring to which he had so eagerly looked forward,
+and yet the listlessness with which he went about his work was apparent.
+Sometimes he did not appear at breakfast, although Honora clung with
+desperation to the hour they had originally fixed: sometimes Mr. Manning
+waited for him until nearly ten o'clock, only to receive curt dismissal.
+He went off for long rides, alone, and to the despair of the groom
+brought back the horses in a lather, with drooping heads and heaving
+sides; one of them he ruined. He declared there wasn't a horse in the
+stable fit to give him exercise.
+
+Often he sat for hours in his study, brooding, inaccessible. She had the
+tennis-court rolled and marked, but the contests here were
+pitifully-unequal; for the row of silver cups on his mantel, engraved
+with many dates, bore witness to his athletic prowess. She wrote for a
+book on solitaire, but after a while the sight of cards became
+distasteful. With a secret diligence she read the reviews, and sent for
+novels and memoirs which she scanned eagerly before they were begun with
+him. Once, when she went into his study on an errand, she stood for a
+minute gazing painfully at the cleared space on his desk where once had
+lain the papers and letters relative to the life of General Angus
+Chiltern.
+
+There were intervals in which her hope flared, in which she tasted,
+fearfully and with bated breath, something that she had not thought to
+know again. It was characteristic of him that his penitence was never
+spoken: nor did he exhibit penitence. He seemed rather at such times
+merely to become normally himself, as one who changes personality,
+apparently oblivious to the moods and deeds of yesterday. And these
+occasions added perplexity to her troubles. She could not reproach him
+--which perhaps in any event she would have been too wise to do; but she
+could not, try as she would, bring herself to the point of a discussion
+of their situation. The risk, she felt, was too great; now, at least.
+There were instances that made her hope that the hour might come.
+
+One fragrant morning Honora came down to find him awaiting her, and to
+perceive lying on her napkin certain distilled drops of the spring
+sunshine. In language less poetic, diamonds to be worn in the ears. The
+wheel of fashion, it appeared, had made a complete revolution since the
+early days of his mother's marriage. She gave a little exclamation, and
+her hand went to her heart.
+
+"They are Brazilian stones," he explained, with a boyish pleasure that
+awoke memories and held her speechless. "I believe it's very difficult,
+if not impossible, to buy them now. My father got them after the war and
+I had them remounted." And he pressed them against the pink lobes of her
+ears. "You look like the Queen of Sheba."
+
+"How do you know?" she asked tremulously. "You never saw her."
+
+"According to competent judges," he replied, "she was the most beautiful
+woman of her time. Go upstairs and put them on."
+
+She shook her head. An inspiration had come to her.
+
+"Wait," she cried. And that morning, when Hugh had gone out, she sent for
+Starling and startled him by commanding that the famous Lowestoft set be
+used at dinner. He stared at her, and the corners of his mouth twitched,
+and still he stood respectfully in the doorway.
+
+"That is all, Starling."
+
+"I beg pardon, madam. How--how many will there be at the table?"
+
+"Just Mr. Chiltern and I," she replied. But she did not look at him.
+
+It was superstition, undoubtedly. She was well aware that Starling had
+not believed that the set would be used again. An extraordinary order,
+that might well have sent him away wondering; for the Lowestoft had been
+reserved for occasions. Ah, but this was to be an occasion, a festival!
+The whimsical fancy grew in her mind as the day progressed, and she
+longed with an unaccustomed impatience for nightfall, and anticipation
+had a strange taste. Mathilde, with the sympathetic gift of her nation,
+shared the excitement of her mistress in this fete. The curtains in the
+pink bedroom were drawn, and on the bed, in all its splendour of lace and
+roses, was spread out the dinner-gown-a chef-d'oeuvre of Madame
+Barriere's as yet unworn. And no vulgar, worldly triumph was it to adorn.
+
+Her heart was beating fast as she descended the stairway, bright spots of
+colour flaming in her cheeks and the diamonds sparkling in her ears. A
+prima donna might have guessed her feelings as she paused, a little
+breathless on the wide landing under the windows. She heard a footstep.
+Hugh came out of the library and stood motionless, looking up at her. But
+even those who have felt the silence and the stir that prefaces the
+clamorous applause of the thousands could not know the thrill that swept
+her under his tribute. She came down the last flight of steps, slowly,
+and stopped in front of him.
+
+"You are wonderful, Honora!" he said, and his voice was not quite under
+control. He took her hand, that trembled in his, and he seemed to be
+seeking to express something for which he could find no words. Thus may
+the King have looked upon Rosamond in her bower; upon a beauty created
+for the adornment of courts which he had sequestered for his eyes alone.
+
+Honora, as though merely by the touch of his hand in hers, divined his
+thought.
+
+"If you think me so, dear," she whispered happily, "it's all I ask."
+
+And they went in to dinner as to a ceremony. It was indeed a ceremony
+filled for her with some occult, sacred, meaning that she could not put
+into words. A feast symbolical. Starling was sent to the wine-cellar to
+bring back a cobwebbed Madeira near a century old, brought out on rare
+occasions in the family. And Hugh, when his glass was filled, looked at
+his wife and raised it in silence to his lips.
+
+She never forgot the scene. The red glow of light from the shaded candles
+on the table, and the corners of the dining room filled with gloom. The
+old butler, like a high priest, standing behind his master's chair. The
+long windows, with the curtains drawn in the deep, panelled arches; the
+carved white mantelpiece; the glint of silver on' the sideboard, with its
+wine-cooler underneath,--these, spoke of generations of respectability
+and achievement. Would this absorbed isolation, this marvellous wild love
+of theirs, be the end of it all? Honora, as one detached, as a ghost in
+the corner, saw herself in the picture with startling clearness. When she
+looked up, she met her husband's eyes. Always she met them, and in them a
+questioning, almost startled look that was new. "Is it the earrings?" she
+asked at last. "I don't know," he answered. "I can't tell. They seem to
+have changed you, but perhaps they have brought out something in your
+face and eyes I have never seen before."
+
+"And--you like it, Hugh?"
+
+"Yes, I like it," he replied, and added enigmatically, "but I don't
+understand it."
+
+She was silent, and oddly satisfied, trusting to fate to send more
+mysteries.
+
+Two days had not passed when that restlessness for which she watched so
+narrowly revived. He wandered aimlessly about the place, and flared up
+into such a sudden violent temper at one of the helpers in the fields
+that the man ran as for his life, and refused to set foot again on any of
+the Chiltern farms. In the afternoon he sent for Honora to ride with him,
+and scolded her for keeping him waiting. And he wore a spur, and pressed
+his horse so savagely that she cried out in remonstrance, although at
+such times she had grown to fear him.
+
+"Oh, Hugh, how can you be so cruel!"
+
+"The beast has no spirit," he said shortly. "I'll get one that has."
+
+Their road wound through the western side of the estate towards misty
+rolling country, in the folds of which lay countless lakes, and at length
+they caught sight of an unpainted farmhouse set amidst a white cloud of
+apple trees in bloom. On the doorstep, whittling, sat a bearded, unkempt
+farmer with a huge frame. In answer to Hugh's question he admitted that
+he had a horse for sale, stuck his knife in the step, rose, and went off
+towards the barn near by; and presently reappeared, leading by a halter a
+magnificent black. The animal stood jerking his head, blowing and pawing
+the ground while Chiltern examined him.
+
+"He's been ridden?" he asked.
+
+The man nodded.
+
+Chiltern sprang to the ground and began to undo his saddle girths. A
+sudden fear seized Honora.
+
+"Oh, Hugh, you're not going to ride him!" she exclaimed.
+
+"Why not? How else am I going to find out anything about him?"
+
+"He looks--dangerous," she faltered.
+
+"I'm tired of horses that haven't any life in them," he said, as he
+lifted off the saddle.
+
+"I guess we'd better get him in the barn," said the farmer.
+
+Honora went behind them to witness the operation, which was not devoid of
+excitement. The great beast plunged savagely when they tightened the
+girths, and closed his teeth obstinately against the bit; but the farmer
+held firmly to his nose and shut off his wind. They led him out from the
+barn floor.
+
+"Your name Chiltern?" asked the farmer.
+
+"Yes," said Hugh, curtly.
+
+"Thought so," said the farmer, and he held the horse's head.
+
+Honora had a feeling of faintness.
+
+"Hugh, do be careful!" she pleaded.
+
+He paid no heed to her. His eyes, she noticed, had a certain feverish
+glitter of animation, of impatience, such as men of his type must wear
+when they go into battle. He seized the horse's mane, he put his foot in
+the stirrup; the astonished animal gave a snort and jerked the bridle
+from the farmer's hand. But Chiltern was in the saddle, with knees
+pressed tight.
+
+There ensued a struggle that Honora will never forget. And although she
+never again saw that farm-house, its details and surroundings come back
+to her in vivid colours when she closes her eyes. The great horse in
+every conceivable pose, with veins standing out and knotty muscles
+twisting in his legs and neck and thighs. Once, when he dashed into the
+apple trees, she gave a cry; a branch snapped, and Chiltern emerged,
+still seated, with his hat gone and the blood trickling from a scratch on
+his forehead. She saw him strike with his spurs, and in a twinkling horse
+and rider had passed over the dilapidated remains of a fence and were
+flying down the hard clay road, disappearing into a dip. A reverberating
+sound, like a single stroke, told them that the bridge at the bottom had
+been crossed.
+
+In an agony of terror, Honora followed, her head on fire, her heart
+pounding faster than the hoof beats. But the animal she rode, though a
+good one, was no match for the great infuriated beast which she pursued.
+Presently she came to a wooded corner where the road forked thrice, and
+beyond, not without difficulty,--brought her sweating mare to a stand.
+The quality of her fear changed from wild terror to cold dread. A hermit
+thrush, in the wood near by, broke the silence with a song inconceivably
+sweet. At last she went back to the farm-house, hoping against hope that
+Hugh might have returned by another road. But he was not there. The
+farmer was still nonchalantly whittling.
+
+"Oh, how could you let any one get on a horse like that?" she cried.
+
+"You're his wife, ain't you?" he asked.
+
+Something in the man's manner seemed to compel her to answer, in spite of
+the form of the question.
+
+"I am Mrs. Chiltern," she said.
+
+He was looking at her with an expression that she found incomprehensible.
+His glance was penetrating, yet here again she seemed to read compassion.
+He continued to gaze at her, and presently, when he spoke, it was as
+though he were not addressing her at all.
+
+"You put me in mind of a young girl I used to know," he said; "seems like
+a long time ago. You're pretty, and you're young, and ye didn't know what
+you were doin,' I'll warrant. Lost your head. He has a way of gittin'
+'em--always had."
+
+Honora did not answer. She would have liked to have gone away, but that
+which was stronger than her held her.
+
+"She didn't live here," he explained, waving his hand deprecatingly
+towards the weather-beaten house. "We lived over near Morrisville in them
+days. And he don't remember me, your husband don't. I ain't surprised.
+I've got considerable older."
+
+Honora was trembling from head to foot, and her hands were cold.
+
+"I've got her picture in there, if ye'd like to look at it," he said,
+after a while.
+
+"Oh, no!" she cried. "Oh, no!"
+
+"Well, I don't know as I blame you." He sat down again and began to
+whittle. "Funny thing, chance," he remarked; "who'd a thought I should
+have owned that there hoss, and he should have come around here to ride
+it?"
+
+She tried to speak, but she could not. The hideous imperturbability of
+the man's hatred sickened her. And her husband! The chips fell in silence
+until a noise on the road caused them to look up. Chiltern was coming
+back. She glanced again at the farmer, but his face was equally
+incapable, or equally unwilling, to express regret. Chiltern rode into
+the dooryard. The blood from the scratch on his forehead had crossed his
+temple and run in a jagged line down his cheek, his very hair (as she had
+sometimes seen it) was damp with perspiration, blacker, kinkier; his eyes
+hard, reckless, bloodshot. So, in the past, must he have emerged from
+dozens of such wilful, brutal contests with man and beast. He had beaten
+the sweat-stained horse (temporarily--such was the impression Honora
+received), but she knew that he would like to have killed it for its
+opposition.
+
+"Give me my hat, will you?" he cried to the farmer.
+
+To her surprise the man obeyed. Chiltern leaped to the ground.
+
+"What do you want for him?" he demanded.
+
+"I'll take five hundred dollars."
+
+"Bring him over in the morning," said Chiltern, curtly.
+
+They rode homeward in silence. Honora had not been able to raise her
+voice against the purchase, and she seemed powerless now to warn her
+husband of the man's enmity. She was thinking, rather, of the horror of
+the tragedy written on the farmer's face, to which he had given her the
+key: Hugh Chiltern, to whom she had intrusted her life and granted her
+all, had done this thing, ruthlessly, even as he had satisfied to-day his
+unbridled cravings in maltreating a horse! And she thought of that other
+woman, on whose picture she had refused to look. What was the essential
+difference between that woman and herself? He had wanted them both, he
+had taken them both for his pleasure, heedless of the pain he might cause
+to others and to them. For her, perhaps, the higher organism, had been
+reserved the higher torture. She did not know. The vision of the girl in
+the outer darkness reserved for castaways was terrible.
+
+Up to this point she had, as it were, been looking into one mirror. Now
+another was suddenly raised behind her, and by its aid she beheld not a
+single, but countless, images of herself endlessly repeated. How many
+others besides this girl had there been? The question gave her the
+shudder of the contemplation of eternity. It was not the first time
+Honora had thought of his past, but until today it had lacked reality;
+until to-day she had clung to the belief that he had been misunderstood;
+until to-day she had considered those acts of his of the existence of
+which she was collectively aware under the generic term of wild oats. He
+had had too much money, and none had known how to control him. Now,
+through this concrete example of another's experience, she was given to
+understand that which she had strangely been unable to learn from her
+own. And she had fancied, in her folly, that she could control him!
+Unable as yet to grasp the full extent of her calamity, she rode on by
+his side, until she was aware at last that they had reached the door of
+the house at Highlawns.
+
+"You look pale," he said as he lifted her off her horse. The demon in
+him, she perceived, was tired.
+
+"Do I?"
+
+"What's the matter?"
+
+"Nothing," she answered.
+
+He laughed.
+
+"It's confoundedly silly to get frightened that way," he declared. "The
+beast only wants riding."
+
+Three mornings later she was seated in the garden with a frame of fancy
+work. Sometimes she put it down. The weather was overcast, langourous,
+and there was a feeling of rain in the air. Chiltern came in through the
+gaffe, and looked at her.
+
+"I'm going to New York on the noon train," he said.
+
+"To New York?"
+
+"Yes. Why not?"
+
+"There's no reason why you shouldn't if you wish to," she replied, picking
+up her frame.
+
+"Anything I can get you?" he asked.
+
+"No, thank you."
+
+"You've been in such a deuced queer mood the last few days I can't make
+you out, Honora."
+
+"You ought to have learned something about women by this time," she said.
+
+"It seems to me," he announced, "that we need a little livening up."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+THE RENEWAL OF AN ANCIENT HOSPITALITY
+
+There were six letters from him, written from a club, representing the
+seven days of his absence. He made no secret of the fact that his visit
+to the metropolis was in the nature of a relaxation and a change of
+scene, but the letters themselves contained surprisingly little
+information as to how he was employing his holiday. He had encountered
+many old friends, supposedly all of the male sex: among them--most
+welcome of surprises to him!--Mr. George Pembroke, a boon companion at
+Harvard. And this mention of boon companionship brought up to Honora a
+sufficiently vivid idea of Mr. Pembroke's characteristics. The extent of
+her knowledge of this gentleman consisted in the facts that he was a
+bachelor, a member of a prominent Philadelphia family, and that time hung
+heavy on his hands.
+
+One morning she received a telegram to the effect that her husband would
+be home that night, bringing three people with him. He sent his love, but
+neglected to state the names and sexes of the prospective guests. And she
+was still in a quandary as to what arrangements to make when Starling
+appeared in answer to her ring.
+
+"You will send the omnibus to the five o'clock train," she said. "There
+will be three extra places at dinner, and tea when Mr. Chiltern arrives."
+
+Although she strove to speak indifferently, she was sure from the way the
+old man looked at her that her voice had not been quite steady. Of late
+her curious feeling about him had increased in intensity; and many times,
+during this week she had spent alone, she had thought that his eyes had
+followed her with sympathy. She did not resent this. Her world having now
+contracted to that wide house, there was a comfort in knowing that there
+was one in it to whom she could turn in need. For she felt that she could
+turn to Starling; he alone, apparently, had measured the full depth of
+her trouble; nay, had silently predicted it from the beginning. And
+to-day, as he stood before her, she had an almost irresistible impulse to
+speak. Just a word-a human word would have been such a help to her! And
+how ridiculous the social law that kept the old man standing there,
+impassive, respectful, when this existed between them! Her tragedy was
+his tragedy; not in the same proportion, perhaps; nevertheless, he had
+the air of one who would die of it.
+
+And she? Would she die? What would become of her? When she thought of the
+long days and months and years that stretched ahead of her, she felt that
+her soul would not be able to survive the process of steady degradation
+to which it was sure to be subjected. For she was a prisoner: the
+uttermost parts of the earth offered no refuge. To-day, she knew, was to
+see the formal inauguration of that process. She had known torture, but
+it had been swift, obliterating, excruciating. And hereafter it was to be
+slow, one turn at a time of the screws, squeezing by infinitesimal
+degrees the life out of her soul. And in the end--most fearful thought of
+all--in the end, painless. Painless! She buried her head in her arms on
+the little desk, shaken by sobs.
+
+How she fought that day to compose herself, fought and prayed! Prayed
+wildly to a God whose help, nevertheless, she felt she had forfeited, who
+was visiting her with just anger. At half-past four she heard the
+carriage on the far driveway, going to the station, and she went down and
+walked across the lawn to the pond, and around it; anything to keep
+moving. She hurried back to the house just in time to reach the hall as
+the omnibus backed up. And the first person she saw descend, after Hugh,
+was Mrs. Kame.
+
+"Here we are, Honora," she cried. "I hope you're glad to see us, and that
+you'll forgive our coming so informally. You must blame Hugh. We've
+brought Adele."
+
+The second lady was, indeed, none other than Mrs. Eustace Rindge,
+formerly Mrs. Dicky Farnham. And she is worth--even at this belated stage
+in our chronicle an attempted sketch, or at least an attempted
+impression. She was fair, and slim as a schoolgirl; not very tall, not
+exactly petite; at first sight she might have been taken for a
+particularly immature debutante, and her dress was youthful and rather
+mannish. Her years, at this period of her career, were in truth but two
+and twenty, yet she had contrived, in the comparatively brief time since
+she had reached the supposed age of discretion, to marry two men and
+build two houses, and incidentally to see a considerable portion of what
+is known as the world. The suspicion that she was not as innocent as a
+dove came to one, on closer inspection, as a shock: her eyes were tired,
+though not from loss of sleep; and her manner--how shall it be described
+to those whose happy lot in life has never been to have made the
+acquaintance of Mrs. Rindge's humbler sisters who have acquired--more
+coarsely, it is true--the same camaraderie? She was one of those for
+whom, seemingly, sex does not exist. Her air of good-fellowship with men
+was eloquent of a precise knowledge of what she might expect from them,
+and she was prepared to do her own policing,--not from any deep moral
+convictions. She belonged, logically, to that world which is disposed to
+take the law into its own hands, and she was the possessor of five
+millions of dollars.
+
+"I came along," she said to Honora, as she gave her hand-bag to a
+footman. "I hope you don't mind. Abby and I were shopping and we ran into
+Hugh and Georgie yesterday at Sherry's, and we've been together ever
+since. Not quite that--but almost. Hugh begged us to come up, and there
+didn't seem to be any reason why we shouldn't, so we telephoned down to
+Banbury for our trunks and maids, and we've played bridge all the way. By
+the way, Georgie, where's my pocket-book?"
+
+Mr. Pembroke handed it over, and was introduced by Hugh. He looked at
+Honora, and his glance somehow betokened that he was in the habit of
+looking only once. He had apparently made up his mind about her before he
+saw her. But he looked again, evidently finding her at variance with a
+preconceived idea, and this time she flushed a little under his stare,
+and she got the impression that Mr. Pembroke was a man from whom few
+secrets of a certain kind were hid. She felt that he had seized, at a
+second glance, a situation that she had succeeded in hiding from the
+women. He was surprised, but cynically so. He was the sort of person who
+had probably possessed at Harvard the knowledge of the world of a Tammany
+politician; he had long ago written his book--such as it was--and closed
+it: or, rather, he had worked out his system at a precocious age, and it
+had lasted him ever since. He had decided that undergraduate life, freed
+from undergraduate restrictions, was a good thing. And he did not, even
+in these days, object to breaking something valuable occasionally.
+
+His physical attributes are more difficult to describe, so closely were
+they allied to those which, for want of a better word, must be called
+mental. He was neither tall nor short, he was well fed, but hard, his
+shoulders too broad, his head a little large. If he should have happened
+to bump against one, the result would have been a bruise--not for him.
+His eyes were blue, his light hair short, and there was a slight baldness
+beginning; his face was red-tanned. There was not the slightest doubt
+that he could be effectively rude, and often was; but it was evident, for
+some reason, that he meant to be gracious (for Mr. Pembroke) to Honora.
+Perhaps this was the result of the second glance. One of his name had not
+lacked, indeed, for instructions in gentility. It must not be thought
+that she was in a condition to care much about what Mr. Pembroke thought
+or did, and yet she felt instinctively that he had changed his greeting
+between that first and second glance.
+
+"I hope you'll forgive my coming in this way," he said. "I'm an old
+friend of Hugh's."
+
+"I'm very glad to have Hugh's friends," she answered.
+
+He looked at her again.
+
+"Is tea ready?" inquired Mrs. Kame. "I'm famished." And, as they walked
+through the house to the garden, where the table was set beside the stone
+seat: "I don't see how you ever can leave this place, Honora. I've always
+wanted to come here, but it's even more beautiful than I thought."
+
+"It's very beautiful," said Honora.
+
+"I'll have a whiskey and soda, if I may," announced Mrs. Rindge. "Open
+one, Georgie."
+
+"The third to-day," said Mr. Pembroke, sententiously, as he obeyed.
+
+"I don't care. I don't see what business it is of yours."
+
+"Except to open them," he replied.
+
+"You'd have made a fortune as a barkeeper," she observed,
+dispassionately, as she watched the process.
+
+"He's made fortunes for a good many," said Chiltern.
+
+"Not without some expert assistance I could mention," Mr. Pembroke
+retorted.
+
+At this somewhat pointed reference to his ancient habits, Chiltern
+laughed.
+
+"You've each had three to-day yourselves," said Mrs. Rindge, in whose
+bosom Mr. Pembroke's remark evidently rankled, "without counting those
+you had before you left the club."
+
+Afterwards Mrs. Kame expressed a desire to walk about a little, a
+proposal received with disfavour by all but Honora, who as hostess
+responded.
+
+"I feel perfectly delightful," declared Mrs. Rindge. "What's the use of
+moving about?" And she sank back in the cushions of her chair.
+
+This observation was greeted with unrestrained merriment by Mr. Pembroke
+and Hugh. Honora, sick at heart, led Mrs. Kame across the garden and
+through the gate in the wall. It was a perfect evening of early June, the
+great lawn a vivid green in the slanting light. All day the cheerful
+music of the horse-mowers had been heard, and the air was fragrant with
+the odour of grass freshly cut. The long shadows of the maples and
+beeches stretched towards the placid surface of the lake, dimpled here
+and there by a fish's swirl: the spiraeas were laden as with freshly
+fallen snow, a lone Judas-tree was decked in pink. The steep pastures
+beyond the water were touched with gold, while to the northward, on the
+distant hills, tender blue lights gathered lovingly around the copses.
+Mrs. Kame sighed.
+
+"What a terrible thing it is," she said, "that we are never satisfied!
+It's the men who ruin all this for us, I believe, and prevent our
+enjoying it. Look at Adele."
+
+Honora had indeed looked at her.
+
+"I found out the other day what is the matter with her. She's madly in
+love with Dicky."
+
+"With--with her former husband?"
+
+"Yes, with poor little innocent Dicky Farnham, who's probably still
+congratulating himself, like a canary bird that's got out of a cage.
+Somehow Dicky's always reminded me of a canary; perhaps it's his name.
+Isn't it odd that she should be in love with him?"
+
+"I think," replied Honora, slowly, "that it's a tragedy."
+
+"It is a tragedy," Mrs. Kame hastily agreed. "To me, this case is one of
+the most incomprehensible aspects of the tender passion. Adele's idea of
+existence is a steeplechase with nothing but water-jumps, Dicky's to
+loiter around in a gypsy van, and sit in the sun. During his brief
+matrimonial experience with her, he nearly died for want of breath--or
+rather the life was nearly shaken out of him. And yet she wants Dicky
+again. She'd run away with him to-morrow if he should come within hailing
+distance of her."
+
+"And her husband?" asked Honora.
+
+"Eustace? Did you ever see him? That accounts for your question. He only
+left France long enough to come over here and make love to her, and he
+swears he'll never leave it again. If she divorces him, he'll have to
+have alimony."
+
+At last Honora was able to gain her own room, but even seclusion, though
+preferable to the companionship of her guests, was almost intolerable.
+The tragedy of Mrs. Rindge had served--if such a thing could be--to
+enhance her own; a sudden spectacle of a woman in a more advanced stage
+of desperation. Would she, Honora, ever become like that? Up to the
+present she felt that suffering had refined her, and a great love had
+burned away all that was false. But now--now that her god had turned to
+clay, what would happen? Desperation seemed possible, notwithstanding the
+awfulness of the example. No, she would never come to that! And she
+repeated it over and over to herself as she dressed, as though to
+strengthen her will.
+
+During her conversation with Mrs. Kame she had more than once suspected,
+in spite of her efforts, that the lady had read her state of mind. For
+Mrs. Kame's omissions were eloquent to the discerning: Chiltern's
+relatives had been mentioned with a casualness intended to imply that no
+breach existed, and the fiction that Honora could at any moment take up
+her former life delicately sustained. Mrs. Kame had adaptably chosen the
+attitude, after a glance around her, that Honora preferred Highlawns to
+the world: a choice of which she let it be known that she approved, while
+deploring that a frivolous character put such a life out of the question
+for herself. She made her point without over-emphasis. On the other hand,
+Honora had read Mrs. Kame. No very careful perusal was needed to convince
+her that the lady was unmoral, and that in characteristics she resembled
+the chameleon. But she read deeper. She perceived that Mrs. Kame was
+convinced that she, Honora, would adjust herself to the new conditions
+after a struggle; and that while she had a certain sympathy in the
+struggle, Mrs. Kame was of opinion that the sooner it was over with the
+better. All women were born to be disillusionized. Such was the key, at
+any rate, to the lady's conduct that evening at dinner, when she capped
+the anecdotes of Mr. Pembroke and Mrs. Rindge and even of Chiltern with
+others not less risque but more fastidiously and ingeniously suggestive.
+The reader may be spared their recital.
+
+Since the meeting in the restaurant the day before, which had resulted in
+Hugh's happy inspiration that the festival begun should be continued
+indefinitely at Highlawns, a kind of freemasonry had sprung up between
+the four. Honora found herself, mercifully, outside the circle: for such
+was the lively character of the banter that a considerable adroitness was
+necessary to obtain, between the talk and--laughter, the ear of the
+company. And so full were they of the reminiscences which had been
+crowded into the thirty hours or so they had spent together, that her
+comparative silence remained unnoticed. To cite an example, Mr. Pembroke
+was continually being addressed as the Third Vice-president, an allusion
+that Mrs. Rindge eventually explained.
+
+"You ought to have been with us coming up on the train," she cried to
+Honora; "I thought surely we'd be put off. We were playing bridge in the
+little room at the end of the car when the conductor came for our
+tickets. Georgie had 'em in his pocket, but he told the man to go away,
+that he was the third vice-president of the road, and we were his
+friends. The conductor asked him if he were Mr. Wheeler, or some such
+name, and Georgie said he was surprised he didn't know him. Well, the man
+stood there in the door, and Georgie picked up his hand and made it
+hearts--or was it diamonds, Georgie?"
+
+"Spades," said that gentleman, promptly.
+
+"At any rate," Mrs. Rindge continued, "we all began to play, although we
+were ready to blow up with laughter, and after a while Georgie looked
+around and said, 'What, are you there yet?' My dear, you ought to have
+seen the conductor's face! He said it was his duty to establish Georgie's
+identity, or something like that, and Georgie told him to get off at the
+next station and buy Waring's Magazine--was that it, Georgie?"
+
+"How the deuce should I know?"
+
+"Well, some such magazine. Georgie said he'd find an article in it on the
+Railroad Kings and Princes of America, and that his picture, Georgie's,
+was among the very first!" At this juncture in her narrative Mrs. Rindge
+shrieked with laughter, in which she was joined by Mrs. Kame and Hugh;
+and she pointed a forefinger across the table at Mr. Pembroke, who went
+on solemnly eating his dinner. "Georgie gave him ten cents with which to
+buy the magazine," she added a little hysterically. "Well, there was a
+frightful row, and a lot of men came down to that end of the car, and we
+had to shut the door. The conductor said the most outrageous things, and
+Georgie pretended to be very indignant, too, and gave him the tickets
+under protest. He told Georgie he ought to be in an asylum for the
+criminally insane, and Georgie advised him to get a photograph album of
+the high officials of the railroad. The conductor said Georgie's picture
+was probably in the rogue's gallery. And we lost two packs of cards out
+of the window."
+
+Such had been the more innocent if eccentric diversions with which they
+had whiled away the time. When dinner was ended, a renewal of the bridge
+game was proposed, for it had transpired at the dinner-table that Mrs.
+Rindge and Hugh had been partners all day, as a result of which there was
+a considerable balance in their favour. This balance Mr. Pembroke was
+palpably anxious to wipe out, or at least to reduce. But Mrs. Kame
+insisted that Honora should cut in, and the others supported her.
+
+"We tried our best to get a man for you," said Mrs. Rindge to Honora.
+"Didn't we, Abby? But in the little time we had, it was impossible. The
+only man we saw was Ned Carrington, and Hugh said he didn't think you'd
+want him."
+
+"Hugh showed a rare perception," said Honora.
+
+Be it recorded that she smiled. One course had been clear to her from the
+first, although she found it infinitely difficult to follow; she was
+determined, cost what it might, to carry through her part of the affair
+with dignity, but without stiffness. This is not the place to dwell upon
+the tax to her strength.
+
+"Come on, Honora," said Hugh, "cut in." His tone was of what may be
+termed a rough good nature. She had not seen him alone since his return,
+but he had seemed distinctly desirous that she should enjoy the
+festivities he had provided. And not to yield would have been to betray
+herself.
+
+The game, with its intervals of hilarity, was inaugurated in the library,
+and by midnight it showed no signs of abating. At this hour the original
+four occupied the table for the second time, and endurance has its
+limits. The atmosphere of Liberty Hall that prevailed made Honora's
+retirement easier.
+
+"I'm sure you won't mind if I go to bed," she said. "I've been so used to
+the routine of--of the chickens." She smiled. "And I've spent the day in
+the open air."
+
+"Certainly, my dear," said Mrs. Kame; "I know exactly how one feels in
+the country. I'm sure it's dreadfully late. We'll have one more rubber,
+and then stop."
+
+"Oh, don't stop," replied Honora; "please play as long as you like."
+
+They didn't stop--at least after one more rubber. Honora, as she lay in
+the darkness, looking through the open square of her window at the silver
+stars, heard their voiced and their laughter floating up at intervals
+from below, and the little clock on her mantel had struck the hour of
+three when the scraping of chairs announced the breaking up of the party.
+And even after that an unconscionable period elapsed, beguiled,
+undoubtedly, by anecdotes; spells of silence--when she thought they had
+gone--ending in more laughter. Finally there was a crash of breaking
+glass, a climax of uproarious mirth, and all was still. . .
+
+She could not have slept much, but the birds were singing when she
+finally awoke, the sunlight pouring into her window: And the hands of her
+clock pointed to half-past seven when she rang her bell. It was a relief
+to breakfast alone, or at least to sip her coffee in solitude. And the
+dew was still on the grass as she crossed the wide lawn and made her way
+around the lake to the path that entered the woods at its farther end.
+She was not tired, yet she would have liked to have lain down under the
+green panoply of the forest, where the wild flowers shyly raised sweet
+faces to be kissed, and lose herself in the forgetfulness of an eternal
+sleep; never to go back again to an Eden contaminated. But when she
+lingered the melody of a thrush pierced her through and through. At last
+she turned and reluctantly retraced her steps, as one whose hour of
+reprieve has expired.
+
+If Mrs. Rindge had a girlish air when fully arrayed for the day, she
+looked younger and more angular still in that article of attire known as
+a dressing gown. And her eyes, Honora remarked, were peculiarly bright:
+glittering, perhaps, would better express the impression they gave; as
+though one got a glimpse through them of an inward consuming fire. Her
+laughter rang shrill and clear as Honora entered the hall by the rear
+door, and the big clock proclaimed that the hour was half-past eleven.
+Hugh and Mr. Pembroke were standing at the foot of the stairs, gazing
+upward. And Honora, following their glances, beheld the two ladies, in
+the negligee referred to above, with their elbows on the railing of the
+upper hall and their faces between their hands, engaged in a lively
+exchange of compliments with the gentlemen. Mrs. Kame looked sleepy.
+
+"Such a night!" she said, suppressing a yawn. "My dear, you did well to
+go to bed."
+
+"And to cap it all," cried Mrs. Rindge, "Georgie fell over backwards in
+one of those beautiful Adam chairs, and there's literally nothing left of
+it. If an ocean steamer had hit it, or a freight tram, it couldn't have
+been more thoroughly demolished."
+
+"You pushed me," declared Mr. Pembroke.
+
+"Did I, Hugh? I barely touched him."
+
+"You knocked him into a cocked hat," said Hugh. "And if you'd been in
+that kimono, you could have done it even easier."
+
+"Georgie broke the whole whiskey service,--or whatever it is," Mrs.
+Rindge went on, addressing Honora again. "He fell into it."
+
+"He's all right this morning," observed Mrs. Kame, critically.
+
+"I think I'll take to swallowing swords and glass and things in public. I
+can do it so well," said Mr. Pembroke.
+
+"I hope you got what you like for breakfast," said Honora to the ladies.
+
+"Hurry up and come down, Adele," said Hugh, "if you want to look over the
+horses before lunch."
+
+"It's Georgie's fault," replied Mrs. Rindge; "he's been standing in the
+door of my sitting-room for a whole half-hour talking nonsense."
+
+A little later they all set out for the stables. These buildings at
+Highlawns, framed by great trees, were old-fashioned and picturesque,
+surrounding three sides of a court, with a yellow brick wall on the
+fourth. The roof of the main building was capped by a lantern, the home
+of countless pigeons. Mrs. Rindge was in a habit, and one by one the
+saddle horses were led out, chiefly for her inspection; and she seemed to
+Honora to become another woman as she looked them over with a critical
+eye and discussed them with Hugh and O'Grady, the stud-groom, and talked
+about pedigrees and strains. For she was renowned in this department of
+sport on many fields, both for recklessness and skill.
+
+"Where did you get that brute, Hugh?" she asked presently.
+
+Honora, who had been talking to Pembroke, looked around with a start. And
+at the sight of the great black horse, bought on that unforgettable day,
+she turned suddenly faint.
+
+"Over here in the country about ten miles," Chiltern was saying. "I heard
+of him, but I didn't expect anything until I went to look at him last
+week."
+
+"What do you call him?" asked Mrs. Rindge.
+
+"I haven't named him."
+
+"I'll give you a name."
+
+Chiltern looked at her. "What is it?" he said.
+
+"Oblivion," she replied:
+
+"By George, Adele," he exclaimed, "you have a way of hitting it off!"
+
+"Will you let me ride him this afternoon?" she asked.
+
+"I'm a--a candidate for oblivion." She laughed a little and her eyes
+shone feverishly.
+
+"No you don't," he said. "I'm giving you the grey. He's got enough in him
+for any woman--even for you: And besides, I don't think the black ever
+felt a side saddle, or any other kind, until last week."
+
+"I've got another habit," she said eagerly. "I'd rather ride him astride.
+I'll match you to see who has him."
+
+Chiltern laughed.
+
+"No you don't," he repeated. "I'll ride him to-day, and consider it
+to-morrow."
+
+"I--I think I'll go back to the house," said Honora to Pembroke. "It's
+rather hot here in the sun."
+
+"I'm not very keen about sunshine, either," he declared.
+
+At lunch she was unable to talk; to sustain, at least, a conversation.
+That word oblivion, which Mrs. Rindge had so aptly applied to the horse,
+was constantly on her lips, and it would not have surprised her if she
+had spoken it. She felt as though a heavy weight lay on her breast, and
+to relieve its intolerable pressure drew in her breath deeply. She was
+wild with fear. The details of the great room fixed themselves indelibly
+in her brain; the subdued light, the polished table laden with silver and
+glass, the roses, and the purple hot-house grapes. All this seemed in
+some way to be an ironic prelude to disaster. Hugh, pausing in his
+badinage with Mrs. Rindge, looked at her.
+
+"Cheer up, Honora," he said.
+
+"I'm afraid this first house-party is too much for her," said Mrs. Kame.
+
+Honora made some protest that seemed to satisfy them, tried to rally
+herself, and succeeded sufficiently to pass muster. After lunch they
+repaired again to the bridge table, and at four Hugh went upstairs to
+change into his riding clothes. Five minutes longer she controlled
+herself, and then made some paltry excuse, indifferent now as to what
+they said or thought, and followed him. She knocked at his dressing-room
+door and entered. He was drawing on his boots. "Hello, Honora," he said.
+
+Honora turned to his man, and dismissed him.
+
+"I wish to speak to Mr. Chiltern alone."
+
+Chiltern paused in his tugging at the straps, and looked up at her.
+
+"What's the matter with you to-day, Honora?" he asked. "You looked like
+the chief mourner at a funeral all through lunch."
+
+He was a little on edge, that she knew. He gave another tug at the boot,
+and while she was still hesitating, he began again.
+
+"I ought to apologize, I know, for bringing these people up without
+notice, but I didn't suppose you'd object when you understood how
+naturally it all came about. I thought a little livening up, as I said,
+wouldn't, hurt us. We've had a quiet winter, to put it mildly." He
+laughed a little. "I didn't have a chance to see you until this morning,
+and when I went to your room they told me you'd gone out."
+
+"Hugh," she said, laying her hand on his shoulder. "It isn't the guests.
+If you want people, and they amuse you, I'm--I'm glad to have them. And
+if I've seemed to be--cold to them, I'm sorry. I tried my best--I mean I
+did not intend to be cold. I'll sit up all night with them, if you like.
+And I didn't come to reproach you, Hugh. I'll never do that--I've got no
+right to."
+
+She passed her hand over her eyes. If she had any wrongs, if she had
+suffered any pain, the fear that obsessed her obliterated all. In spite
+of her disillusionment, in spite of her newly acquired ability to see him
+as he was, enough love remained to scatter, when summoned, her pride to
+the winds.
+
+Having got on both boots, he stood up.
+
+"What's the trouble, then?" he asked. And he took an instant's hold of
+her chin--a habit he had--and smiled at her.
+
+He little knew how sublime, in its unconscious effrontery, his question
+was! She tried to compose herself, that she might be able to present
+comprehensively to his finite masculine mind the ache of today.
+
+"Hugh, it's that black horse." She could not bring herself to pronounce
+the name Mrs. Rindge had christened him.
+
+"What about him?" he said, putting on his waistcoat.
+
+"Don't ride him!" she pleaded. "I--I'm afraid of him--I've been afraid of
+him ever since that day.
+
+"It may be a foolish feeling, I know. Sometimes the feelings that hurt
+women most are foolish. If I tell you that if you ride him you will
+torture me, I'm sure you'll grant what I ask. It's such a little thing
+and it means so much--so much agony to me. I'd do anything for you--give
+up anything in the world at your slightest wish. Don't ride him!"
+
+"This is a ridiculous fancy of yours, Honora. The horse is all right.
+I've ridden dozens of worse ones."
+
+"Oh, I'm sure he isn't," she cried; "call it fancy, call it instinct,
+call it anything you like--but I feel it, Hugh. That woman--Mrs.
+Rindge--knows something about horses, and she said he was a brute."
+
+"Yes," he interrupted, with a short laugh, "and she wants to ride him."
+
+"Hugh, she's reckless. I--I've been watching her since she came here, and
+I'm sure she's reckless with--with a purpose."
+
+"You're morbid," he said. "She's one of the best sportswomen in the
+country--that's the reason she wanted to ride the horse. Look here,
+Honora, I'd accede to any reasonable request. But what do you expect me
+to do?" he demanded; "go down and say I'm afraid to ride him? or that my
+wife doesn't want me to? I'd never hear the end of it. And the first
+thing Adele would do would be to jump on him herself--a little wisp of a
+woman that looks as if she couldn't hold a Shetland pony! Can't you see
+that what you ask is impossible?"
+
+He started for the door to terminate a conversation which had already
+begun to irritate him. For his anger, in these days, was very near the
+surface. She made one more desperate appeal.
+
+"Hugh--the man who sold him--he knew the horse was dangerous. I'm sure he
+did, from something he said to me while you were gone."
+
+"These country people are all idiots and cowards," declared Chiltern.
+"I've known 'em a good while, and they haven't got the spirit of mongrel
+dogs. I was a fool to think that I could do anything for them. They're
+kind and neighbourly, aren't they?" he exclaimed. "If that old rascal
+flattered himself he deceived me, he was mistaken. He'd have been
+mightily pleased if the beast had broken my neck."
+
+"Hugh!"
+
+"I can't, Honora. That's all there is to it, I can't. Now don't cut up
+about nothing. I'm sorry, but I've got to go. Adele's waiting."
+
+He came back, kissed her hurriedly, turned and opened the door. She
+followed him into the hallway, knowing that she had failed, knowing that
+she never could have succeeded. There she halted and watched him go down
+the stairs, and stand with her hands tightly pressed together: voices
+reached her, a hurrah from George Pembroke, and the pounding of hoofs on
+the driveway. It had seemed such a little thing to ask!
+
+But she did not dwell upon this, now, when fear was gnawing her: how she
+had humbled her pride for days and weeks and months for him, and how he
+had refused her paltry request lest he should be laughed at. Her
+reflections then were not on his waning love. She was filled with the
+terror of losing him--of losing all that remained to her in the world.
+Presently she began to walk slowly towards the stairs, descended them,
+and looked around her. The hall, at least, had not changed. She listened,
+and a bee hummed in through the open doorway. A sudden longing for
+companionship possessed her-no matter whose; and she walked hurriedly, as
+though she were followed, through the empty rooms until she came upon
+George Pembroke stretched at full length on the leather-covered lounge in
+the library. He opened his eyes, and got up with alacrity.
+
+"Please don't move," she said.
+
+He looked at her. Although his was not what may be called a sympathetic
+temperament, he was not without a certain knowledge of women;
+superficial, perhaps. But most men of his type have seen them in despair;
+and since he was not related to this particular despair, what finer
+feelings he had were the more easily aroused. It must have been clear to
+her then that she had lost the power to dissemble, all the clearer
+because of Mr. Pembroke's cheerfulness.
+
+"I wasn't going to sleep," he assured her. "Circumstantial evidence is
+against me, I know. Where's Abby? reading French literature?"
+
+"I haven't seen her," replied Honora.
+
+"She usually goes to bed with a play at this hour. It's a horrid habit
+--going to bed, I mean. Don't you think? Would you mind showing me about
+a little?"
+
+"Do you really wish to?" asked Honora, incredulously.
+
+"I haven't been here since my senior year," said Mr. Pembroke. "If the
+old General were alive, he could probably tell you something of that
+visit--he wrote to my father about it. I always liked the place, although
+the General was something of a drawback. Fine old man, with no memory."
+
+"I should have thought him to have had a good memory," she said.
+
+"I have always been led to believe that he was once sent away from
+college in his youth,--for his health," he explained significantly. "No
+man has a good memory who can't remember that. Perhaps the battle of
+Gettysburg wiped it out."
+
+Thus, in his own easy-going fashion, Mr. Pembroke sought to distract her.
+She put on a hat, and they walked about, the various scenes recalling
+incidents of holidays he had spent at Highlawns. And after a while Honora
+was thankful that chance had sent her in this hour to him rather than to
+Mrs. Kame. For the sight, that morning of this lady in her dressing-gown
+over the stairway, had seemingly set the seal on a growing distaste. Her
+feeling had not been the same about Mrs. Rindge: Mrs. Kame's actions
+savoured of deliberate choice, of an inherent and calculating wickedness.
+
+Had the distraction of others besides himself been the chief business of
+Mr. Pembroke's life, he could not have succeeded better that afternoon.
+He must be given this credit: his motives remain problematical; at length
+he even drew laughter from her. The afternoon wore on, they returned to
+the garden for tea, and a peaceful stillness continued to reign about
+them, the very sky smiling placidly at her fears. Not by assuring her
+that Hugh was unusual horseman, that he had passed through many dangers
+beside which this was a bagatelle, could the student of the feminine by
+her side have done half so well. And it may have been that his success
+encouraged him as he saw emerging, as the result of his handiwork, an
+unexpectedly attractive--if still somewhat serious-woman from the gloom
+that had enveloped her. That she should still have her distrait moments
+was but natural.
+
+He talked to her largely about Hugh, of whom he appeared sincerely fond.
+The qualities which attracted Mr. Pembroke in his own sex were somewhat
+peculiar, and seemingly consisted largely in a readiness to drop the
+business at hand, whatever it might be, at the suggestion of a friend to
+do something else; the "something else," of course, to be the conception
+of an ingenious mind. And it was while he was in the midst of an anecdote
+proving the existence of this quality in his friend that he felt a sudden
+clutch on his arm.
+
+They listened. Faintly, very faintly, could be heard the sound of hoof
+beats; rapid, though distant.
+
+"Do you hear?" she whispered, and still held his arm.
+
+"It's just like them to race back," said Pembroke, with admirable
+nonchalance.
+
+"But they wouldn't come back at this time--it's too early. Hugh always
+takes long rides. They started for Hubbard's--it's twelve miles."
+
+"Adele changes her mind every minute of the day," he said.
+
+"Listen!" she cried, and her clutch tightened. The hoof beats grew
+louder. "It's only one--it's only one horse!"
+
+Before he could answer, she was already halfway up the garden path
+towards the house. He followed her as she ran panting through the
+breakfast room, the dining room, and drawing-room, and when they reached
+the hall, Starling, the butler, and two footmen were going out at the
+door. A voice--Mrs. Kame's--cried out, "What is it?" over the stairs, but
+they paid no heed. As they reached the steps they beheld the slight
+figure of Mrs. Rindge on a flying horse coming towards them up the
+driveway. Her black straw hat had slipped to the back of her neck, her
+hair was awry, her childish face white as paper. Honora put her hand to
+her heart. There was no need to tell her the news--she had known these
+many hours.
+
+Mrs. Rindge's horse came over the round grass-plot of the circle and
+planted his fore feet in the turf as she pulled him up. She lurched
+forward. It was Starling who lifted her off--George Pembroke stood by
+Honora.
+
+"My God, Adele," he exclaimed, "why don't you speak?"
+
+She was staring at Honora.
+
+"I can't!" she cried. "I can't tell you--it's too terrible! The horse--"
+she seemed to choke.
+
+It was Honora who went up to her with a calmness that awed them.
+
+"Tell me," she said, "is he dead?"
+
+Mrs. Rindge nodded, and broke into hysterical sobbing.
+
+"And I wanted to ride him myself," she sobbed, as they led her up the
+steps.
+
+In less than an hour they brought him home and laid him in the room in
+which he had slept from boyhood, and shut the door. Honora looked into
+his face. It was calm at last, and his body strangely at rest. The
+passions which had tortured it and driven it hither and thither through a
+wayward life had fled: the power gone that would brook no guiding hand,
+that had known no master. It was not until then that she fell upon him,
+weeping . . . .
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+IN WHICH MR. ERWIN SEEK PARIS
+
+As she glanced around the sitting-room of her apartment in Paris one
+September morning she found it difficult, in some respects, to realize
+that she had lived in it for more than five years. After Chiltern's death
+she had sought a refuge, and she had found it here: a refuge in which she
+meant--if her intention may be so definitely stated--to pass the
+remainder of her days.
+
+As a refuge it had become dear to her. When first she had entered it she
+had looked about her numbly, thankful for walls and roof, thankful for
+its remoteness from the haunts of the prying: as a shipwrecked castaway
+regards, at the first light, the cave into which he has stumbled into the
+darkness-gratefully. And gradually, castaway that she felt herself to be,
+she had adorned it lovingly, as one above whose horizon the sails of hope
+were not to rise; filled it with friends not chosen in a day, whose
+faithful ministrations were not to cease. Her books, but only those
+worthy to be bound and read again; the pictures she had bought when she
+had grown to know what pictures were; the music she had come to love for
+its eternal qualities--these were her companions.
+
+The apartment was in the old quarter across the Seine, and she had found
+it by chance. The ancient family of which this hotel had once been the
+home would scarce have recognized, if they had returned the part of it
+Honora occupied. The room in which she mostly lived was above the corner
+of the quiet street, and might have been more aptly called a sitting-room
+than a salon. Its panels were the most delicate of blue-gray,
+fantastically designed and outlined by ribbings of blue. Some of them
+contained her pictures. The chairs, the sofas, the little tabourets, were
+upholstered in yellow, their wood matching the panels. Above the carved
+mantel of yellowing marble was a quaintly shaped mirror extending to the
+high ceiling, and flanked on either side by sconces. The carpet was a
+golden brown, the hangings in the tall windows yellow. And in the morning
+the sun came in, not boisterously, but as a well-bred and cheerful guest.
+An amiable proprietor had permitted her also to add a wrought-iron
+balcony as an adjunct to this room, and sometimes she sat there on the
+warmer days reading under the seclusion of an awning, or gazing at the
+mysterious facades of the houses opposite, or at infrequent cabs or
+pedestrians below.
+
+An archway led out of the sitting-room into a smaller room, once the
+boudoir of a marquise, now Honora's library. This was in blue and gold,
+and she had so far modified the design of the decorator as to replace the
+mirrors of the cases with glass; she liked to see her books. Beyond the
+library was a dining room in grey, with dark red hangings; it overlooked
+the forgotten garden of the hotel.
+
+One item alone of news from the outer world, vital to her, had drifted to
+her retreat. Newspapers filled her with dread, but it was from a
+newspaper, during the first year of her retirement, that she had learned
+of the death of Howard Spence. A complication of maladies was mentioned,
+but the true underlying cause was implied in the article, and this had
+shocked but not surprised her. A ferment was in progress in her own
+country, the affairs of the Orange Trust Company being investigated, and
+its president under indictment at the hour of his demise. Her feelings at
+the time, and for months after, were complex. She had been moved to deep
+pity, for in spite of what he had told her of his business transactions,
+it was impossible for her to think of him as a criminal. That he had been
+the tool of others, she knew, but it remained a question in her mind how
+clearly he had perceived the immorality of his course, and of theirs. He
+had not been given to casuistry, and he had been brought up in a school
+the motto of which he had once succinctly stated: the survival of the
+fittest. He had not been, alas, one of those to survive.
+
+Honora had found it impossible to unravel the tangled skein of their
+relationship, and to assign a definite amount of blame to each. She did
+not shirk hers, and was willing to accept a full measure. That she had
+done wrong in marrying him, and again in leaving him to marry another
+man, she acknowledged freely. Wrong as she knew this to have been,
+severely though she had been punished for it, she could not bring herself
+to an adequate penitence. She tried to remember him as he had been at
+Silverdale, and in the first months of their marriage, and not as he had
+afterwards become. There was no question in her mind, now that it was
+given her to see things more clearly, that she might have tried harder,
+much harder, to make their marriage a success. He might, indeed, have
+done more to protect and cherish her. It was a man's part to guard a
+woman against the evils with which she had been surrounded. On the other
+hand, she could not escape the fact, nor did she attempt to escape it,
+that she had had the more light of the two: and that, though the task
+were formidable, she might have fought to retain that light and infuse
+him with it.
+
+That she did not hold herself guiltless is the important point. Many of
+her hours were spent in retrospection. She was, in a sense, as one dead,
+yet retaining her faculties; and these became infinitely keen now that
+she was deprived of the power to use them as guides through life. She
+felt that the power had come too late, like a legacy when one is old. And
+she contemplated the Honora of other days--of the flesh, as though she
+were now the spirit departed from that body; sorrowfully, poignantly
+regretful of the earthly motives, of the tarnished ideals by which it had
+been animated and led to destruction.
+
+Even Hugh Chiltern had left her no illusions. She thought of him at tunes
+with much tenderness; whether she still loved him or not she could not
+say. She came to the conclusion that all capacity for intense feeling had
+been burned out of her. And she found that she could permit her mind to
+rest upon no period of her sojourn at Grenoble without a sense of horror;
+there had been no hour when she had seemed secure from haunting terror,
+no day that had not added its mite to the gathering evidence of an
+ultimate retribution. And it was like a nightmare to summon again this
+spectacle of the man going to pieces under her eyes. The whole incident
+in her life as time wore on assumed an aspect bizarre, incredible, as the
+follies of a night of madness appear in the saner light of morning. Her
+great love had bereft her of her senses, for had the least grain of
+sanity remained to her she might have known that the thing they attempted
+was impossible of accomplishment.
+
+Her feeling now, after four years, might be described as relief. To
+employ again the figure of the castaway, she often wondered why she of
+all others had been rescued from the tortures of slow drowning and thrown
+up on an island. What had she done above the others to deserve
+preservation? It was inevitable that she should on occasions picture to
+herself the years with him that would have stretched ahead, even as the
+vision of them had come to her that morning when, in obedience to his
+telegram, she had told Starling to prepare for guests. Her escape had
+indeed been miraculous!
+
+Although they had passed through a ceremony, the conviction had never
+taken root in her that she had been married to Chiltern. The tie that had
+united her to him had not been sacred, though it had been no less
+binding; more so, in fact. That tie would have become a shackle. Her
+perception of this, after his death, had led her to instruct her attorney
+to send back to his relatives all but a small income from his estate,
+enough for her to live on during her lifetime. There had been some
+trouble about this matter; Mrs. Grainger, in particular, had surprised
+her in making objections, and had finally written a letter which Honora
+received with a feeling akin to gratitude. Whether her own action had
+softened this lady's feelings, she never understood; she had cherished
+the letter for its unexpectedly charitable expressions. Chiltern's family
+had at last agreed to accept the estate on the condition that the income
+mentioned should be tripled. And to this Honora had consented. Money had
+less value than ever in her eyes.
+
+She lived here in Paris in what may be called a certain peace, made no
+demands upon the world, and had no expectations from it. She was now in
+half mourning, and intended to remain so. Her isolation was of her own
+choice, if a stronger expression be not used. She was by no means an
+enforced outcast. And she was even aware that a certain sympathy for her
+had grown up amongst her former friends which had spread to the colony of
+her compatriots in Paris; in whose numbers there were some, by no means
+unrecognized, who had defied the conventions more than she. Hugh
+Chiltern's reputation, and the general knowledge of his career, had no
+doubt aided to increase this sympathy, but the dignity of her conduct
+since his death was at the foundation of it. Sometimes, on her walks and
+drives, she saw people bowing to her, and recognized friends or
+acquaintances of what seemed to her like a former existence.
+
+Such had been her life in Paris until a certain day in early September, a
+month before this chapter opens. It was afternoon, and she was sitting in
+the balcony cutting a volume of memoirs when she heard the rattle of a
+cab on the cobbles below, and peered curiously over the edge of the
+railing. Although still half a block away, the national characteristics
+of the passenger were sufficiently apparent. He was an American--of that
+she was sure. And many Americans did not stray into that quarter. The
+length of his legs, for one thing, betrayed him: he found the seat of the
+fiacre too low, and had crossed one knee over the other. Other and less
+easily definable attributes he did not lack. And as he leaned against the
+faded blue cushions regarding with interest the buildings he passed, he
+seemed, like an ambassador, to convert the cab in which he rode into
+United States territory. Then she saw that it was Peter Erwin.
+
+She drew back her head from the balcony rail, and tried to sit still and
+to think, but she was trembling as one stricken with a chill. The cab
+stopped; and presently, after an interval, his card was handed her. She
+rose, and stood for a moment with her hand against the wall before she
+went into the salon. None of the questions she had asked herself were
+answered. Was she glad to see him? and what would be his attitude towards
+her? When she beheld him standing before her she had strength only to
+pronounce his name.
+
+He came forward quickly and took her hand and looked down into her face.
+She regarded him tremulously, instinctively guessing the vital importance
+of this moment for him; and she knew then that he had been looking
+forward to it in mingled hope and dread, as one who gazes seaward after a
+night of tempest for the ship he has seen at dusk in the offing. What had
+the tempest done to her? Such was his question. And her heart leaped as
+she saw the light growing in his eyes, for it meant much to her that he
+should see that she was not utterly dismantled. She fell; his own hand
+tremble as he relinquished hers. He was greatly moved; his voice, too,
+betrayed it.
+
+"You see I have found you," he said.
+
+"Yes," she answered; "--why did you come?"
+
+"Why have I always come to you, when it was possible?" he asked.
+
+"No one ever had such a friend, Peter. Of that I am sure:'
+
+"I wanted to see Paris," he said, "before I grew too decrepit to enjoy
+it."
+
+She smiled, and turned away.
+
+"Have you seen much of it?"
+
+"Enough to wish to see more."
+
+"When did you arrive?"
+
+"Some time in the night," he said, "from Cherbourg. And I'm staying at a
+very grand hotel, which might be anywhere. A man I crossed with on the
+steamer took me there. I think I'd move to one of the quieter ones, the
+French ones, if I were a little surer of my pronunciation and the
+subjunctive mood."
+
+"You don't mean to say you've been studying French!"
+
+He coloured a little, and laughed.
+
+"You think it ridiculous at my time of life? I suppose you're right. You
+should have seen me trying to understand the cabmen. The way these people
+talk reminds me more of a Gatling gun than anything I can think of. It
+certainly isn't human."
+
+"Perhaps you have come over as ambassador," she suggested. "When I saw
+you in the cab, even before I recognized you, I thought of a bit of our
+soil broken off and drifted over here."
+
+Her voice did not quite sustain the lighter note--the emotion his visit
+was causing her was too great. He brought with him into her retreat not
+so much a flood of memories as of sensations. He was a man whose image
+time with difficulty obliterates, whose presence was a shining thing: so
+she had grown to value it in proportion as she had had less of it. She
+did inevitably recall the last time she had seen him, in the little
+Western city, and how he had overwhelmed her, invaded her with doubts and
+aroused the spirit which had possessed her to fight fiercely for its
+foothold. And to-day his coming might be likened to the entrance of a
+great physician into the room of a distant and lonely patient whom amidst
+wide ministrations he has not forgotten. She saw now that he had been
+right. She had always seen it, clearly indeed when he had been beside
+her, but the spirit within her had been too strong, until now. Now, when
+it had plundered her soul of treasures--once so little valued--it had
+fled. Such were her thoughts.
+
+The great of heart undoubtedly possess this highest quality of the
+physician,--if the statement may thus be put backhandedly,--and Peter
+Erwin instinctively understood the essential of what was going on within
+her. He appeared to take a delight in the fancy she had suggested; that
+he had brought a portion of the newer world to France.
+
+"Not a piece of the Atlantic coast, certainly," he replied. "One of the
+muddy islands, perhaps, of the Mississippi."
+
+"All the more representative," she said. "You seem to have taken
+possession of Paris, Peter--not Paris of you. You have annexed the seat
+of the Capets, and brought democracy at last into the Faubourg."
+
+"Without a Reign of Terror," he added quizzically.
+
+"If you are not ambassador, what are you?" she asked. "I have expected at
+any moment to read in the Figaro that you were President of the United
+States."
+
+"I am the American tourist," he declared, "with Baedeker for my Bible,
+who desires to be shown everything. And I have already discovered that
+the legend of the fabulous wealth of the Indies is still in force here.
+There are many who are willing to believe that in spite of my modest
+appearance--maybe because of it--I have sailed over in a galleon filled
+with gold. Already I have been approached from every side by confidential
+gentlemen who announced that they spoke English--one of them said
+'American'--who have offered to show me many things, and who have
+betrayed enough interest in me to inquire whether I were married or
+single."
+
+Honora laughed. They were seated in the balcony by this time, and he had
+the volume of memoirs on his knee, fingering it idly.
+
+"What did you say to them?" she asked.
+
+"I told them I was the proud father of ten children," he replied. "That
+seemed to stagger them, but only for a moment. They offered to take us
+all to the Louvre."
+
+"Peter, you are ridiculous! But, in spite of your nationality, you don't
+look exactly gullible."
+
+"That is a relief," he said. "I had begun to think I ought to leave my
+address and my watch with the Consul General . . . ."
+
+Of such a nature was the first insidious rupture of that routine she had
+grown to look upon as changeless for the years to come, of the life she
+had chosen for its very immutable quality. Even its pangs of loneliness
+had acquired a certain sweet taste. Partly from a fear of a world that
+had hurt her, partly from fear of herself, she had made her burrow deep,
+that heat and cold, the changing seasons, and love and hate might be
+things far removed. She had sought to remove comparisons, too, from the
+limits of her vision; to cherish and keep alive, indeed, such regrets as
+she had, but to make no new ones.
+
+Often had she thought of Peter Erwin, and it is not too much to say that
+he had insensibly grown into an ideal. He had come to represent to her
+the great thing she had missed in life, missed by feverish searching in
+the wrong places, digging for gold where the ground had glittered. And,
+if the choice had been given her, she would have preferred his spiritual
+to his bodily companionship--for a while, at least. Some day, when she
+should feel sure that desire had ceased to throb, when she should have
+acquired an unshakable and absolute resignation, she would see him. It is
+not too much to say, if her feeling be not misconstrued and stretched far
+beyond her own conception of it, that he was her one remaining interest
+in the world. She had scanned the letters of her aunt and uncle for
+knowledge of his doings, and had felt her curiosity justified by a
+certain proprietorship that she did not define, faith in humankind, or
+the lack of it, usually makes itself felt through one's comparative
+contemporaries. That her uncle was a good man, for instance, had no such
+effect upon Honora, as the fact that Peter was a good man. And that he
+had held a true course had gradually become a very vital thing to her,
+perhaps the most vital thing; and she could have imagined no greater
+personal calamity now than to have seen him inconsistent. For there are
+such men, and most people have known them. They are the men who,
+unconsciously, keep life sweet.
+
+Yet she was sorry he had invaded her hiding-place. She had not yet
+achieved peace, and much of the weary task would have to be done over
+after he was gone.
+
+In the meantime she drifted with astounding ease into another existence.
+For it was she, and not the confidential gentlemen, who showed Peter
+Paris: not the careless, pleasure-loving Paris of the restaurants, but of
+the Cluny and the Carnavalet. The Louvre even was not neglected, and as
+they entered it first she recalled with still unaccustomed laughter his
+reply to the proffered services of the guide. Indeed, there was much
+laughter in their excursions: his native humour sprang from the same well
+that held his seriousness. She was amazed at his ability to strip a sham
+and leave it grotesquely naked; shams the risible aspect of which she had
+never observed in spite of the familiarity four years had given her. Some
+of his own countrymen and countrywomen afforded him the greatest
+amusement in their efforts to carry off acquired European
+"personalities," combinations of assumed indifference and effrontery, and
+an accent the like of which was never heard before. But he was neither
+bitter nor crude in his criticisms. He made her laugh, but he never made
+her ashamed. His chief faculty seemed to be to give her the power to
+behold, with astonishing clearness, objects and truths which had lain
+before her eyes, and yet hidden. And she had not thought to acquire any
+more truths.
+
+The depth of his pleasure in the things he saw was likewise a revelation
+to her. She was by no means a bad guide to the Louvre and the Luxembourg,
+but the light in her which had come slowly flooded him with radiance at
+the sight of a statue or a picture. He would stop with an exclamation and
+stand gazing, self-forgetful, for incredible periods, and she would watch
+him, filled with a curious sense of the limitations of an appreciation
+she had thought complete. Where during his busy life had he got this
+thing which others had sought in many voyages in vain?
+
+Other excursions they made, and sometimes these absorbed a day. It was a
+wonderful month, that Parisian September, which Honora, when she allowed
+herself to think, felt that she had no right to. A month filled to the
+brim with colour: the stone facades of the houses, which in certain
+lights were what the French so aptly call bleuatre; the dense green
+foliage of the horse-chestnut trees, the fantastic iron grills, the Arc
+de Triomphe in the centre of its circle at sunset, the wide shaded
+avenues radiating from it, the bewildering Champs Elysees, the blue
+waters of the Seine and the graceful bridges spanning it, Notre Dame
+against the sky. Their walks took them, too, into quainter, forgotten
+regions where history was grim and half-effaced, and they speculated on
+the France of other days.
+
+They went farther afield; and it was given them to walk together down
+green vistas cut for kings, to linger on terraces with the river far
+below them, and the roofs of Paris in the hazy distance; that Paris,
+sullen so long, the mutterings of which the kings who had sat there must
+have heard with dread; that Paris which had finally risen in its wrath
+and taken the pleasure-houses and the parks for itself.
+
+Once they went out to Chantilly, the cameo-like chateau that stands
+mirrored in its waters, and wandered through the alleys there. Honora had
+left her parasol on the parapet, and as they returned Peter went to get
+it, while she awaited him at a little distance. A group was chatting
+gayly on the lawn, and one of them, a middle-aged, well-dressed man
+hailed him with an air of fellowship, and Peter stopped for a moment's
+talk.
+
+"We were speaking of ambassadors the other day," he said when he joined
+her; "that was our own, Minturn."
+
+"We were speaking of them nearly a month ago," she said.
+
+"A month ago! I can't believe it!" he exclaimed.
+
+"What did he say to you?" Honora inquired presently.
+
+"He was abusing me for not letting him know I was in Paris."
+
+"Peter, you ought to have let him know!"
+
+"I didn't come over here to see the ambassador," answered Peter, gayly.
+
+She talked less than usual on their drive homeward, but he did not seem
+to notice the fact. Dusk was already lurking in the courtyards and byways
+of the quiet quarter when the porter let them in, and the stone stairway
+of the old hotel was almost in darkness. The sitting-room, with its
+yellow, hangings snugly drawn and its pervading but soft light, was a
+grateful change. And while she was gone to--remove her veil and hat,
+Peter looked around it.
+
+It was redolent of her. A high vase of remarkable beauty, filled with
+white roses, stood on the gueridon. He went forward and touched it, and
+closed his eyes as though in pain. When he opened them he saw her
+standing in the archway.
+
+She had taken off her coat, and was in a simple white muslin gown, with a
+black belt--a costume that had become habitual. Her age was thirty. The
+tragedy and the gravity of her life during these later years had touched
+her with something that before was lacking. In the street, in the
+galleries, people had turned to look at her; not with impudent stares.
+She caught attention, aroused imagination. Once, the year before, she had
+had a strange experience with a well-known painter, who, in an impulsive
+note, had admitted following her home and bribing the concierge. He
+craved a few sittings. Her expression now, as she looked at Peter, was
+graver than usual.
+
+"You must not come to-morrow," she said.
+
+"I thought we were going to Versailles again," he replied in surprise. "I
+have made the arrangements."
+
+"I have changed my mind. I'm not going."
+
+"You want to postpone it?" he asked.
+
+She took a chair beside the little blaze in the fireplace.
+
+"Sit down, Peter. I wish to say something to you. I have been wishing to
+do so for some time."
+
+"Do you object if I stand a moment?" he said. "I feel so much more
+comfortable standing, especially when I am going to be scolded."
+
+"Yes," she admitted, "I am going to scold you. Your conscience has warned
+you."
+
+"On the contrary," he declared, "it has never been quieter. If I have
+offended; it is through ignorance."
+
+"It is through charity, as usual," she said in a low voice. "If your
+conscience be quiet, mine is not. It is in myself that I am
+disappointed--I have been very selfish. I have usurped you. I have known
+it all along, and I have done very wrong in not relinquishing you
+before."
+
+"Who would have shown me Paris?" he exclaimed.
+
+"No," she continued, "you would not have been alone. If I had needed
+proof of that fact, I had it to-day--"
+
+"Oh, Minturn," he interrupted; "think of me hanging about an Embassy and
+trying not to spill tea!" And he smiled at the image that presented.
+
+Her own smile was fleeting.
+
+"You would never do that, I know," she said gravely.
+
+"You are still too modest, Peter, but the time has gone by when I can be
+easily deceived. You have a great reputation among men of affairs, an
+unique one. In spite of the fact that you are distinctly American, you
+have a wide interest in what is going on in the world. And you have an
+opportunity here to meet people of note, people really worth while from
+every point of view. You have no right to neglect it."
+
+He was silent a moment, looking down at her. She was leaning forward, her
+eyes fixed on the fire, her hands clasped between her knees.
+
+"Do you think I care for that?" he asked.
+
+"You ought to care," she said, without looking up. "And it is my duty to
+try to make you care."
+
+"Honora, why do you think I came over here?" he said.
+
+"To see Paris," she answered. "I have your own word for it. To--to
+continue your education. It never seems to stop."
+
+"Did you really believe that?"
+
+"Of course I believed it. What could be more natural? And you have never
+had a holiday like this."
+
+"No," he agreed. "I admit that."
+
+"I don't know how much longer you are going to stay," she said. "You have
+not been abroad before, and there are other places you ought to go."
+
+"I'll get you to make out an itinerary."
+
+"Peter, can't you see that I'm serious? I have decided to take matters in
+my own hands. The rest of the time you are here, you may come to see me
+twice a week. I shall instruct the concierge."
+
+He turned and grasped the mantel shelf with both hands, and touched the
+log with the toe of his boot.
+
+"What I told you about seeing Paris may be called polite fiction," he
+said. "I came over here to see you. I have been afraid to say it until
+to-day, and I am afraid to say it now."
+
+She sat very still. The log flared up again, and he turned slowly and
+looked at the shadows in her face.
+
+"You-you have always been good to me," she answered. "I have never
+deserved it--I have never understood it. If it is any satisfaction for
+you to know that what I have saved of myself I owe to you, I tell you so
+freely."
+
+"That," he said, "is something for which God forbid that I should take
+credit. What you are is due to the development of a germ within you, a
+development in which I have always had faith. I came here to see you, I
+came here because I love you, because I have always loved you, Honora."
+
+"Oh, no, not that!" she cried; "not that!"
+
+"Why not?" he asked. "It is something I cannot help, something beyond my
+power to prevent if I would. But I would not. I am proud of it, and I
+should be lost without it. I have had it always. I have come over to beg
+you to marry me."
+
+"It's impossible! Can't you see it's impossible?"
+
+"You don't love me?" he said. Into those few words was thrown all the
+suffering of his silent years.
+
+"I don't know what I feel for you," she answered in an agonized voice,
+her fingers tightening over the backs of her white hands. "If reverence
+be love--if trust be love, infinite and absolute trust--if gratitude be
+love--if emptiness after you are gone be a sign of it--yes, I love you.
+If the power to see clearly only through you, to interpret myself only by
+your aid be love, I acknowledge it. I tell you so freely, as of your
+right to know. And the germ of which you spoke is you. You have grown
+until you have taken possession of--of what is left of me. If I had only
+been able to see clearly from the first, Peter, I should be another woman
+to-day, a whole woman, a wise woman. Oh, I have thought of it much. The
+secret of life was there at my side from the time I was able to pronounce
+your name, and I couldn't see it. You had it. You stayed. You took duty
+where you found it, and it has made you great. Oh, I don't mean to speak
+in a worldly sense. When I say that, it is to express the highest human
+quality of which I can think and feel. But I can't marry you. You must
+see it."
+
+"I cannot see it," he replied, when he had somewhat gained control of
+himself.
+
+"Because I should be wronging you."
+
+"How?" he asked.
+
+"In the first place, I should be ruining your career."
+
+"If I had a career," he said, smiling gently, "you couldn't ruin it. You
+both overestimate and underestimate the world's opinion, Honora. As my
+wife, it will not treat you cruelly. And as for my career, as you call
+it, it has merely consisted in doing as best I could the work that has
+come to me. I have tried to serve well those who have employed me, and if
+my services be of value to them, and to those who may need me in the
+future, they are not going to reject me. If I have any worth in the
+world, you will but add to it. Without you I am incomplete."
+
+She looked up at him wonderingly.
+
+"Yes, you are great," she said. "You pity me, you think of my
+loneliness."
+
+"It is true I cannot bear to picture you here," he exclaimed. "The
+thought tortures me, but it is because I love you, because I wish to take
+and shield you. I am not a man to marry a woman without love. It seems to
+me that you should know me well enough to believe that, Honora. There
+never has been any other woman in my life, and there never can be. I have
+given you proof of it, God knows."
+
+"I am not what I was," she said, "I am not what I was. I have been
+dragged down."
+
+He bent and lifted her hand from her knee, and raised it to his lips, a
+homage from him that gave her an exquisite pain.
+
+"If you had been dragged down," he answered simply, "my love would have
+been killed. I know something of the horrors you have been through, as
+though I had suffered them myself. They might have dragged down another
+woman, Honora. But they have strangely ennobled you."
+
+She drew her hand away.
+
+"No," she said, "I do not deserve happiness. It cannot be my destiny."
+
+"Destiny," he repeated. "Destiny is a thing not understandable by finite
+minds. It is not necessarily continued tragedy and waste, of that I am
+certain. Only a little thought is required, it seems to me, to assure us
+that we cannot be the judges of our own punishment on this earth. And of
+another world we know nothing. It cannot be any one's destiny to throw
+away a life while still something may be made of it. You would be
+throwing your life away here. That no other woman is possible, or ever
+can be possible, for me should be a consideration with you, Honora. What
+I ask of you is a sacrifice--will you make me happy?"
+
+Her eyes filled with tears.
+
+"Oh, Peter, do you care so much as that? If--if I could be sure that I
+were doing it for you! If in spite--of all that has happened to me, I
+could be doing something for you--!"
+
+He stooped and kissed her.
+
+"You can if you will," he said.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's A Modern Chronicle, Volume 8, by Winston Churchill
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+The Project Gutenberg Ebook A Modern Chronicle, v8, by Winston Churchill
+WC#44 in our series by Winston Churchill (USA author, not Sir Winston)
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
+copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing
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+**EBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
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+*****These EBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers*****
+
+
+Title: A Modern Chronicle, Volume 8.
+
+Author: Winston Churchill (USA author, not Sir Winston Churchill)
+
+Release Date: March, 2004  [EBook #5381]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on June 28, 2002]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+
+
+
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MODERN CHRONICLE, V8, BY CHURCHILL ***
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
+
+
+
+[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of the
+file for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making an
+entire meal of them.  D.W.]
+
+
+
+
+
+A MODERN CHRONICLE
+
+By Winston Churchill
+
+
+
+Volume 8.
+
+
+XVI.      IN WHICH A MIRROR IS HELD UP
+XVII.     THE RENEWAL OF AN ANCIENT HOSPITALITY
+XVIII.    IN WHICH MR. ERWIN SEES PARIS
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+IN WHICH A MIRROR IS HELD UP
+
+Spring came to Highlawns, Eden tinted with myriad tender greens.  Yellow-
+greens, like the beech boughs over the old wall, and gentle blue-greens,
+like the turf; and the waters of the lake were blue and white in
+imitation of the cloud-flecked sky.  It seemed to Honora, as she sat on
+the garden bench, that the yellow and crimson tulips could not open wide
+enough their cups to the sun.
+
+In these days she looked at her idol, and for the first time believed
+it to be within her finite powers to measure him.  She began by asking
+herself if it were really she who had ruined his life, and whether he
+would ultimately have redeemed himself if he had married a woman whom the
+world would have recognized.  Thus did the first doubt invade her heart.
+It was of him she was thinking still, and always.  But there was the
+doubt.  If he could have stood this supreme test of isolation, of the
+world's laughter and scorn, although it would have made her own heavy
+burden of responsibility heavier, yet could she still have rejoiced.
+That he should crumble was the greatest of her punishments.
+
+Was he crumbling?  In these months she could not quite be sure, and she
+tried to shut her eyes when the little pieces fell off, to remind herself
+that she must make allowances for the severity of his disappointment.
+Spring was here, the spring to which he had so eagerly looked forward,
+and yet the listlessness with which he went about his work was apparent.
+Sometimes he did not appear at breakfast, although Honora clung with
+desperation to the hour they had originally fixed: sometimes Mr. Manning
+waited for him until nearly ten o'clock, only to receive curt dismissal.
+He went off for long rides, alone, and to the despair of the groom
+brought back the horses in a lather, with drooping heads and heaving
+sides; one of them he ruined.  He declared there wasn't a horse in the
+stable fit to give him exercise.
+
+Often he sat for hours in his study, brooding, inaccessible.  She had the
+tennis-court rolled and marked, but the contests here were pitifully-
+unequal; for the row of silver cups on his mantel, engraved with many
+dates, bore witness to his athletic prowess.  She wrote for a book on
+solitaire, but after a while the sight of cards became distasteful.  With
+a secret diligence she read the reviews, and sent for novels and memoirs
+which she scanned eagerly before they were begun with him.  Once, when
+she went into his study on an errand, she stood for a minute gazing
+painfully at the cleared space on his desk where once had lain the papers
+and letters relative to the life of General Angus Chiltern.
+
+There were intervals in which her hope flared, in which she tasted,
+fearfully and with bated breath, something that she had not thought to
+know again.  It was characteristic of him that his penitence was never
+spoken: nor did he exhibit penitence.  He seemed rather at such times
+merely to become normally himself, as one who changes personality,
+apparently oblivious to the moods and deeds of yesterday.  And these
+occasions added perplexity to her troubles.  She could not reproach him--
+which perhaps in any event she would have been too wise to do; but she
+could not, try as she would, bring herself to the point of a discussion
+of their situation.  The risk, she felt, was too great; now, at least.
+There were instances that made her hope that the hour might come.
+
+One fragrant morning Honora came down to find him awaiting her, and to
+perceive lying on her napkin certain distilled drops of the spring
+sunshine.  In language less poetic, diamonds to be worn in the ears.  The
+wheel of fashion, it appeared, had made a complete revolution since the
+early days of his mother's marriage.  She gave a little exclamation, and
+her hand went to her heart.
+
+"They are Brazilian stones," he explained, with a boyish pleasure that
+awoke memories and held her speechless.  "I believe it's very difficult,
+if not impossible, to buy them now.  My father got them after the war and
+I had them remounted."  And he pressed them against the pink lobes of her
+ears.  "You look like the Queen of Sheba."
+
+"How do you know?" she asked tremulously.  "You never saw her."
+
+"According to competent judges," he replied, "she was the most beautiful
+woman of her time.  Go upstairs and put them on."
+
+She shook her head.  An inspiration had come to her.
+
+"Wait," she cried.  And that morning, when Hugh had gone out, she sent
+for Starling and startled him by commanding that the famous Lowestoft set
+be used at dinner.  He stared at her, and the corners of his mouth
+twitched, and still he stood respectfully in the doorway.
+
+"That is all, Starling."
+
+"I beg pardon, madam.  How--how many will there be at the table?"
+
+"Just Mr. Chiltern and I," she replied.  But she did not look at him.
+
+It was superstition, undoubtedly.  She was well aware that Starling had
+not believed that the set would be used again.  An extraordinary order,
+that might well have sent him away wondering; for the Lowestoft had been
+reserved for occasions.  Ah, but this was to be an occasion, a festival!
+The whimsical fancy grew in her mind as the day progressed, and she
+longed with an unaccustomed impatience for nightfall, and anticipation
+had a strange taste.  Mathilde, with the sympathetic gift of her nation,
+shared the excitement of her mistress in this fete.  The curtains in the
+pink bedroom were drawn, and on the bed, in all its splendour of lace and
+roses, was spread out the dinner-gown-a chef-d'oeuvre of Madame
+Barriere's as yet unworn.  And no vulgar, worldly triumph was it to
+adorn.
+
+Her heart was beating fast as she descended the stairway, bright spots of
+colour flaming in her cheeks and the diamonds sparkling in her ears.  A
+prima donna might have guessed her feelings as she paused, a little
+breathless on the wide landing under the windows.  She heard a footstep.
+Hugh came out of the library and stood motionless, looking up at her.
+But even those who have felt the silence and the stir that prefaces the
+clamorous applause of the thousands could not know the thrill that swept
+her under his tribute.  She came down the last flight of steps, slowly,
+and stopped in front of him.
+
+"You are wonderful, Honora !" he said, and his voice was not quite under
+control.  He took her hand, that trembled in his, and he seemed to be
+seeking to express something for which he could find no words.  Thus may
+the King have looked upon Rosamond in her bower; upon a beauty created
+for the adornment of courts which he had sequestered for his eyes alone.
+
+Honora, as though merely by the touch of his hand in hers, divined his
+thought.
+
+"If you think me so, dear," she whispered happily, "it's all I ask."
+
+And they went in to dinner as to a ceremony.  It was indeed a ceremony
+filled for her with some occult, sacred, meaning that she could not put
+into words.  A feast symbolical.  Starling was sent to the wine-cellar to
+bring back a cobwebbed Madeira near a century old, brought out on rare
+occasions in the family.  And Hugh, when his glass was filled, looked at
+his wife and raised it in silence to his lips.
+
+She never forgot the scene.  The red glow of light from the shaded
+candles on the table, and the corners of the dining room filled with
+gloom.  The old butler, like a high priest, standing behind his master's
+chair.  The long windows, with the curtains drawn in the deep, panelled
+arches; the carved white mantelpiece; the glint of silver on' the
+sideboard, with its wine-cooler underneath,--these, spoke of generations
+of respectability and achievement.  Would this absorbed isolation, this
+marvellous wild love of theirs, be the end of it all?  Honora, as one
+detached, as a ghost in the corner, saw herself in the picture with
+startling clearness.  When she looked up, she met her husband's eyes.
+Always she met them, and in them a questioning, almost startled look that
+was new.  "Is it the earrings?" she asked at last. "I don't know," he
+answered.  "I can't tell.  They seem to have changed you, but perhaps
+they have brought out something in your face and eyes I have never seen
+before."
+
+"And--you like it, Hugh?"
+
+"Yes, I like it," he replied, and added enigmatically, "but I don't
+understand it."
+
+She was silent, and oddly satisfied, trusting to fate to send more
+mysteries.
+
+Two days had not passed when that restlessness for which she watched so
+narrowly revived.  He wandered aimlessly about the place, and flared up
+into such a sudden violent temper at one of the helpers in the fields
+that the man ran as for his life, and refused to set foot again on any
+of the Chiltern farms.  In the afternoon he sent for Honora to ride with
+him, and scolded her for keeping him waiting.  And he wore a spur, and
+pressed his horse so savagely that she cried out in remonstrance,
+although at such times she had grown to fear him.
+
+"Oh, Hugh, how can you be so cruel!"
+
+"The beast has no spirit," he said shortly.  "I'll get one that has."
+
+Their road wound through the western side of the estate towards misty
+rolling country, in the folds of which lay countless lakes, and at length
+they caught sight of an unpainted farmhouse set amidst a white cloud of
+apple trees in bloom.  On the doorstep, whittling, sat a bearded, unkempt
+farmer with a huge frame.  In answer to Hugh's question he admitted that
+he had a horse for sale, stuck his knife in the step, rose, and went off
+towards the barn near by; and presently reappeared, leading by a halter a
+magnificent black.  The animal stood jerking his head, blowing and pawing
+the ground while Chiltern examined him.
+
+"He's been ridden?" he asked.
+
+The man nodded.
+
+Chiltern sprang to the ground and began to undo his saddle girths.  A
+sudden fear seized Honora.
+
+"Oh, Hugh, you're not going to ride him!" she exclaimed.
+
+"Why not?  How else am I going to find out anything about him?"
+
+"He looks--dangerous," she faltered.
+
+"I'm tired of horses that haven't any life in them," he said, as he
+lifted off the saddle.
+
+"I guess we'd better get him in the barn," said the farmer.
+
+Honora went behind them to witness the operation, which was not devoid of
+excitement.  The great beast plunged savagely when they tightened the
+girths, and closed his teeth obstinately against the bit; but the farmer
+held firmly to his nose and shut off his wind.  They led him out from the
+barn floor.
+
+"Your name Chiltern?"  asked the farmer.
+
+"Yes," said Hugh, curtly.
+
+"Thought so," said the farmer, and he held the horse's head.
+
+Honora had a feeling of faintness.
+
+"Hugh, do be careful!" she pleaded.
+
+He paid no heed to her.  His eyes, she noticed, had a certain feverish
+glitter of animation, of impatience, such as men of his type must wear
+when they go into battle.  He seized the horse's mane, he put his foot
+in the stirrup; the astonished animal gave a snort and jerked the bridle
+from the farmer's hand.  But Chiltern was in the saddle, with knees
+pressed tight.
+
+There ensued a struggle that Honora will never forget.  And although she
+never again saw that farm-house, its details and surroundings come back
+to her in vivid colours when she closes her eyes.  The great horse in
+every conceivable pose, with veins standing out and knotty muscles
+twisting in his legs and neck and thighs.  Once, when he dashed into the
+apple trees, she gave a cry; a branch snapped, and Chiltern emerged,
+still seated, with his hat gone and the blood trickling from a scratch on
+his forehead.  She saw him strike with his spurs, and in a twinkling
+horse and rider had passed over the dilapidated remains of a fence and
+were flying down the hard clay road, disappearing into a dip.  A
+reverberating sound, like a single stroke, told them that the bridge at
+the bottom had been crossed.
+
+In an agony of terror, Honora followed, her head on fire, her heart
+pounding faster than the hoof beats.  But the animal she rode, though a
+good one, was no match for the great infuriated beast which she pursued.
+Presently she came to a wooded corner where the road forked thrice, and
+beyond, not without difficulty,--brought her sweating mare to a stand.
+The quality of her fear changed from wild terror to cold dread.  A hermit
+thrush, in the wood near by, broke the silence with a song inconceivably
+sweet.  At last she went back to the farm-house, hoping against hope that
+Hugh might have returned by another road.  But he was not there.  The
+farmer was still nonchalantly whittling.
+
+"Oh, how could you let any one get on a horse like that?"  she cried.
+
+"You're his wife, ain't you?"  he asked.
+
+Something in the man's manner seemed to compel her to answer, in spite of
+the form of the question.
+
+"I am Mrs. Chiltern," she said.
+
+He was looking at her with an expression that she found incomprehensible.
+His glance was penetrating, yet here again she seemed to read compassion.
+He continued to gaze at her, and presently, when he spoke, it was as
+though he were not addressing her at all.
+
+"You put me in mind of a young girl I used to know," he said; "seems like
+a long time ago.  You're pretty, and you're young, and ye didn't know
+what you were doin,' I'll warrant.  Lost your head.  He has a way of
+gittin' 'em--always had."
+
+Honora did not answer.  She would have liked to have gone away, but that
+which was stronger than her held her.
+
+"She didn't live here," he explained, waving his hand deprecatingly
+towards the weather-beaten house.  "We lived over near Morrisville in
+them days.  And he don't remember me, your husband don't.  I ain't
+surprised.  I've got considerable older."
+
+Honora was trembling from head to foot, and her hands were cold.
+
+"I've got her picture in there, if ye'd like to look at it," he said,
+after a while.
+
+"Oh, no!" she cried.  "Oh, no!"
+
+"Well, I don't know as I blame you."  He sat down again and began to
+whittle.  "Funny thing, chance," he remarked; "who'd a thought I should
+have owned that there hoss, and he should have come around here to ride
+it?"
+
+She tried to speak, but she could not.  The hideous imperturbability of
+the man's hatred sickened her.  And her husband!  The chips fell in
+silence until a noise on the road caused them to look up.  Chiltern was
+coming back.  She glanced again at the farmer, but his face was equally
+incapable, or equally unwilling, to express regret.  Chiltern rode into
+the dooryard.  The blood from the scratch on his forehead had crossed his
+temple and run in a jagged line down his cheek, his very hair (as she had
+sometimes seen it) was damp with perspiration, blacker, kinkier; his eyes
+hard, reckless, bloodshot.  So, in the past, must he have emerged from
+dozens of such wilful, brutal contests with man and beast.  He had beaten
+the sweat-stained horse (temporarily--such was the impression Honora
+received), but she knew that he would like to have killed it for its
+opposition.
+
+"Give me my hat, will you?" he cried to the farmer.
+
+To her surprise the man obeyed.  Chiltern leaped to the ground.
+
+"What do you want for him?"  he demanded.
+
+"I'll take five hundred dollars."
+
+"Bring him over in the morning," said Chiltern, curtly.
+
+They rode homeward in silence.  Honora had not been able to raise her
+voice against the purchase, and she seemed powerless now to warn her
+husband of the man's enmity.  She was thinking, rather, of the horror of
+the tragedy written on the farmer's face, to which he had given her the
+key: Hugh Chiltern, to whom she had intrusted her life and granted her
+all, had done this thing, ruthlessly, even as he had satisfied to-day his
+unbridled cravings in maltreating a horse!  And she thought of that other
+woman, on whose picture she had refused to look.  What was the essential
+difference between that woman and herself?  He had wanted them both, he
+had taken them both for his pleasure, heedless of the pain he might cause
+to others and to them.  For her, perhaps, the higher organism, had been
+reserved the higher torture.  She did not know.  The vision of the girl
+in the outer darkness reserved for castaways was terrible.
+
+Up to this point she had, as it were, been looking into one mirror.  Now
+another was suddenly raised behind her, and by its aid she beheld not a
+single, but countless, images of herself endlessly repeated.  How many
+others besides this girl had there been?  The question gave her the
+shudder of the contemplation of eternity.  It was not the first time
+Honora had thought of his past, but until today it had lacked reality;
+until to-day she had clung to the belief that he had been misunderstood;
+until to-day she had considered those acts of his of the existence of
+which she was collectively aware under the generic term of wild oats.
+He had had too much money, and none had known how to control him.  Now,
+through this concrete example of another's experience, she was given to
+understand that which she had strangely been unable to learn from her
+own.  And she had fancied, in her folly, that she could control him!
+Unable as yet to grasp the full extent of her calamity, she rode on by
+his side, until she was aware at last that they had reached the door of
+the house at Highlawns.
+
+"You look pale," he said as he lifted her off her horse.  The demon in
+him, she perceived, was tired.
+
+"Do I?"
+
+"What's the matter?"
+
+"Nothing," she answered.
+
+He laughed.
+
+"It's confoundedly silly to get frightened that way," he declared.
+"The beast only wants riding."
+
+Three mornings later she was seated in the garden with a frame of fancy
+work.  Sometimes she put it down.  The weather was overcast, langourous,
+and there was a feeling of rain in the air.  Chiltern came in through the
+gaffe, and looked at her.
+
+"I'm going to New York on the noon train," he said.
+
+"To New York?"
+
+"Yes.  Why not?"
+
+There's no reason why you shouldn't if you wish to," she replied, picking
+up her frame.
+
+"Anything I can get you?" he asked.
+
+"No, thank you."
+
+"You've been in such a deuced queer mood the last few days I can't make
+you out, Honora."
+
+"You ought to have learned something about women by this time," she said.
+
+"It seems to me," he announced, "that we need a little livening up."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+THE RENEWAL OF AN ANCIENT HOSPITALITY
+
+There were six letters from him, written from a club, representing the
+seven days of his absence.  He made no secret of the fact that his visit
+to the metropolis was in the nature of a relaxation and a change of
+scene, but the letters themselves contained surprisingly little
+information as to how he was employing his holiday.  He had encountered
+many old friends, supposedly all of the male sex: among them--most
+welcome of surprises to him!--Mr. George Pembroke, a boon companion at
+Harvard.  And this mention of boon companionship brought up to Honora a
+sufficiently vivid idea of Mr. Pembroke's characteristics.  The extent of
+her knowledge of this gentleman consisted in the facts that he was a
+bachelor, a member of a prominent Philadelphia family, and that time
+hung heavy on his hands.
+
+One morning she received a telegram to the effect that her husband would
+be home that night, bringing three people with him.  He sent his love,
+but neglected to state the names and sexes of the prospective guests.
+And she was still in a quandary as to what arrangements to make when
+Starling appeared in answer to her ring.
+
+"You will send the omnibus to the five o'clock train," she said.  "There
+will be three extra places at dinner, and tea when Mr. Chiltern arrives."
+
+Although she strove to speak indifferently, she was sure from the way the
+old man looked at her that her voice had not been quite steady.  Of late
+her curious feeling about him had increased in intensity; and many times,
+during this week she had spent alone, she had thought that his eyes had
+followed her with sympathy.  She did not resent this.  Her world having
+now contracted to that wide house, there was a comfort in knowing that
+there was one in it to whom she could turn in need.  For she felt that
+she could turn to Starling; he alone, apparently, had measured the full
+depth of her trouble; nay, had silently predicted it from the beginning.
+And to-day, as he stood before her, she had an almost irresistible
+impulse to speak.  Just a word-a human word would have been such a help
+to her!  And how ridiculous the social law that kept the old man standing
+there, impassive, respectful, when this existed between them!  Her
+tragedy was his tragedy; not in the same proportion, perhaps;
+nevertheless, he had the air of one who would die of it.
+
+And she?  Would she die?  What would become of her?  When she thought of
+the long days and months and years that stretched ahead of her, she felt
+that her soul would not be able to survive the process of steady
+degradation to which it was sure to be subjected.  For she was a
+prisoner: the uttermost parts of the earth offered no refuge.  To-day,
+she knew, was to see the formal inauguration of that process.  She had
+known torture, but it had been swift, obliterating, excruciating.  And
+hereafter it was to be slow, one turn at a time of the screws, squeezing
+by infinitesimal degrees the life out of her soul.  And in the end--most
+fearful thought of all--in the end, painless.  Painless!  She buried her
+head in her arms on the little desk, shaken by sobs.
+
+How she fought that day to compose herself, fought and prayed!  Prayed
+wildly to a God whose help, nevertheless, she felt she had forfeited,
+who was visiting her with just anger.  At half-past four she heard the
+carriage on the far driveway, going to the station, and she went down
+and walked across the lawn to the pond, and around it; anything to keep
+moving.  She hurried back to the house just in time to reach the hall as
+the omnibus backed up.  And the first person she saw descend, after Hugh,
+was Mrs. Kame.
+
+"Here we are, Honora," she cried.  "I hope you're glad to see us, and
+that you'll forgive our coming so informally.  You must blame Hugh.
+We've brought Adele."
+
+The second lady was, indeed, none other than Mrs. Eustace Rindge,
+formerly Mrs. Dicky Farnham.  And she is worth--even at this belated
+stage in our chronicle an attempted sketch, or at least an attempted
+impression.  She was fair, and slim as a schoolgirl; not very tall, not
+exactly petite; at first sight she might have been taken for a
+particularly immature debutante, and her dress was youthful and rather
+mannish.  Her years, at this period of her career, were in truth but
+two and twenty, yet she had contrived, in the comparatively brief time
+since she had reached the supposed age of discretion, to marry two men
+and build two houses, and incidentally to see a considerable portion of
+what is known as the world.  The suspicion that she was not as innocent
+as a dove came to one, on closer inspection, as a shock: her eyes were
+tired, though not from loss of sleep; and her manner--how shall it be
+described to those whose happy lot in life has never been to have made
+the acquaintance of Mrs. Rindge's humbler sisters who have acquired--more
+coarsely, it is true--the same camaraderie?  She was one of those for
+whom, seemingly, sex does not exist.  Her air of good-fellowship with men
+was eloquent of a precise knowledge of what she might expect from them,
+and she was prepared to do her own policing,--not from any deep moral
+convictions.  She belonged, logically, to that world which is disposed
+to take the law into its own hands, and she was the possessor of five
+millions of dollars.
+
+"I came along," she said to Honora, as she gave her hand-bag to a
+footman.  "I hope you don't mind.  Abby and I were shopping and we ran
+into Hugh and Georgie yesterday at Sherry's, and we've been together ever
+since.  Not quite that--but almost.  Hugh begged us to come up, and there
+didn't seem to be any reason why we shouldn't, so we telephoned down to
+Banbury for our trunks and maids, and we've played bridge all the way.
+By the way, Georgie, where's my pocket-book?"
+
+Mr. Pembroke handed it over, and was introduced by Hugh.  He looked at
+Honora, and his glance somehow betokened that he was in the habit of
+looking only once.  He had apparently made up his mind about her before
+he saw her.  But he looked again, evidently finding her at variance with
+a preconceived idea, and this time she flushed a little under his stare,
+and she got the impression that Mr. Pembroke was a man from whom few
+secrets of a certain kind were hid.  She felt that he had seized, at a
+second glance, a situation that she had succeeded in hiding from the
+women.  He was surprised, but cynically so.  He was the sort of person
+who had probably possessed at Harvard the knowledge of the world of a
+Tammany politician; he had long ago written his book--such as it was--and
+closed it: or, rather, he had worked out his system at a precocious age,
+and it had lasted him ever since.  He had decided that undergraduate
+life, freed from undergraduate restrictions, was a good thing.  And he
+did not, even in these days, object to breaking something valuable
+occasionally.
+
+His physical attributes are more difficult to describe, so closely were
+they allied to those which, for want of a better word, must be called
+mental.  He was neither tall nor short, he was well fed, but hard, his
+shoulders too broad, his head a little large.  If he should have happened
+to bump against one, the result would have been a bruise--not for him.
+His eyes were blue, his light hair short, and there was a slight baldness
+beginning; his face was red-tanned.  There was not the slightest doubt
+that he could be effectively rude, and often was; but it was evident, for
+some reason, that he meant to be gracious (for Mr. Pembroke) to Honora.
+Perhaps this was the result of the second glance.  One of his name had
+not lacked, indeed, for instructions in gentility.  It must not be
+thought that she was in a condition to care much about what Mr. Pembroke
+thought or did, and yet she felt instinctively that he had changed his
+greeting between that first and second glance.
+
+"I hope you'll forgive my coming in this way," he said.  "I'm an old
+friend of Hugh's."
+
+"I'm very glad to have Hugh's friends," she answered.
+
+He looked at her again.
+
+"Is tea ready?" inquired Mrs. Kame.  "I'm famished."  And, as they walked
+through the house to the garden, where the table was set beside the stone
+seat: "I don't see how you ever can leave this place, Honora.  I've
+always wanted to come here, but it's even more beautiful than I thought."
+
+"It's very beautiful," said Honora.
+
+"I'll have a whiskey and soda, if I may," announced Mrs. Rindge.  "Open
+one, Georgie."
+
+"The third to-day," said Mr. Pembroke, sententiously, as he obeyed.
+
+"I don't care.  I don't see what business it is of yours."
+
+"Except to open them," he replied.
+
+"You'd have made a fortune as a barkeeper," she observed,
+dispassionately, as she watched the process.
+
+"He's made fortunes for a good many," said Chiltern.
+
+"Not without some expert assistance I could mention," Mr. Pembroke
+retorted.
+
+At this somewhat pointed reference to his ancient habits, Chiltern
+laughed.
+
+"You've each had three to-day yourselves," said Mrs. Rindge, in whose
+bosom Mr. Pembroke's remark evidently rankled, "without counting those
+you had before you left the club."
+
+Afterwards Mrs. Kame expressed a desire to walk about a little, a
+proposal received with disfavour by all but Honora, who as hostess
+responded.
+
+"I feel perfectly delightful," declared Mrs. Rindge.  "What's the use of
+moving about?"  And she sank back in the cushions of her chair.
+
+This observation was greeted with unrestrained merriment by Mr. Pembroke
+and Hugh.  Honora, sick at heart, led Mrs. Kame across the garden and
+through the gate in the wall.  It was a perfect evening of early June,
+the great lawn a vivid green in the slanting light.  All day the cheerful
+music of the horse-mowers had been heard, and the air was fragrant with
+the odour of grass freshly cut.  The long shadows of the maples and
+beeches stretched towards the placid surface of the lake, dimpled here
+and there by a fish's swirl: the spiraeas were laden as with freshly
+fallen snow, a lone Judas-tree was decked in pink.  The steep pastures
+beyond the water were touched with gold, while to the northward, on the
+distant hills, tender blue lights gathered lovingly around the copses.
+Mrs. Kame sighed.
+
+"What a terrible thing it is," she said, "that we are never satisfied!
+It's the men who ruin all this for us, I believe, and prevent our
+enjoying it.  Look at Adele."
+
+Honora had indeed looked at her.
+
+"I found out the other day what is the matter with her.  She's madly in
+love with Dicky."
+
+"With--with her former husband?"
+
+"Yes, with poor little innocent Dicky Farnham, who's probably still
+congratulating himself, like a canary bird that's got out of a cage.
+Somehow Dicky's always reminded me of a canary; perhaps it's his name.
+Isn't it odd that she should be in love with him?"
+
+"I think," replied Honora, slowly, "that it's a tragedy."
+
+"It is a tragedy," Mrs. Kame hastily agreed.  "To me, this case is one
+of the most incomprehensible aspects of the tender passion.  Adele's idea
+of existence is a steeplechase with nothing but water-jumps, Dicky's to
+loiter around in a gypsy van, and sit in the sun.  During his brief
+matrimonial experience with her, he nearly died for want of breath--or
+rather the life was nearly shaken out of him.  And yet she wants Dicky
+again.  She'd run away with him to-morrow if he should come within
+hailing distance of her."
+
+"And her husband?" asked Honora.
+
+"Eustace?  Did you ever see him?  That accounts for your question.  He
+only left France long enough to come over here and make love to her, and
+he swears he'll never leave it again.  If she divorces him, he'll have to
+have alimony."
+
+At last Honora was able to gain her own room, but even seclusion, though
+preferable to the companionship of her guests, was almost intolerable.
+The tragedy of Mrs. Rindge had served--if such a thing could be--to
+enhance her own; a sudden spectacle of a woman in a more advanced stage
+of desperation.  Would she, Honora, ever become like that?  Up to the
+present she felt that suffering had refined her, and a great love had
+burned away all that was false.  But now--now that her god had turned to
+clay, what would happen?  Desperation seemed possible, notwithstanding
+the awfulness of the example.  No, she would never come to that!  And
+she repeated it over and over to herself as she dressed, as though to
+strengthen her will.
+
+During her conversation with Mrs. Kame she had more than once suspected,
+in spite of her efforts, that the lady had read her state of mind.  For
+Mrs. Kame's omissions were eloquent to the discerning: Chiltern's
+relatives had been mentioned with a casualness intended to imply that no
+breach existed, and the fiction that Honora could at any moment take up
+her former life delicately sustained.  Mrs. Kame had adaptably chosen the
+attitude, after a glance around her, that Honora preferred Highlawns to
+the world: a choice of which she let it be known that she approved, while
+deploring that a frivolous character put such a life out of the question
+for herself.  She made her point without over-emphasis.  On the other
+hand, Honora had read Mrs. Kame.  No very careful perusal was needed to
+convince her that the lady was unmoral, and that in characteristics she
+resembled the chameleon.  But she read deeper.  She perceived that Mrs.
+Kame was convinced that she, Honora, would adjust herself to the new
+conditions after a struggle; and that while she had a certain sympathy in
+the struggle, Mrs. Kame was of opinion that the sooner it was over with
+the better.  All women were born to be disillusionized.  Such was the
+key, at any rate, to the lady's conduct that evening at dinner, when she
+capped the anecdotes of Mr. Pembroke and Mrs. Rindge and even of Chiltern
+with others not less risque but more fastidiously and ingeniously
+suggestive.  The reader may be spared their recital.
+
+Since the meeting in the restaurant the day before, which had resulted
+in Hugh's happy inspiration that the festival begun should be continued
+indefinitely at Highlawns, a kind of freemasonry had sprung up between
+the four.  Honora found herself, mercifully, outside the circle: for such
+was the lively character of the banter that a considerable adroitness was
+necessary to obtain, between the talk and--laughter, the ear of the
+company.  And so full were they of the reminiscences which had been
+crowded into the thirty hours or so they had spent together, that her
+comparative silence remained unnoticed.  To cite an example, Mr. Pembroke
+was continually being addressed as the Third Vice-president, an allusion
+that Mrs. Rindge eventually explained.
+
+"You ought to have been with us coming up on the train," she cried to
+Honora; "I thought surely we'd be put off.  We were playing bridge in
+the little room at the end of the car when the conductor came for our
+tickets.  Georgie had 'em in his pocket, but he told the man to go away,
+that he was the third vice-president of the road, and we were his
+friends.  The conductor asked him if he were Mr. Wheeler, or some such
+name, and Georgie said he was surprised he didn't know him.  Well, the
+man stood there in the door, and Georgie picked up his hand and made it
+hearts--or was it diamonds, Georgie?"
+
+"Spades," said that gentleman, promptly.
+
+"At any rate," Mrs. Rindge continued, "we all began to play, although we
+were ready to blow up with laughter, and after a while Georgie looked
+around and said, 'What, are you there yet?'  My dear, you ought to have
+seen the conductor's face!  He said it was his duty to establish
+Georgie's identity, or something like that, and Georgie told him to get
+off at the next station and buy Waring's Magazine--was that it, Georgie?"
+
+"How the deuce should I know?"
+
+"Well, some such magazine.  Georgie said he'd find an article in it on
+the Railroad Kings and Princes of America, and that his picture,
+Georgie's, was among the very first!"  At this juncture in her narrative
+Mrs. Rindge shrieked with laughter, in which she was joined by Mrs. Kame
+and Hugh; and she pointed a forefinger across the table at Mr. Pembroke,
+who went on solemnly eating his dinner.  "Georgie gave him ten cents with
+which to buy the magazine," she added a little hysterically.  "Well,
+there was a frightful row, and a lot of men came down to that end of the
+car, and we had to shut the door.  The conductor said the most outrageous
+things, and Georgie pretended to be very indignant, too, and gave him the
+tickets under protest.  He told Georgie he ought to be in an asylum for
+the criminally insane, and Georgie advised him to get a photograph album
+of the high officials of the railroad.  The conductor said Georgie's
+picture was probably in the rogue's gallery.  And we lost two packs of
+cards out of the window."
+
+Such had been the more innocent if eccentric diversions with which they
+had whiled away the time.  When dinner was ended, a renewal of the bridge
+game was proposed, for it had transpired at the dinner-table that Mrs.
+Rindge and Hugh had been partners all day, as a result of which there was
+a considerable balance in their favour.  This balance Mr. Pembroke was
+palpably anxious to wipe out, or at least to reduce.  But Mrs. Kame
+insisted that Honora should cut in, and the others supported her.
+
+"We tried our best to get a man for you," said Mrs. Rindge to Honora.
+"Didn't we, Abby?  But in the little time we had, it was impossible.  The
+only man we saw was Ned Carrington, and Hugh said he didn't think you'd
+want him."
+
+"Hugh showed a rare perception," said Honora.
+
+Be it recorded that she smiled.  One course had been clear to her from
+the first, although she found it infinitely difficult to follow; she was
+determined, cost what it might, to carry through her part of the affair
+with dignity, but without stiffness.  This is not the place to dwell upon
+the tax to her strength.
+
+"Come on, Honora," said Hugh, "cut in."  His tone was of what may be
+termed a rough good nature.  She had not seen him alone since his return,
+but he had seemed distinctly desirous that she should enjoy the
+festivities he had provided.  And not to yield would have been
+to betray herself.
+
+The game, with its intervals of hilarity, was inaugurated in the library,
+and by midnight it showed no signs of abating.  At this hour the original
+four occupied the table for the second time, and endurance has its
+limits.  The atmosphere of Liberty Hall that prevailed made Honora's
+retirement easier.
+
+"I'm sure you won't mind if I go to bed," she said.  "I've been so used
+to the routine of--of the chickens."  She smiled.  "And I've spent the
+day in the open air."
+
+"Certainly, my dear," said Mrs. Kame; "I know exactly how one feels in
+the country.  I'm sure it's dreadfully late.  We'll have one more rubber,
+and then stop."
+
+"Oh, don't stop," replied Honora; "please play as long as you like."
+
+They didn't stop--at least after one more rubber.  Honora, as she lay in
+the darkness, looking through the open square of her window at the silver
+stars, heard their voiced and their laughter floating up at intervals
+from below, and the little clock on her mantel had struck the hour of
+three when the scraping of chairs announced the breaking up of the party.
+And even after that an unconscionable period elapsed, beguiled,
+undoubtedly, by anecdotes; spells of silence--when she thought they had
+gone--ending in more laughter.  Finally there was a crash of breaking
+glass, a climax of uproarious mirth, and all was still.  .  .
+
+She could not have slept much, but the birds were singing when she
+finally awoke, the sunlight pouring into her window: And the hands of her
+clock pointed to half-past seven when she rang her bell.  It was a relief
+to breakfast alone, or at least to sip her coffee in solitude.  And the
+dew was still on the grass as she crossed the wide lawn and made her way
+around the lake to the path that entered the woods at its farther end.
+She was not tired, yet she would have liked to have lain down under the
+green panoply of the forest, where the wild flowers shyly raised sweet
+faces to be kissed, and lose herself in the forgetfulness of an eternal
+sleep; never to go back again to an Eden contaminated.  But when she
+lingered the melody of a thrush pierced her through and through.  At last
+she turned and reluctantly retraced her steps, as one whose hour of
+reprieve has expired.
+
+If Mrs. Rindge had a girlish air when fully arrayed for the day, she
+looked younger and more angular still in that article of attire known as
+a dressing gown.  And her eyes, Honora remarked, were peculiarly bright:
+glittering, perhaps, would better express the impression they gave; as
+though one got a glimpse through them of an inward consuming fire.  Her
+laughter rang shrill and clear as Honora entered the hall by the rear
+door, and the big clock proclaimed that the hour was half-past eleven.
+Hugh and Mr. Pembroke were standing at the foot of the stairs, gazing
+upward.  And Honora, following their glances, be held the two ladies,
+in the negligee referred to above, with their elbows on the railing of
+the upper hall and their faces between their hands, engaged in a lively
+exchange of compliments with the gentlemen.  Mrs. Kame looked sleepy.
+
+"Such a night!" she said, suppressing a yawn.  "My dear, you did well to
+go to bed."
+
+"And to cap it all," cried Mrs. Rindge, "Georgie fell over backwards in
+one of those beautiful Adam chairs, and there's literally nothing left of
+it.  If an ocean steamer had hit it, or a freight tram, it couldn't have
+been more thoroughly demolished."
+
+"You pushed me," declared Mr. Pembroke.
+
+"Did I, Hugh?  I barely touched him."
+
+"You knocked him into a cocked hat," said Hugh.  "And if you'd been in
+that kimono, you could have done it even easier."
+
+"Georgie broke the whole whiskey service,--or whatever it is," Mrs.
+Rindge went on, addressing Honora again.  "He fell into it."
+
+"He's all right this morning," observed Mrs. Kame, critically.
+
+"I think I'll take to swallowing swords and glass and things in public.
+I can do it so well," said Mr. Pembroke.
+
+"I hope you got what you like for breakfast," said Honora to the ladies.
+
+"Hurry up and come down, Adele," said Hugh, "if you want to look over the
+horses before lunch."
+
+"It's Georgie's fault," replied Mrs. Rindge; "he's been standing in the
+door of my sitting-room for a whole half-hour talking nonsense."
+
+A little later they all set out for the stables.  These buildings at
+Highlawns, framed by great trees, were old-fashioned and picturesque,
+surrounding three sides of a court, with a yellow brick wall on the
+fourth.  The roof of the main building was capped by a lantern, the home
+of countless pigeons.  Mrs. Rindge was in a habit, and one by one the
+saddle horses were led out, chiefly for her inspection; and she seemed to
+Honora to become another woman as she looked them over with a critical
+eye and discussed them with Hugh and O'Grady, the stud-groom, and talked
+about pedigrees and strains.  For she was renowned in this department of
+sport on many fields, both for recklessness and skill.
+
+"Where did you get that brute, Hugh?" she asked presently.
+
+Honora, who had been talking to Pembroke, looked around with a start.
+And at the sight of the great black horse, bought on that unforgettable
+day, she turned suddenly faint.
+
+"Over here in the country about ten miles," Chiltern was saying.
+"I heard of him, but I didn't expect anything until I went to look at
+him last week."
+
+"What do you call him?" asked Mrs. Rindge.
+
+"I haven't named him."
+
+"I'll give you a name."
+
+Chiltern looked at her.  "What is it?" he said.
+
+"Oblivion," she replied:
+
+"By George, Adele," he exclaimed, "you have a way of hitting it off!"
+
+"Will you let me ride him this afternoon?" she asked.
+
+"I'm a--a candidate for oblivion."  She laughed a little and her eyes
+shone feverishly.
+
+"No you don't," he said.  "I'm giving you the grey.  He's got enough in
+him for any woman--even for you:  And besides, I don't think the black
+ever felt a side saddle, or any other kind, until last week."
+
+"I've got another habit," she said eagerly.  "I'd rather ride him astride.
+I'll match you to see who has him."
+
+Chiltern laughed.
+
+"No you don't," he repeated.  "I'll ride him to-day, and consider it
+to-morrow."
+
+"I--I think I'll go back to the house," said Honora to Pembroke.
+"It's rather hot here in the sun."
+
+"I'm not very keen about sunshine, either," he declared.
+
+At lunch she was unable to talk; to sustain, at least, a conversation.
+That word oblivion, which Mrs. Rindge had so aptly applied to the horse,
+was constantly on her lips, and it would not have surprised her if she
+had spoken it.  She felt as though a heavy weight lay on her breast, and
+to relieve its intolerable pressure drew in her breath deeply.  She was
+wild with fear.  The details of the great room fixed themselves indelibly
+in her brain; the subdued light, the polished table laden with silver and
+glass, the roses, and the purple hot-house grapes.  All this seemed in
+some way to be an ironic prelude to disaster.  Hugh, pausing in his
+badinage with Mrs. Rindge, looked at her.
+
+"Cheer up, Honora," he said.
+
+"I'm afraid this first house-party is too much for her," said Mrs. Kame.
+
+Honora made some protest that seemed to satisfy them, tried to rally
+herself, and succeeded sufficiently to pass muster.  After lunch they
+repaired again to the bridge table, and at four Hugh went upstairs to
+change into his riding clothes.  Five minutes longer she controlled
+herself, and then made some paltry excuse, indifferent now as to what
+they said or thought, and followed him.  She knocked at his dressing-room
+door and entered.  He was drawing on his boots.  "Hello, Honora," he
+said.
+
+Honora turned to his man, and dismissed him.
+
+"I wish to speak to Mr. Chiltern alone."
+
+Chiltern paused in his tugging at the straps, and looked up at her.
+
+"What's the matter with you to-day, Honora?" he asked.  "You looked like
+the chief mourner at a funeral all through lunch."
+
+He was a little on edge, that she knew.  He gave another tug at the boot,
+and while she was still hesitating, he began again.
+
+"I ought to apologize, I know, for bringing these people up without
+notice, but I didn't suppose you'd object when you understood how
+naturally it all came about.  I thought a little livening up, as I said,
+wouldn't,  hurt us.  We've had a quiet winter, to put it mildly."  He
+laughed a little.  "I didn't have a chance to see you until this morning,
+and when I went to your room they told me you'd gone out."
+
+"Hugh," she said, laying her hand on his shoulder.  "It isn't the guests.
+If you want people, and they amuse you, I'm--I'm glad to have them.  And
+if I've seemed to be--cold to them, I'm sorry.  I tried my best--I mean I
+did not intend to be cold.  I'll sit up all night with them, if you like.
+And I didn't come to reproach you, Hugh.  I'll never do that--I've got no
+right to."
+
+She passed her hand over her eyes.  If she had any wrongs, if she had
+suffered any pain, the fear that obsessed her obliterated all.  In spite
+of her disillusionment, in spite of her newly acquired ability to see him
+as he was, enough love remained to scatter, when summoned, her pride to
+the winds.
+
+Having got on both boots, he stood up.
+
+"What's the trouble, then?" he asked.  And he took an instant's hold of
+her chin--a habit he had--and smiled at her.
+
+He little knew how sublime, in its unconscious effrontery, his question
+was!  She tried to compose herself, that she might be able to present
+comprehensively to his finite masculine mind the ache of today.
+
+"Hugh, it's that black horse."  She could not bring herself to pronounce
+the name Mrs. Rindge had christened him.
+
+"What about him?" he said, putting on his waistcoat.
+
+"Don't ride him!" she pleaded.  "I--I'm afraid of him--I've been afraid
+of him ever since that day.
+
+"It may be a foolish feeling, I know.  Sometimes the feelings that hurt
+women most are foolish.  If I tell you that if you ride him you will
+torture me, I'm sure you'll grant what I ask.  It's such a little thing
+and it means so much--so much agony to me.  I'd do anything for you--give
+up anything in the world at your slightest wish.  Don't ride him!"
+
+"This is a ridiculous fancy of yours, Honora.  The horse is all right.
+I've ridden dozens of worse ones."
+
+"Oh, I'm sure he isn't," she cried; "call it fancy, call it instinct,
+call it anything you like--but I feel it, Hugh.  That woman--Mrs.
+Rindge--knows something about horses, and she said he was a brute."
+
+"Yes," he interrupted, with a short laugh, "and she wants to ride him."
+
+"Hugh, she's reckless.  I--I've been watching her since she came here,
+and I'm sure she's reckless with--with a purpose."
+
+"You're morbid," he said.  "She's one of the best sportswomen in the
+country--that's the reason she wanted to ride the horse.  Look here,
+Honora, I'd accede to any reasonable request.  But what do you expect me
+to do?"  he demanded; "go down and say I'm afraid to ride him? or that my
+wife doesn't want me to?  I'd never hear the end of it.  And the first
+thing Adele would do would be to jump on him herself--a little wisp of a
+woman that looks as if she couldn't hold a Shetland pony!  Can't you see
+that what you ask is impossible?"
+
+He started for the door to terminate a conversation which had already
+begun to irritate him.  For his anger, in these days, was very near the
+surface.  She made one more desperate appeal.
+
+"Hugh--the man who sold him--he knew the horse was dangerous.  I'm sure
+he did, from something he said to me while you were gone."
+
+"These country people are all idiots and cowards," declared Chiltern.
+"I've known 'em a good while, and they haven't got the spirit of mongrel
+dogs.  I was a fool to think that I could do anything for them.  They're
+kind and neighbourly, aren't they?" he exclaimed.  "If that old rascal
+flattered himself he deceived me, he was mistaken.  He'd have been
+mightily pleased if the beast had broken my neck."
+
+"Hugh!"
+
+"I can't, Honora.  That's all there is to it, I can't.  Now don't cut up
+about nothing.  I'm sorry, but I've got to go.  Adele's waiting."
+
+He came back, kissed her hurriedly, turned and opened the door.  She
+followed him into the hallway, knowing that she had failed, knowing that
+she never could have succeeded.  There she halted and watched him go down
+the stairs, and stand with her hands tightly pressed together: voices
+reached her, a hurrah from George Pembroke, and the pounding of hoofs on
+the driveway.  It had seemed such a little thing to ask!
+
+But she did not dwell upon this, now, when fear was gnawing her: how she
+had humbled her pride for days and weeks and months for him, and how he
+had refused her paltry request lest he should be laughed at.  Her
+reflections then were not on his waning love.  She was filled with the
+terror of losing him--of losing all that remained to her in the world.
+Presently she began to walk slowly towards the stairs, descended them,
+and looked around her.  The hall, at least, had not changed.  She
+listened, and a bee hummed in through the open doorway.  A sudden
+longing for companionship possessed her-no matter whose; and she walked
+hurriedly, as though she were followed, through the empty rooms until she
+came upon George Pembroke stretched at full length on the leather-covered
+lounge in the library.  He opened his eyes, and got up with alacrity.
+
+"Please don't move," she said.
+
+He looked at her.  Although his was not what may be called
+a sympathetic temperament, he was not without a certain knowledge of
+women; superficial, perhaps.  But most men of his type have seen them in
+despair; and since he was not related to this particular despair, what
+finer feelings he had were the more easily aroused.  It must have been
+clear to her then that she had lost the power to dissemble, all the
+clearer because of Mr. Pembroke's cheerfulness.
+
+"I wasn't going to sleep," he assured her.  "Circumstantial evidence is
+against me, I know.  Where's Abby?  reading French literature?"
+
+"I haven't seen her," replied Honora.
+
+"She usually goes to bed with a play at this hour.  It's a horrid habit--
+going to bed, I mean.  Don't you think?  Would you mind showing me about
+a little?"
+
+"Do you really wish to?" asked Honora, incredulously.
+
+"I haven't been here since my senior year," said Mr. Pembroke.  "If the
+old General were alive, he could probably tell you something of that
+visit--he wrote to my father about it.  I always liked the place,
+although the General was something of a drawback.  Fine old man,
+with no memory."
+
+I should have thought him to have had a good memory," she said.
+
+"I have always been led to believe that he was once sent away from
+college in his youth,--for his health," he explained significantly.
+"No man has a good memory who can't remember that.  Perhaps the battle
+of Gettysburg wiped it out."
+
+Thus, in his own easy-going fashion, Mr. Pembroke sought to distract her.
+She put on a hat, and they walked about, the various scenes recalling
+incidents of holidays he had spent at Highlawns.  And after a while
+Honora was thankful that chance had sent her in this hour to him rather
+than to Mrs. Kame.  For the sight, that morning of this lady in her
+dressing-gown over the stairway, had seemingly set the seal on a growing
+distaste.  Her feeling had not been the same about Mrs. Rindge: Mrs.
+Kame's actions savoured of deliberate choice, of an inherent and
+calculating wickedness.
+
+Had the distraction of others besides himself been the chief business of
+Mr. Pembroke's life, he could not have succeeded better that afternoon.
+He must be given this credit: his motives remain problematical; at length
+he even drew laughter from her.  The afternoon wore on, they returned to
+the garden for tea, and a peaceful stillness continued to reign about
+them, the very sky smiling placidly at her fears.  Not by assuring her
+that Hugh was unusual horseman, that he had passed through many dangers
+beside which this was a bagatelle, could the student of the feminine by
+her side have done half so well.  And it may have been that his success
+encouraged him as he saw emerging, as the result of his handiwork, an
+unexpectedly attractive--if still somewhat serious-woman from the gloom
+that had enveloped her.  That she should still have her distrait moments
+was but natural.
+
+He talked to her largely about Hugh, of whom he appeared sincerely fond.
+The qualities which attracted Mr. Pembroke in his own sex were somewhat
+peculiar, and seemingly consisted largely in a readiness to drop the
+business at hand, whatever it might be, at the suggestion of a friend to
+do something else; the "something else," of course, to be the conception
+of an ingenious mind.  And it was while he was in the midst of an
+anecdote proving the existence of this quality in his friend that he felt
+a sudden clutch on his arm.
+
+They listened.  Faintly, very faintly, could be heard the sound of hoof
+beats; rapid, though distant.
+
+"Do you hear?"  she whispered, and still held his arm.
+
+"It's just like them to race back," said Pembroke, with admirable
+nonchalance.
+
+"But they wouldn't come back at this time--it's too early.  Hugh always
+takes long rides.  They started for Hubbard's--it's twelve miles."
+
+"Adele changes her mind every minute of the day," he said.
+
+"Listen!" she cried, and her clutch tightened.  The hoof beats grew
+louder.  "It's only one--it's only one horse!"
+
+Before he could answer, she was already halfway up the garden path
+towards the house.  He followed her as she ran panting through the
+breakfast room, the dining room, and drawing-room, and when they reached
+the hall, Starling, the butler, and two footmen were going out at the
+door.  A voice--Mrs. Kame's--cried out, "What is it?" over the stairs,
+but they paid no heed.  As they reached the steps they beheld the slight
+figure of Mrs. Rindge on a flying horse coming towards them up the
+driveway.  Her black straw hat had slipped to the back of her neck, her
+hair was awry, her childish face white as paper.  Honora put her hand to
+her heart.  There was no need to tell her the news--she had known these
+many hours.
+
+Mrs. Rindge's horse came over the round grass-plot of the circle and
+planted his fore feet in the turf as she pulled him up.  She lurched
+forward.  It was Starling who lifted her off--George Pembroke stood by
+Honora.
+
+"My God, Adele," he exclaimed, "why don't you speak?"
+
+She was staring at Honora.
+
+"I can't!" she cried.  "I can't tell you--it's too terrible!
+The horse--"  she seemed to choke.
+
+It was Honora who went up to her with a calmness that awed them.
+
+"Tell me," she said, "is he dead?"
+
+Mrs. Rindge nodded, and broke into hysterical sobbing.
+
+"And I wanted to ride him myself," she sobbed, as they led her up the
+steps.
+
+In less than an hour they brought him home and laid him in the room in
+which he had slept from boyhood, and shut the door.  Honora looked into
+his face.  It was calm at last, and his body strangely at rest.  The
+passions which had tortured it and driven it hither and thither through a
+wayward life had fled: the power gone that would brook no guiding hand,
+that had known no master.  It was not until then that she fell upon him,
+weeping .  .  .  .
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+IN WHICH MR. ERWIN SEEK PARIS
+
+As she glanced around the sitting-room of her apartment in Paris one
+September morning she found it difficult, in some respects, to realize
+that she had lived in it for more than five years.  After Chiltern's
+death she had sought a refuge, and she had found it here: a refuge in
+which she meant--if her intention may be so definitely stated--to pass
+the remainder of her days.
+
+As a refuge it had become dear to her.  When first she had entered it she
+had looked about her numbly, thankful for walls and roof, thankful for
+its remoteness from the haunts of the prying: as a shipwrecked castaway
+regards, at the first light, the cave into which he has stumbled into the
+darkness-gratefully.  And gradually, castaway that she felt herself to
+be, she had adorned it lovingly, as one above whose horizon the sails of
+hope were not to rise; filled it with friends not chosen in a day, whose
+faithful ministrations were not to cease.  Her books, but only those
+worthy to be bound and read again; the pictures she had bought when she
+had grown to know what pictures were; the music she had come to love for
+its eternal qualities--these were her companions.
+
+The apartment was in the old quarter across the Seine, and she had found
+it by chance.  The ancient family of which this hotel had once been the
+home would scarce have recognized, if they had returned the part of it
+Honora occupied.  The room in which she mostly lived was above the corner
+of the quiet street, and might have been more aptly called a sitting-room
+than a salon.  Its panels were the most delicate of blue-gray,
+fantastically designed and outlined by ribbings of blue.  Some of them
+contained her pictures.  The chairs, the sofas, the little tabourets,
+were upholstered in yellow, their wood matching the panels.  Above the
+carved mantel of yellowing marble was a quaintly shaped mirror extending
+to the high ceiling, and flanked on either side by sconces.  The carpet
+was a golden brown, the hangings in the tall windows yellow.  And in the
+morning the sun came in, not boisterously, but as a well-bred and
+cheerful guest.  An amiable proprietor had permitted her also to add a
+wrought-iron balcony as an adjunct to this room, and sometimes she sat
+there on the warmer days reading under the seclusion of an awning, or
+gazing at the mysterious facades of the houses opposite, or at infrequent
+cabs or pedestrians below.
+
+An archway led out of the sitting-room into a smaller room, once the
+boudoir of a marquise, now Honora's library.  This was in blue and gold,
+and she had so far modified the design of the decorator as to replace the
+mirrors of the cases with glass; she liked to see her books.  Beyond the
+library was a dining room in grey, with dark red hangings; it overlooked
+the forgotten garden of the hotel.
+
+One item alone of news from the outer world, vital to her, had drifted
+to her retreat.  Newspapers filled her with dread, but it was from a
+newspaper, during the first year of her retirement, that she had learned
+of the death of Howard Spence.  A complication of maladies was mentioned,
+but the true underlying cause was implied in the article, and this had
+shocked but not surprised her.  A ferment was in progress in her own
+country, the affairs of the Orange Trust Company being investigated, and
+its president under indictment at the hour of his demise.  Her feelings
+at the time, and for months after, were complex.  She had been moved to
+deep pity, for in spite of what he had told her of his business
+transactions, it was impossible for her to think of him as a criminal.
+That he had been the tool of others, she knew, but it remained a question
+in her mind how clearly he had perceived the immorality of his course,
+and of theirs.  He had not been given to casuistry, and he had been
+brought up in a school the motto of which he had once succinctly stated:
+the survival of the fittest.  He had not been, alas, one of those to
+survive.
+
+Honora had found it impossible to unravel the tangled skein of their
+relationship, and to assign a definite amount of blame to each.  She did
+not shirk hers, and was willing to accept a full measure.  That she had
+done wrong in marrying him, and again in leaving him to marry another
+man, she acknowledged freely.  Wrong as she knew this to have been,
+severely though she had been punished for it, she could not bring herself
+to an adequate penitence.  She tried to remember him as he had been at
+Silverdale, and in the first months of their marriage, and not as he had
+afterwards become.  There was no question in her mind, now that it was
+given her to see things more clearly, that she might have tried harder,
+much harder, to make their marriage a success.  He might, indeed, have
+done more to protect and cherish her.  It was a man's part to guard a
+woman against the evils with which she had been surrounded.  On the other
+hand, she could not escape the fact, nor did she attempt to escape it,
+that she had had the more light of the two: and that, though the task
+were formidable, she might have fought to retain that light and infuse
+him with it.
+
+That she did not hold herself guiltless is the important point.  Many of
+her hours were spent in retrospection.  She was, in a sense, as one dead,
+yet retaining her faculties; and these became infinitely keen now that
+she was deprived of the power to use them as guides through life.  She
+felt that the power had come too late, like a legacy when one is old.
+And she contemplated the Honora of other days--of the flesh, as though
+she were now the spirit departed from that body; sorrowfully, poignantly
+regretful of the earthly motives, of the tarnished ideals by which it had
+been animated and led to destruction.
+
+Even Hugh Chiltern had left her no illusions.  She thought of him at
+tunes with much tenderness; whether she still loved him or not she could
+not say.  She came to the conclusion that all capacity for intense
+feeling had been burned out of her.  And she found that she could permit
+her mind to rest upon no period of her sojourn at Grenoble without a
+sense of horror; there had been no hour when she had seemed secure from
+haunting terror, no day that had not added its mite to the gathering
+evidence of an ultimate retribution.  And it was like a nightmare to
+summon again this spectacle of the man going to pieces under her eyes.
+The whole incident in her life as time wore on assumed an aspect bizarre,
+incredible, as the follies of a night of madness appear in the saner
+light of morning.  Her great love had bereft her of her senses, for had
+the least grain of sanity remained to her she might have known that the
+thing they attempted was impossible of accomplishment.
+
+Her feeling now, after four years, might be described as relief.  To
+employ again the figure of the castaway, she often wondered why she of
+all others had been rescued from the tortures of slow drowning and thrown
+up on an island.  What had she done above the others to deserve
+preservation?  It was inevitable that she should on occasions picture to
+herself the years with him that would have stretched ahead, even as the
+vision of them had come to her that morning when, in obedience to his
+telegram, she had told Starling to prepare for guests.  Her escape had
+indeed been miraculous!
+
+Although they had passed through a ceremony, the conviction had never
+taken root in her that she had been married to Chiltern.  The tie that
+had united her to him had not been sacred, though it had been no less
+binding; more so, in fact.  That tie would have become a shackle.  Her
+perception of this, after his death, had led her to instruct her attorney
+to send back to his relatives all but a small income from his estate,
+enough for her to live on during her lifetime.  There had been some
+trouble about this matter; Mrs. Grainger, in particular, had surprised
+her in making objections, and had finally written a letter which Honora
+received with a feeling akin to gratitude.  Whether her own action had
+softened this lady's feelings, she never understood; she had cherished
+the letter for its unexpectedly charitable expressions.  Chiltern's
+family had at last agreed to accept the estate on the condition that the
+income mentioned should be tripled.  And to this Honora had consented.
+Money had less value than ever in her eyes.
+
+She lived here in Paris in what may be called a certain peace, made no
+demands upon the world, and had no expectations from it.  She was now in
+half mourning, and intended to remain so.  Her isolation was of her own
+choice, if a stronger expression be not used.  She was by no means an
+enforced outcast.  And she was even aware that a certain sympathy for her
+had grown up amongst her former friends which had spread to the colony of
+her compatriots in Paris; in whose numbers there were some, by no means
+unrecognized, who had defied the conventions more than she.  Hugh
+Chiltern's reputation, and the general knowledge of his career, had no
+doubt aided to increase this sympathy, but the dignity of her conduct
+since his death was at the foundation of it.  Sometimes, on her walks
+and drives, she saw people bowing to her, and recognized friends or
+acquaintances of what seemed to her like a former existence.
+
+Such had been her life in Paris until a certain day in early September,
+a month before this chapter opens.  It was afternoon, and she was sitting
+in the balcony cutting a volume of memoirs when she heard the rattle of a
+cab on the cobbles below, and peered curiously over the edge of the
+railing.  Although still half a block away, the national characteristics
+of the passenger were sufficiently apparent.  He was an American--of that
+she was sure.  And many Americans did not stray into that quarter.  The
+length of his legs, for one thing, betrayed him: he found the seat of the
+fiacre too low, and had crossed one knee over the other.  Other and less
+easily definable attributes he did not lack.  And as he leaned against
+the faded blue cushions regarding with interest the buildings he passed,
+he seemed, like an ambassador, to convert the cab in which he rode into
+United States territory.  Then she saw that it was Peter Erwin.
+
+She drew back her head from the balcony rail, and tried to sit still and
+to think, but she was trembling as one stricken with a chill.  The cab
+stopped; and presently, after an interval, his card was handed her.  She
+rose, and stood for a moment with her hand against the wall before she
+went into the salon.  None of the questions she had asked herself were
+answered.  Was she glad to see him? and what would be his attitude
+towards her?  When she beheld him standing before her she had strength
+only to pronounce his name.
+
+He came forward quickly and took her hand and looked down into her face.
+She regarded him tremulously, instinctively guessing the vital importance
+of this moment for him; and she knew then that he had been looking
+forward to it in mingled hope and dread, as one who gazes seaward after
+a night of tempest for the ship he has seen at dusk in the offing.  What
+had the tempest done to her?  Such was his question.  And her heart
+leaped as she saw the light growing in his eyes, for it meant much to her
+that he should see that she was not utterly dismantled.  She fell; his
+own hand tremble as he relinquished hers.  He was greatly moved; his
+voice, too, betrayed it.
+
+"You see I have found you," he said.
+
+"Yes," she answered; "--why did you come?"
+
+"Why have I always come to you, when it was possible?" he asked.
+
+"No one ever had such a friend, Peter.  Of that I am sure:'
+
+"I wanted to see Paris," he said, "before I grew too decrepit to enjoy
+it."
+
+She smiled, and turned away.
+
+"Have you seen much of it?"
+
+"Enough to wish to see more."
+
+"When did you arrive?"
+
+"Some time in the night," he said, "from Cherbourg.  And I'm staying at a
+very grand hotel, which might be anywhere.  A man I crossed with on the
+steamer took me there.  I think I'd move to one of the quieter ones, the
+French ones, if I were a little surer of my pronunciation and the
+subjunctive mood."
+
+"You don't mean to say you've been studying French!"
+
+He coloured a little, and laughed.
+
+"You think it ridiculous at my time of life?  I suppose you're right.
+You should have seen me trying to understand the cabmen.  The way these
+people talk reminds me more of a Gatling gun than anything I can think
+of.  It certainly isn't human."
+
+"Perhaps you have come over as ambassador," she suggested.  "When I saw
+you in the cab, even before I recognized you, I thought of a bit of our
+soil broken off and drifted over here."
+
+Her voice did not quite sustain the lighter note--the emotion his visit
+was causing her was too great.  He brought with him into her retreat not
+so much a flood of memories as of sensations.  He was a man whose image
+time with difficulty obliterates, whose presence was a shining thing: so
+she had grown to value it in proportion as she had had less of it.  She
+did inevitably recall the last time she had seen him, in the little
+Western city, and how he had overwhelmed her, invaded her with doubts and
+aroused the spirit which had possessed her to fight fiercely for its
+foothold.  And to-day his coming might be likened to the entrance of a
+great physician into the room of a distant and lonely patient whom amidst
+wide ministrations he has not forgotten.  She saw now that he had been
+right.  She had always seen it, clearly indeed when he had been beside
+her, but the spirit within her had been too strong, until now.  Now, when
+it had plundered her soul of treasures--once so little valued--it had
+fled.  Such were her thoughts.
+
+The great of heart undoubtedly possess this highest quality of the
+physician,--if the statement may thus be put backhandedly,--and Peter
+Erwin instinctively understood the essential of what was going on within
+her.  He appeared to take a delight in the fancy she had suggested; that
+he had brought a portion of the newer world to France.
+
+"Not a piece of the Atlantic coast, certainly," he replied.  "One of the
+muddy islands, perhaps, of the Mississippi."
+
+"All the more representative," she said.  "You seem to have taken
+possession of Paris, Peter--not Paris of you.  You have annexed the seat
+of the Capets, and brought democracy at last into the Faubourg."
+
+"Without a Reign of Terror," he added quizzically.
+
+"If you are not ambassador, what are you?" she asked.  "I have expected
+at any moment to read in the Figaro that you were President of the United
+States."
+
+"I am the American tourist," he declared, "with Baedeker for my Bible,
+who desires to be shown everything.  And I have already discovered that
+the legend of the fabulous wealth of the Indies is still in force here.
+There are many who are willing to believe that in spite of my modest
+appearance--maybe because of it--I have sailed over in a galleon
+filled with gold.  Already I have been approached from every side by
+confidential gentlemen who announced that they spoke English--one of them
+said 'American'--who have offered to show me many things, and who have
+betrayed enough interest in me to inquire whether I were married or
+single."
+
+Honora laughed.  They were seated in the balcony by this time, and he had
+the volume of memoirs on his knee, fingering it idly.
+
+"What did you say to them?" she asked.
+
+"I told them I was the proud father of ten children," he replied.  "That
+seemed to stagger them, but only for a moment.  They offered to take us
+all to the Louvre."
+
+"Peter, you are ridiculous!  But, in spite of your nationality, you don't
+look exactly gullible."
+
+"That is a relief," he said.  "I had begun to think I ought to leave my
+address and my watch with the Consul General .  .  .  ."
+
+Of such a nature was the first insidious rupture of that routine she had
+grown to look upon as changeless for the years to come, of the life she
+had chosen for its very immutable quality.  Even its pangs of loneliness
+had acquired a certain sweet taste.  Partly from a fear of a world that
+had hurt her, partly from fear of herself, she had made her burrow deep,
+that heat and cold, the changing seasons, and love and hate might be
+things far removed.  She had sought to remove comparisons, too, from the
+limits of her vision; to cherish and keep alive, indeed, such regrets as
+she had, but to make no new ones.
+
+Often had she thought of Peter Erwin, and it is not too much to say that
+he had insensibly grown into an ideal.  He had come to represent to her
+the great thing she had missed in life, missed by feverish searching in
+the wrong places, digging for gold where the ground had glittered.  And,
+if the choice had been given her, she would have preferred his spiritual
+to his bodily companionship--for a while, at least.  Some day, when she
+should feel sure that desire had ceased to throb, when she should have
+acquired an unshakable and absolute resignation, she would see him.  It
+is not too much to say, if her feeling be not misconstrued and stretched
+far beyond her own conception of it, that he was her one remaining
+interest in the world.  She had scanned the letters of her aunt and uncle
+for knowledge of his doings, and had felt her curiosity justified by a
+certain proprietorship that she did not define, faith in humankind, or
+the lack of it, usually makes itself felt through one's comparative
+contemporaries.  That her uncle was a good man, for instance, had no such
+effect upon Honora, as the fact that Peter was a good man.  And that he
+had held a true course had gradually become a very vital thing to her,
+perhaps the most vital thing; and she could have imagined no greater
+personal calamity now than to have seen him inconsistent.  For there are
+such men, and most people have known them.  They are the men who,
+unconsciously, keep life sweet.
+
+Yet she was sorry he had invaded her hiding-place.  She had not yet
+achieved peace, and much of the weary task would have to be done over
+after he was gone.
+
+In the meantime she drifted with astounding ease into another existence.
+For it was she, and not the confidential gentlemen, who showed Peter
+Paris: not the careless, pleasure-loving Paris of the restaurants, but of
+the Cluny and the Carnavalet.  The Louvre even was not neglected, and as
+they entered it first she recalled with still unaccustomed laughter his
+reply to the proffered services of the guide.  Indeed, there was much
+laughter in their excursions: his native humour sprang from the same well
+that held his seriousness.  She was amazed at his ability to strip a sham
+and leave it grotesquely naked; shams the risible aspect of which she had
+never observed in spite of the familiarity four years had given her.
+Some of his own countrymen and countrywomen afforded him the
+greatest amusement in their efforts to carry off acquired European
+"personalities," combinations of assumed indifference and effrontery, and
+an accent the like of which was never heard before.  But he was neither
+bitter nor crude in his criticisms.  He made her laugh, but he never made
+her ashamed.  His chief faculty seemed to be to give her the power to
+behold, with astonishing clearness, objects and truths which had lain
+before her eyes, and yet hidden.  And she had not thought to acquire any
+more truths.
+
+The depth of his pleasure in the things he saw was likewise a revelation
+to her.  She was by no means a bad guide to the Louvre and the
+Luxembourg, but the light in her which had come slowly flooded him with
+radiance at the sight of a statue or a picture.  He would stop with an
+exclamation and stand gazing, self-forgetful, for incredible periods, and
+she would watch him, filled with a curious sense of the limitations of an
+appreciation she had thought complete.  Where during his busy life had
+he got this thing which others had sought in many voyages in vain?
+
+Other excursions they made, and sometimes these absorbed a day.  It was a
+wonderful month, that Parisian September, which Honora, when she allowed
+herself to think, felt that she had no right to.  A month filled to the
+brim with colour: the stone facades of the houses, which in certain
+lights were what the French so aptly call bleuatre; the dense green
+foliage of the horse-chestnut trees, the fantastic iron grills, the Arc
+de Triomphe in the centre of its circle at sunset, the wide shaded
+avenues radiating from it, the bewildering Champs Elysees, the blue
+waters of the Seine and the graceful bridges spanning it, Notre Dame
+against the sky.  Their walks took them, too, into quainter, forgotten
+regions where history was grim and half-effaced, and they speculated on
+the France of other days.
+
+They went farther afield; and it was given them to walk together down
+green vistas cut for kings, to linger on terraces with the river far
+below them, and the roofs of Paris in the hazy distance; that Paris,
+sullen so long, the mutterings of which the kings who had sat there must
+have heard with dread; that Paris which had finally risen in its wrath
+and taken the pleasure-houses and the parks for itself.
+
+Once they went out to Chantilly, the cameo-like chateau that stands
+mirrored in its waters, and wandered through the alleys there.  Honora
+had left her parasol on the parapet, and as they returned Peter went to
+get it, while she awaited him at a little distance.  A group was chatting
+gayly on the lawn, and one of them, a middle-aged, well-dressed man
+hailed him with an air of fellowship, and Peter stopped for a moment's
+talk.
+
+"We were speaking of ambassadors the other day," he said when he joined
+her; "that was our own, Minturn."
+
+"We were speaking of them nearly a month ago," she said.
+
+"A month ago!  I can't believe it!" he exclaimed.
+
+"What did he say to you?"  Honora inquired presently.
+
+"He was abusing me for not letting him know I was in Paris."
+
+"Peter, you ought to have let him know!"
+
+"I didn't come over here to see the ambassador," answered Peter, gayly.
+
+She talked less than usual on their drive homeward, but he did not seem
+to notice the fact.  Dusk was already lurking in the courtyards and
+byways of the quiet quarter when the porter let them in, and the stone
+stairway of the old hotel was almost in darkness.  The sitting-room, with
+its yellow, hangings snugly drawn and its pervading but soft light, was a
+grateful change.  And while she was gone to--remove her veil and hat,
+Peter looked around it.
+
+It was redolent of her.  A high vase of remarkable beauty, filled with
+white roses, stood on the gueridon.  He went forward and touched it, and
+closed his eyes as though in pain.  When he opened them he saw her
+standing in the archway.
+
+She had taken off her coat, and was in a simple white muslin gown, with a
+black belt--a costume that had become habitual.  Her age was thirty.  The
+tragedy and the gravity of her life during these later years had touched
+her with something that before was lacking.  In the street, in the
+galleries, people had turned to look at her; not with impudent stares.
+She caught attention, aroused imagination.  Once, the year before, she
+had had a strange experience with a well-known painter, who, in an
+impulsive note, had admitted following her home and bribing the
+concierge.  He craved a few sittings.  Her expression now, as she
+looked at Peter, was graver than usual.
+
+"You must not come to-morrow," she said.
+
+"I thought we were going to Versailles again," he replied in surprise.
+"I have made the arrangements."
+
+"I have changed my mind.  I'm not going."
+
+"You want to postpone it?" he asked.
+
+She took a chair beside the little blaze in the fireplace.
+
+"Sit down, Peter.  I wish to say something to you.  I have been wishing
+to do so for some time."
+
+"Do you object if I stand a moment?"  he said.  "I feel so much more
+comfortable standing, especially when I am going to be scolded."
+
+"Yes," she admitted, "I am going to scold you.  Your conscience has
+warned you."
+
+"On the contrary," he declared, "it has never been quieter.  If I have
+offended; it is through ignorance."
+
+"It is through charity, as usual," she said m a low voice.  "If your
+conscience be quiet, mine is not.  It is in myself that I am
+disappointed--I have been very selfish.  I have usurped you.  I have
+known it all along, and I have done very wrong in not relinquishing you
+before."
+
+"Who would have shown me Paris?" he exclaimed.
+
+"No," she continued, "you would not have been alone.  If I had needed
+proof of that fact, I had it to-day--"
+
+"Oh, Minturn," he interrupted; "think of me hanging about an Embassy and
+trying not to spill tea!"  And he smiled at the image that presented.
+
+Her own smile was fleeting.
+
+"You would never do that, I know," she said gravely.
+
+"You are still too modest, Peter, but the time has gone by when I can be
+easily deceived.  You have a great reputation among men of affairs, an
+unique one.  In spite of the fact that you are distinctly American, you
+have a wide interest in what is going on in the world.  And you have an
+opportunity here to meet people of note, people really worth while from
+every point of view.  You have no right to neglect it."
+
+He was silent a moment, looking down at her.  She was leaning forward,
+her eyes fixed on the fire, her hands clasped between her knees.
+
+"Do you think I care for that?"  he asked.
+
+"You ought to care," she said, without looking up.  "And it is my duty to
+try to make you care."
+
+"Honora, why do you think I came over here?" he said.
+
+"To see Paris," she answered.  "I have your own word for it.
+To--to continue your education.  It never seems to stop."
+
+"Did you really believe that?"
+
+"Of course I believed it.  What could be more natural?  And you have
+never had a holiday like this."
+
+"No," he agreed.  "I admit that."
+
+"I don't know how much longer you are going to stay," she said.  "You
+have not been abroad before, and there are other places you ought to go."
+
+"I'll get you to make out an itinerary."
+
+"Peter, can't you see that I'm serious?  I have decided to take matters
+in my own hands.  The rest of the time you are here, you may come to see
+me twice a week.  I shall instruct the concierge."
+
+He turned and grasped the mantel shelf with both hands, and touched the
+log with the toe of his boot.
+
+"What I told you about seeing Paris may be called polite fiction," he
+said.  "I came over here to see you.  I have been afraid to say it until
+to-day, and I am afraid to say it now."
+
+She sat very still.  The log flared up again, and he turned slowly and
+looked at the shadows in her face.
+
+"You-you have always been good to me," she answered.  "I have never
+deserved it--I have never understood it.  If it is any satisfaction for
+you to know that what I have saved of myself I owe to you, I tell you so
+freely."
+
+"That," he said, "is something for which God forbid that I should take
+credit.  What you are is due to the development of a germ within you, a
+development in which I have always had faith.  I came here to see you, I
+came here because I love you, because I have always loved you, Honora."
+
+"Oh, no, not that!" she cried; "not that!"
+
+"Why not?" he asked.  "It is something I cannot help, something beyond
+my power to prevent if I would.  But I would not.  I am proud of it, and
+I should be lost without it.  I have had it always.  I have come over to
+beg you to marry me."
+
+"It's impossible!  Can't you see it's impossible?"
+
+"You don't love me?" he said.  Into those few words was thrown all the
+suffering of his silent years.
+
+"I don't know what I feel for you," she answered in an agonized voice,
+her fingers tightening over the backs of her white hands.  "If reverence
+be love--if trust be love, infinite and absolute trust--if gratitude be
+love--if emptiness after you are gone be a sign of it--yes, I love you.
+If the power to see clearly only through you, to interpret myself only by
+your aid be love, I acknowledge it.  I tell you so freely, as of your
+right to know.  And the germ of which you spoke is you.  You have grown
+until you have taken possession of--of what is left of me.  If I had only
+been able to see clearly from the first, Peter, I should be another woman
+to-day, a whole woman, a wise woman.  Oh, I have thought of it much.  The
+secret of life was there at my side from the time I was able to pronounce
+your name, and I couldn't see it.  You had it.  You stayed.  You took
+duty where you found it, and it has made you great.  Oh, I don't mean to
+speak in a worldly sense.  When I say that, it is to express the highest
+human quality of which I can think and feel.  But I can't marry you.  You
+must see it."
+
+"I cannot see it," he replied, when he had somewhat gained control of
+himself.
+
+"Because I should be wronging you."
+
+"How?" he asked.
+
+"In the first place, I should be ruining your career."
+
+"If I had a career," he said, smiling gently, "you couldn't ruin it.
+You both overestimate and underestimate the world's opinion, Honora.
+As my wife, it will not treat you cruelly.  And as for my career, as you
+call it, it has merely consisted in doing as best I could the work that
+has come to me.  I have tried to serve well those who have employed me,
+and if my services be of value to them, and to those who may need me in
+the future, they are not going to reject me.  If I have any worth in the
+world, you will but add to it.  Without you I am incomplete."
+
+She looked up at him wonderingly.
+
+"Yes, you are great," she said.  "You pity me, you think of my loneliness."
+
+"It is true I cannot bear to picture you here," he exclaimed.  "The
+thought tortures me, but it is because I love you, because I wish to take
+and shield you.  I am not a man to marry a woman without love.  It seems
+to me that you should know me well enough to believe that, Honora.  There
+never has been any other woman in my life, and there never can be.  I
+have given you proof of it, God knows."
+
+"I am not what I was," she said, "I am not what I was.  I have been
+dragged down."
+
+He bent and lifted her hand from her knee, and raised it to his lips, a
+homage from him that gave her an exquisite pain.
+
+"If you had been dragged down," he answered simply, "my love would have
+been killed.  I know something of the horrors you have been through, as
+though I had suffered them myself.  They might have dragged down another
+woman, Honora.  But they have strangely ennobled you."
+
+She drew her hand away.
+
+"No," she said, "I do not deserve happiness.  It cannot be my destiny."
+
+"Destiny," he repeated.  "Destiny is a thing not understandable by finite
+minds.  It is not necessarily continued tragedy and waste, of that I am
+certain.  Only a little thought is required, it seems to me, to assure us
+that we cannot be the judges of our own punishment on this earth.  And of
+another world we know nothing.  It cannot be any one's destiny to throw
+away a life while still something may be made of it.  You would be
+throwing your life away here.  That no other woman is possible, or
+ever can be possible, for me should be a consideration with you, Honora.
+What I ask of you is a sacrifice--will you make me happy?"
+
+Her eyes filled with tears.
+
+"Oh, Peter, do you care so much as that?  If--if I could be sure that I
+were doing it for you!  If in spite--of all that has happened to me, I
+could be doing something for you--!"
+
+He stooped and kissed her.
+
+"You can if you will," he said.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Sought to remove comparisons, too
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MODERN CHRONICLE, V8, BY CHURCHILL ***
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