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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Ideala, by Sarah Grand
+
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+*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!*****
+
+
+Title: Ideala
+
+Author: Sarah Grand
+
+Release Date: November, 2004 [EBook #6855]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on February 2, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII, with a few ISO-8859-1 characters
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IDEALA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Joshua Hutchinson, Tom Allen, David Moynihan, Charles Franks
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+IDEALA
+
+BY SARAH GRAND
+
+  "L'esprit ne nous garantit pas
+  des sottises de notre humeur."--VAUVENARGUES
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+You will ask me, perhaps, even you who are all charity, why parts of
+this book are what they are. I can only answer with another question:
+Why are we what we are? But I warn you that it would not be fair to
+take any of Ideala's opinions, here given, as final. Much of what she
+thought was the mere effervescence of a strong mind in a state of
+fermentation, a mind passing successively through the three stages of
+the process; the _vinous_, alcoholic, or excitable stage; the
+_acetous_, jaundiced, or embittered stage; and the _putrefactive_,
+or unwholesome stage; and also embodying, at different times, the
+characteristics of all three. But, even during its worst phase, it was
+an earnest mind, seeking the truth diligently, and not to be blamed
+for stumbling upon good and bad together by the way. It is, in fact,
+not a perfect, but a transitional state which I offer for your
+consideration, a state which has its repulsive features, but which, it
+may be hoped, would result in a beautiful deposit, when at last the
+inevitable effervescence had subsided.
+
+But why exhibit the details of the process, you may ask. To encourage
+others, of course. What help is there in the contemplation of
+perfection ready made? It only disheartens us. We should lay down our
+arms, we should struggle no longer, we should be hopeless, despairing,
+reckless, if we never had a glimpse of growth, of those "stepping-
+stones of their dead selves" upon which men mount to higher things. The
+imperfections must be studied, because it is only from the details of
+the process that anything can be learned. Putting aside the people who
+criticise, not with a view to mending matters, but because a
+
+    ... low desire
+  Not to seem lowest makes them level all;
+
+the people who judge, who condemn, who have no mercy on any faults and
+failings but their own, and who,
+
+  ... if they find
+  Some stain or blemish in a name of note,
+  Not grieving that their greatest are so small,
+  Inflate themselves with some insane delight,
+
+and would ostracise a neighbour for the first offence by ruling that
+one mistake must mar a life--anybody's life but their own, of course;
+who have no peace in themselves, no habit of sweet thought; whose lives
+are one long agony of excitement, objection, envy, hate, and unrest;
+the decently clad devils of society who may be known by their eternal
+carping, and who are already in torment, and doing their utmost to drag
+others after them. Putting them aside, as any one may who has the
+courage to face them--for they are terrible cowards--and taking the
+best of us, and the best intentioned among us, we find that all are apt
+to make some one trait in the characters, some one trick in the
+manners, some one incident in the lives of people we meet the text of
+an objection to the whole person. And a state of objection is a
+miserable state, and a dangerous one, because it stops our growth by
+robbing us of half our power to love, in which lies all our strength,
+and which, with the delight of being loved, is the one thing worth
+living for. When we know in ourselves that love is heaven, and hate is
+hell, and all the intervals of like and dislike are antechambers to
+either, we possess the key to joy and sorrow, by which alone we can
+attain to the mystery that may not be mentioned here, but beyond which
+ecstasy awaits us.
+
+This is why such details are necessary.
+
+Doctors-spiritual must face the horrors of the dissecting-room, and
+learn before they can cure or teach; and even we, poor feeble
+creatures, who have no strength, however great our desire, to do
+either, can help at least a little by not hindering, if we attend to
+our own mental health, which we shall do all the better for knowing
+something of our moral anatomy, and the diseases to which it is liable.
+We hate and despise in our ignorance, and grow weak; but love and pity
+thrive on knowledge, and to love and pity we owe all the beauty of
+life, and all our highest power.
+
+_"It is that life of custom and accident in which many of us pass
+much of our time in this world; that life in which we do what we have
+not purposed, and speak what we do not mean, and assent to what we do
+not understand; that life which is overlaid by the weight of things
+external to it, and is moulded by them, instead of assimilating them;
+that which, instead of growing and blossoming under any wholesome dew,
+is crystallised over with it, as with hoar frost, and becomes to the
+true life what an arborescence is to a tree, a candied agglomeration of
+thoughts and habits foreign to it, brittle, obstinate, and icy, which
+can neither bend nor grow, but must be crushed and broken to bits if it
+stands in our way. All men are liable to be in some degree frost-bitten
+in this sort; all are partly encumbered and crusted over with idle
+matter; only, if they have real life in them, they are always breaking
+this bark away in noble rents, until it becomes, like the black strips
+upon the birch tree, only a witness of their own inward strength."_
+--RUSKIN.
+
+
+
+
+IDEALA
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+She came among us without flourish of trumpets. She just slipped into
+her place, almost unnoticed, but once she was settled there it seemed
+as if we had got something we had wanted all our lives, and we should
+have missed her as you would miss the thrushes in the spring, or any
+other sweet familiar thing. But what the secret of her charm was I
+cannot say. She was full of inconsistencies. She disliked ostentation,
+and never wore those ornamental fidgets ladies delight in, but she
+would take a piece of priceless lace to cover her head when she went
+to water her flowers. And she said rings were a mistake; if your hands
+were ugly they drew attention to them, if pretty they hid their
+beauty; yet she wore half-a-dozen worthless ones habitually for the
+love of those who gave them, to her. It was said that she was striking
+in appearance, but cold and indifferent in manner. Some, on whom she
+had never turned her eyes, called her repellent. But it was noticed
+that men who took her down to dinner, or had any other opportunity of
+talking to her, were never very positive in, what they said of her
+afterwards. She made every one, men and women alike, feel, and she did
+it unconsciously. Without effort, without eccentricity, without
+anything you could name or define, she impressed you, and she held you
+--or at least she held _me_, always--expectant. Nothing about her ever
+seemed to be of the present. When she talked she made you wonder what
+her past had been, and when she was silent you began to speculate
+about her future. But she did not talk much as a rule, and when she
+did speak it was always some subject of interest, some fact that she
+wanted to ascertain accurately, or some beautiful idea, that occupied
+her; she had absolutely no small talk for any but her most intimate
+friends, whom she was wont at times to amuse with an endless stock of
+anecdotes and quaint observations; and this made people of limited
+capacity hard on her. Some of these called her a cold, ambitious,
+unsympathetic woman; and perhaps, from their point of view, she was
+so. She certainly aspired to something far above them, and had nothing
+but scorn for the dead level of dull mediocrity from which they would
+not try to rise.
+
+"To be distinguished among these people," she once said, "it is only
+necessary to have one's heart
+
+  Dowered with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn,
+    The love of love.
+
+There is no need to _do_ anything; if you have the right _feeling_ you
+may be as passive as a cow, and still excel them all, for they never
+thrill to a noble thought."
+
+"Then, pity them," I said.
+
+"No, despise them," she answered. "Pity is for affliction, for such
+shortcomings as are hereditary and can hardly be remedied--for the
+taint in nature which is all but hopeless. But these people are not
+afflicted. They could do better if they would. They know the higher
+walk, and deliberately pursue the lower. Their whole feeling is for
+themselves, and such things as have power to move them through the
+flesh only. I would almost rather sin on the impulse of a generous but
+misguided nature, and have the power to appreciate and the will to be
+better, than live a perfect, loveless woman, caring only for myself,
+like these. I should do more good."
+
+They called Ideala unsympathetic, yet I have known her silent from
+excess of sympathy. She could walk with you, reading your heart and
+soul, sorrowing and rejoicing with you, and make you feel without a
+word that she did so. It was this power to sympathise, and the longing
+she had to find good in everything, that made her forgive the faults
+that were patent in a nature with which she was finally brought into
+contact, for the sake of the virtues which she discovered hidden away
+deep down under a slowly hardening crust of that kind of self-
+indulgence which mars a man.
+
+But her own life was set to a tune that admitted of endless variations.
+Sometimes it was difficult even for those who knew her best to detect
+the original melody among the clashing cords that concealed it; but,
+let it be hidden as it might, one felt that it would resolve itself
+eventually, through many a jarring modulation and startling cadence,
+perhaps, back to the perfect key.
+
+I saw her first at a garden party. She scarcely noticed me when we were
+introduced. There were great masses of white cloud drifting up over the
+blue above the garden, and she was wholly occupied with them when she
+could watch them without rudeness to those about her; and even when she
+was obliged to look away, I could see that she was still thinking of
+the sky. "Do you live much in cloudland?" I asked, and felt for a
+moment I had said a silly thing; but she turned to me quickly, and
+looked at me for the first time as if she saw me--and when I say she
+looked at me, I mean something more than an ordinary look, for Ideala's
+eyes were a wonder, affecting you as a poem does which has power to
+exalt.
+
+"Ah, you feel it too," she said. "Are they not beautiful? Will you sit
+beside me here? You can see the river as well--down there, beneath the
+trees."
+
+I thought she would have talked after that, but she did not. When I
+spoke to her once or twice she answered absently; and presently she
+forgot me altogether, and began to sing to herself softly:
+
+  Flow down, cold rivulet, to the sea,
+    Thy tribute wave deliver;
+  No more by thee my steps shall be
+    For ever and for ever.
+
+Then suddenly recollecting herself, she stopped, and exclaimed, in much
+confusion, "O please forgive me! That stupid thing has been running in
+my head all day--and it is a way I have. I always forget people and
+begin to sing."
+
+She did not see in the least that her apology might have been
+considered an adding of insult to injury, and, of course, I was careful
+not to let her know that I thought it so, although I must confess that
+for a moment I felt just a trifle aggrieved. I thought my presence had
+bored her, and was surprised to see, when I got up to go, that she
+would rather have had me stay.
+
+She cared little for people in general, and had few likings. It was
+love with her if anything; but those whom she loved once she loved
+always, never changing in her affection for them, however badly they
+might treat her. And she had the power of liking people for themselves,
+regardless of their feeling for her; indeed, her indifference on this
+score was curious. I once heard a lady say to her: "You are one of the
+few young married ladies whom I dare chaperon in these degenerate days.
+No degree of admiration or worship ever seems to touch you. Is it real
+or pretended, your unconsciousness?"
+
+"Unconsciousness of what?"
+
+"Of the feeling you excite."
+
+"The feeling _I_ excite?" Ideala seemed to think a moment; then she
+answered gravely: "I do not think I am conscious of anything that
+relates to myself, personally, in my intercourse with people. They are
+ideas to me for the most part--men especially so."
+
+That way she had of forgetting people's presence was one of her
+peculiarities. If she liked you she was content just to have you there,
+but she never showed it except by a regretful glance when you went
+away. She was very absent, too. One day I found her with a big, awkward
+volume on her knee, heated, excited, and evidently put out.
+
+"Is anything the matter?" I wanted to know.
+
+"O yes," she answered desperately; "I've lost my pen, and I'm writing
+for the mail."
+
+"Why, where are you looking for it?" I asked.
+
+She glanced at me, and then at the book.
+
+"I--I believe," she faltered, "I was looking for it among the p's in
+the French dictionary."
+
+On another occasion I watched her revising a manuscript. As she wrote
+her emendations she gummed them on over the old copy, and she was so
+absorbed that at last she put the gum-brush into the ink-bottle.
+Discovering her mistake, she gave a little disconcerted sort of laugh,
+and took the brush away to wash it. She returned presently, examining
+it critically to see if it were perfectly cleansed, and having
+satisfied herself, she carefully put it back in the ink-bottle.
+
+But perhaps the funniest instance of this peculiarity of hers was one
+that happened in the Grosvenor Gallery on a certain occasion. She had
+been busy with her catalogue, doing the pictures conscientiously, and
+not talking at all, when suddenly she burst out laughing.
+
+"Do you know what I have been doing?" she said. "I wanted to know who
+that man is"--indicating a gentleman of peculiar appearance in the
+crowd--"and I have been looking all over him for his number, that I
+might hunt up his name in the catalogue!"
+
+Her way of seeing analogies as plausible as the obvious relation of p
+to pen, and of acting on wholly wrong conclusions deduced from most
+unexceptionable premises, was another characteristic. She always blamed
+her early education, or rather want of education, for it. "If I had
+been taught to think," she said, "when my memory was being burdened
+with historical anecdotes torn from the text, and other useless scraps
+of knowledge, I should be able to see both sides of a subject, and
+judge rationally, now. As it is, I never see more than one side at a
+time, and when I have mastered that, I feel like the old judge in some
+Greek play, who, when he had heard one party to a suit, begged that the
+other would not speak as it would only poggle what was then clear to
+him."
+
+But in this Ideala was not quite fair to herself.
+
+It was not always--although, unfortunately, it was oftenest at critical
+moments--that she was beset with this inability to see more than one
+side of a subject at a time. The odd thing about it was that one never
+knew which side, the pathetic or the humorous, would strike her.
+Generally, however, it was the one that related least to herself
+personally. This self-forgetfulness, with a keen sense of the
+ludicrous, led her sometimes, when she had anything amusing to relate,
+to overlook considerations which would have kept other people silent.
+
+"I saw a pair of horses running away with a heavy wagon the other day,"
+she told us once. "It was in Cross Street, and there was a child in the
+way--there always is a child in the way!--and, as there was no one else
+to do it, I ran into the road to remove that child. I had to pull it
+aside quickly, and there was no time to say 'Allow me'--in fact, there
+was no time for anything--and in my hurry I lost my balance and fell in
+the mud, and the wagon came tearing over me. It was an unpleasant
+sensation, but I wasn't hurt, you know; neither the wheels nor the
+horses touched me. I got very dirty, though, and I have no doubt I
+looked as ridiculous as I felt, and for that I expected to be tenderly
+dealt with; but when I went to ask after the child, a few days later, a
+neighbour told me that its mother was out, and it was a good thing too,
+as she had been heard to declare she would 'go for that lady the next
+time she saw her, for flingin' of her bairn about!'"
+
+When she had told the story, Ideala was horrified to find that the
+fact, which she had overlooked, of her having risked her life to save
+the child struck us all much more forcibly than the ingratitude that
+amused her.
+
+Although her sense of humour was keen, it was not always, as I said
+before, the humorous side of a subject that struck her. I found her one
+day looking utterly miserable.
+
+"What has happened?" I asked. "You look sad."
+
+"And I feel sad," she answered. "I was just thinking what a pity it is
+those gay, pleasure-loving, flower-clad people of Hawaii are dying
+out!"
+
+She was quite in earnest, and could not be made to see that there was
+anything droll in her mourning poignantly for a people so remote.
+
+Another instance of her absent-mindedness recurs to me. The incident
+was related at our house one evening, in Ideala's presence, by Mr.
+Lloyd, a mutual friend. A clever drawing by another friend, of Ideala
+trying to force a cabman to take ten shillings for a half-crown fare--
+one of the great fears of her life being the chance of not giving
+people of that kind as much as they expected--had caused Ideala to
+protest that she _did_ understand money matters.
+
+"O yes, we all know that your capacity for business is quite
+extraordinary," Mr. Lloyd said, with a smile that meant something. And
+then, addressing us all, he asked: "Did I ever tell you about her
+coming to borrow five shillings from me one day? Shall I tell, Ideala?"
+
+"You may, if you like," Ideala answered, getting very red. "But the
+story is not interesting."
+
+We all began to be anxious to hear it.
+
+"Judge for yourselves," Mr. Lloyd said. "One day the head clerk came
+into my private room at the Bank, looking perplexed and discomfited.
+'Please, sir' he said, 'a lady wishes to see you.' 'A lady,' I
+answered. 'Ladies have no business here. What does she want?' 'She
+would not say, sir, and she would not send in her name. She said it did
+not matter.' I began to wonder what I had been doing. 'What is she
+like?' I asked. He looked all round as if in search of a simile, and
+then he answered: 'Well, sir, she's more like a picture than anything.'
+'Show her in,' I said."
+
+Here the story was interrupted by a shout of laughter. He laughed a
+little himself.
+
+"I should have been polite in any case," he declared, apologetically.
+"The clerk ushered in a lady whose extreme embarrassment made me sorry
+for her. She changed colour half-a-dozen times in as many seconds, and
+then she hurled her errand at my head in these words, without any
+previous preparation to break the blow: 'Mr. Lloyd, can you lend me
+five shillings?' and before I had recovered she continued--'I came in
+by train this morning, and I've lost my purse, and can't get back if
+you won't help me--at least I think I've lost my purse. I took it out
+to give sixpence to a beggar--and--and here is the sixpence!' and she
+held it out to me. She had given her purse to the beggar and carried
+the sixpence off in triumph. You may well say 'Oh, Ideala!'"
+
+"And Mr. Lloyd was so very good as to take me to the station, and see
+me into the train," Ideala murmured; "and he gave me his bank-book to
+amuse me on the journey, and carried Huxley's _Elementary Physiology_,
+which I had come in to buy, off in triumph!"
+
+But with all her self-forgetfulness there were moments in which she
+showed that she must have thought deeply about herself, weighing her
+own individuality against others, to see what place she occupied in her
+own age, and how she stood with regard to the ages that had gone
+before; yet even this she seemed to have done in a selfless way, having
+apparently examined herself coolly, critically, fairly, as she might
+have examined any other specimen of humanity in which she felt an
+interest, unbiassed by any special regard.
+
+"People always want to know if I write, or paint, or play, or what I
+do," she once said to me. "They all expect me to do something. My
+function is not to do, but to be. I make no poetry. I am a poem--if you
+read me aright."
+
+And again, in a moment of despondency, she said, "I am one of the weary
+women of the nineteenth century. No other age could have produced me."
+
+When she said she did nothing she must have meant she was not great in
+anything, for her time was all occupied, and those things in which she
+was interested were never so well done without her help. If any crying
+abuse were brought to light in the old Cathedral city; if any large
+measure of reform were set on foot; if the local papers suddenly became
+eloquent in favour of some good movement, and adroit in their powers of
+persuasion; if burdens had to be lifted from the oppressed, and the
+weak defended against great odds, you might be sure that Ideala was
+busy, and her work could be detected in it all. And she was especially
+active when efforts were being made to find amusement for the people.
+"That is what they want, poor things," she would say. "Their lives are
+such a dreary round of dull monotonous toil, and they have so little
+sun to cheer them. They ought to be taught to laugh, and have the
+brightness put into themselves, and then it would seem as if they had
+been relieved of half the atmospheric pressure beneath which they
+groan. Think what your own life would be if day day after day brought
+you nothing but toil; if you had nothing to look back upon, nothing to
+look forward to, but the labour that makes a machine of you, deadening
+the power to care, and holding mind and body in the galling bondage and
+weariness of everlasting routine."
+
+She thought laughter an unfailing specific for most of the ills of
+life. "We can none of us be thankful enough for the sensation," she
+said. "Nothing relieves the mental oppression, which does such moral
+and physical harm, like mirth; of course, I mean legitimate laughter,
+not levity, nor the ill-natured rejoicing of small minds in such
+subjects for sorrow as their neighbours' faults, follies, and mistakes.
+What I am thinking of is the pleasure without excitement which there is
+in sympathetic intercourse with those large, loving natures that
+elevate, and the laughter without bitterness which is always a part of
+it."
+
+Like most people whose goodness is neither affected nor acquired, but
+natural to them, Ideala saw no merit in her own works, and would not
+take the credit she deserved for them; nor would she have had her good
+deeds known at all if she could have helped it. But knowledge of these
+things leaks out somehow, although probably not a third of what she did
+will ever be even suspected.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+Speaking to me of women one day, she said: "Certainly they are
+_vainqueurs des vainqueurs de la terre_ in any sense they choose; but
+the pity of it is that they do not choose to exercise their power for
+good to any great extent. I agree with Madame Bernier--if it were
+Madame Bernier--who said: _'L'ignorance où les femmes sont de leurs
+devoirs, l'abus qu'elles font de leur puissance, leur font perdre le
+plus beau et le plus précieux de leurs avantages, celui d'être
+utiles.'_ But hundreds of other quotations will occur to you, written
+by thoughtful men and women in all ages, and all to the same effect;
+it is impossible to over-estimate their restraining and refining
+influence as the companions and mothers of men--and almost equally
+impossible to make them realise their responsibility or care to use
+their strength. I would have every woman feel herself a power for good
+in the land--and if only half of them did, what a world of difference
+it would make to everybody's health and happiness! But women should,
+as a rule, be silent powers. There are, of course, occasions when they
+_must_ speak--and all honour to those who do so when the need
+arises--but our influence is most felt when it is quietly persistent
+and unobtrusive. There is no social reform that we might not
+accomplish if we agreed among ourselves to do it, and then worked,
+each of us using her influence to that end in her own family, and
+among her own friends, only. I once induced some ladies to try a
+little experiment to prove this. At that time the gentlemen of our
+respective families were all wearing a certain kind of necktie. We
+agreed to banish the necktie, and in a month it had disappeared, and
+not one of those gentlemen was ever able to tell us why he had given
+it up. We don't deserve much credit for our ingenuity, though," she
+added, lightly. "Men are so easily managed. All you have to do is to
+feed them and flatter them."
+
+"I think that hardly fair," I commented.
+
+"What? The feeding and flattering?"
+
+"No, the conspiracy."
+
+"Well, that occurred to me too--afterwards, when it was too late to do
+anything but repent. At the time, I own, I thought of nothing but the
+success of the experiment as an example and proof of our will-power."
+
+"You considered one side of the subject only, as per usual, when you
+are eager and interested," I softly insinuated.
+
+She frowned at me thoughtfully; then, after a pause, she resumed: "Ah,
+yes! You may be sure there is a great deal of good motive power in
+women, but most of it is lost for want of knowledge and means to apply
+it. It works like the sails of a windmill not attached to the
+machinery, which whirl round and round with incredible velocity and
+every evidence of strength, but serve no better purpose than to show
+which way the wind blows."
+
+This question of the position of women in our own day occupied her a
+good deal.
+
+"The women of my time," she said to me once, "are in an unsettled
+state, it may be a state of transition. Much that made life worth
+having has lost its charm for them. The old interests pall upon them.
+Occupations that used to be the great business of their lives are now
+thought trivial, and are left to children and to servants. Principles
+accepted since the beginning of time have been called in question.
+Weariness and distrust have taken the place of peace and content, and
+doubt and dissatisfaction are the order of the day. Women want
+something; they are determined to have it, too; and doubtless they
+would get it if only they knew what it is that they want. They are
+struggling to arrive at something, but opinions differ widely as to
+what that something ought to be; and the result is that they have
+divided themselves into three classes, not exactly distinct: they
+dovetail into each other so nicely that it is hard to say where the
+influence of the one set ends and the other begins. There are, first of
+all, the women who in their struggles for political power have done so
+much to unsex us. They have tried to force themselves into unnatural
+positions, and the consequence has been about as pleasing and edifying
+as an attempt to make a goose sing. They clamour for change, mistaking
+change for progress. But don't let the puzzling dovetail confuse you.
+The people I speak of are not those who have so nobly devoted
+themselves to the removal of the wrongs of women, though they work
+together. But the object of all this class is good. They wish to raise
+us, and what they want, for the most part, is a little more common
+sense--as is shown in their system of education, for instance, which
+cultivates the intellectual at the expense of the physical powers,
+girls being crammed as boys (to their great let and hindrance also) are
+crammed, just when nature wants all their strength to assist their
+growth; the result of which becomes periodically apparent when a number
+of amiable young ladies are let loose on society without hair or teeth.
+But the thing they clamour for most is equality. There is a great deal
+to be said in favour of placing the sexes on an equal footing, and if
+social conventions are stronger and more admirable than natural
+instincts--and doubtless they are--the thing should be done; but the
+innate perversity of women make it difficult--for, I know this, that
+whatever the position of a true woman, and however much she may clamour
+for equality with men in general, the man she herself loves in
+particular will always be her master.
+
+"But such ridicule as this party has brought upon itself would not have
+mattered so much had nothing worse come of it. Unfortunately, there
+seems to be no neutral ground for us women: we either do good or harm;
+and I hold that first class responsible for the existence of those
+people who clamour for change of any kind, regardless of the
+consequences. Their ideas, shorn of all good intention, have resulted
+in the production of a new creature; and have made it possible for
+women who have the faults of both sexes and the virtues of neither to
+mix in society. The bad work done by the influence of this second class
+is only too apparent. It is to them we owe the fact that there is less
+refinement, less courtesy, less of the really good breeding which shows
+itself in kindness and consideration for others, and, Heaven help us!
+even less modesty among us now than there was some years ago."
+
+"These are the women, too, who spend their time and talents on the
+production of cleverly written books of the most corrupt tendency.
+Their works are a special feature of the age, and are doubly dangerous
+because they have the art of making the worst ideas attractive, by
+presenting them in forms too refined and beautiful to shock even the
+most delicate."
+
+"Besides these two classes there is the third, which is more difficult
+to define. It is the one on which our hope rests. The women who belong
+to it are dissatisfied like the others, but they are less decided, and
+therefore their dissatisfaction takes no positive shape. They also want
+something, and go this way and that as if in search of it, but they are
+not really trying for anything in particular. They do good and evil
+indiscriminately, and for the same motive: they find distraction in
+doing something--anything. But the desire to do good is latent in all
+of them; show them the way, and it will make itself apparent."
+
+"But what is the reason of all this dissatisfaction?" I asked. "Why
+don't you go to your husbands and brothers to be set right, as of old?"
+
+"Ah! when you ask me that, you get to the first cause of the trouble,"
+she answered. "The truth is that we have lost faith in our men. They
+claim some superiority for themselves, but we find none. The age
+requires people to practise what they preach, and yet expects us to be
+guided by the counsels of those whose own lives, we know, have rendered
+them contemptible. They are not fit to guide us, and we are not fit to
+go alone. I suppose we shall come to an understanding eventually--
+either they must be raised or we must be lowered. It is for the death
+of manliness we women mourn. We marry, and find we have taken upon
+ourselves misery, and lifelong widowhood of the mind and moral nature.
+Do you wonder that some of us ask: Why should we keep ourselves pure if
+impurity is to be our bedfellow? You make us breathe corruption, and
+wonder that we lose our health."
+
+"But why do you talk of the death of manliness? Men have as much
+courage now as they ever had."
+
+"Oh, of course--mere animal courage; there is plenty of that, but that
+is nothing. A cat will fight for her kittens. It is moral courage that
+makes a man, and where do you find it now? Are men self-denying? Are
+they scrupulous to a shadow of the truth? Are they disinterested? How
+many _gentlemen_ have you met in the course of your life? I know about
+half a dozen."
+
+"What do you call a gentleman, then?" I asked in surprise. "What makes
+a man one?"
+
+"Why, truth and affection, of course," she answered; "the one is the
+most ennobling, and the other the most refining quality. As a child I
+used to think ladies and gentlemen never told stories; it was only the
+common people who were dis-honourable, and that was what made them
+common. _Hélas_! one lives and learns!"
+
+"I don't think the world is worse than it ever was," I said, drily.
+
+"Not worse, when we know so much better!" she answered with scorn.
+"Not worse when we have learnt to see so clearly, and most of us
+acknowledge that
+
+  It is our will
+  Which thus enchains us to permitted ill!
+
+It is nearly two thousand years since Christianity began its work, and
+it is still unaccomplished. Do you know, I sometimes think that all
+this talk of virtue, and teaching of religion, is a kind of practical
+joke, gravely kept up to find a church parade of respectability for
+States, a profession for hundreds, and a means of influencing men by
+making a tender point in their nervous system to be touched, as with a
+rod, when necessary--a rod that is held over them always _in terrorem_!
+We all talk about morality; but try some measure of reform, and you
+will find that every man sees the necessity of it for his neighbour
+only. Goodness is happiness, and sin is disease. The truism is as old
+as the hills, and as evident; but if men were in earnest, do you
+suppose they would go on for ever choosing sin and its ghastly
+companion as they do? Do you know, there are moments when I think that
+even their reverence for the purity of women is a sham. For why do
+they keep us pure? Is it not to make each morsel more delicious for
+themselves, that sense and sentiment may be satisfied together, and
+their own pleasure made more complete? Individuals may be in earnest,
+but the great bulk of mankind is a hypocrite. When the history of this
+age is written, moral cowardice and self-indulgence will be found to
+have been the most striking characteristics of the people. There is no
+truth to be found in the inward parts."
+
+But Ideala did not often adopt this tone, and she would herself check
+other people who were preparing to assume it. She had a favourite
+quotation, adroitly mangled, to suit such occasions. "When we begin to
+inculcate morality as a science, we must discard moralising as a
+method," she declared; and she would also beg us to stop the hysteria.
+"It is the mortal malady of all well-beloved measures," she said; "and
+it spreads to an epidemic if the infected ones are not suppressed at
+once to prevent contagion."
+
+But, although she spoke so positively when taken out of herself by the
+interest and importance of a subject, she had no very high opinion of
+her own judgment and power to decide. A little more self-esteem would
+have been good for her; she was too diffident, "I have not come across
+people on whose knowledge I could rely," she told me. "I have been
+obliged to study alone, and to form my opinions for myself out of such
+scraps of information as I have had the capacity to acquire from
+reading and observation. I am, therefore, always prepared to find
+myself mistaken, even when I am surest about a thing--for
+
+    What am I?
+  An infant crying in the night:
+  An infant crying for the light:
+  And with no language but a cry!
+
+In practice, too, she frequently, albeit unconsciously, diverged from
+her theories to some considerable extent; as on one occasion, when,
+after talking long and earnestly of the sin of selfishness, she
+absently picked up a paper I had just cut with intent to enjoy myself,
+took it away with her to the drawing-room, and sat on it for the rest
+of the morning--as I afterwards heard.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+Ideala held that dignity and calm are essential in a woman, but, like
+the rest of the world, she found it hard to attain to her own standard
+of excellence. Her bursts of enthusiasm were followed by fits of
+depression, and these again by periods of indifference, when it was
+hard to rouse her to interest in anything. She always said, and was
+probably right, that want of proper discipline in childhood was the
+reason of this variableness, which she deplored, but could neither
+combat nor conceal. Temperament must also have had something to do with
+it. Her nervous system was too highly strung, she was too sensitive,
+too emotional, too intense. She reflected phases of feeling with which
+she was brought into contact as a lake reflects the sky above it, and
+the bird that skims across it, and the boats that rest upon its breast;
+yet, like the lake's, her own nature remained unchanged; it might be
+darkened by shadows, and lashed by tempests till it raged, but the pure
+element showed divinely even in its wrath, and the passion of it was
+expended always to some good end.
+
+But even her love of the beautiful was carried to excess. It was a
+passion with her which would, in a sturdier age, have been considered a
+vice. She delighted in the scent of flowers, the song of the thrushes
+in the spring; colour, and beautiful forms. Doubtless the emotion they
+caused her was pure enough, and it was natural that, highly bred,
+cultivated, and refined as she was, she should feel these delicate,
+sensuous pleasures in a greater degree than lower natures do. There was
+danger, however, in the over-education of the senses, which made their
+ready response inevitable, but neither limited the subjects, nor
+regulated the degree, to which they should respond. But it would be
+hard in any case to say where cultivation of love for the beautiful
+should end, and to determine the exact point at which the result ceases
+to be intellectual and begins to be sensual.
+
+I have sat and watched Ideala lolling at an open window in the summer.
+The house stood on a hill, a river wound through the valley below, and
+beyond the river--the land sloped up again, green and dotted with
+trees, to a range of low hills, crested with a fringe of wood.
+
+"Do you know what there is beyond those hills?" Ideala asked me once,
+abruptly. "_I_ don't know; but I love to believe that the sea is
+there, and that the sun is sinking into it now. Sometimes I fancy I
+can hear it murmur."
+
+And then followed a long silence. And the scent of mignonette and roses
+blew in upon her, and the twilight deepened, and I saw her grow pale
+with pleasure when the nightingale began to sing--and then I stole away
+and never was missed. She would lie in a long chair for hours like
+that, scarcely moving, and never speaking. At first I used to wonder
+what she thought about; but afterwards I knew that at such times she
+did not think, she only felt.
+
+I have some pictures of her as she was then, dressed in a gown of some
+quaint blue and white Japanese material, with her white throat bare--I
+was just going to catalogue her charms, but it seems indelicate to
+describe a woman, point by point, like a horse that is for sale. I have
+some other pictures of her, too, as she appeared to me one hot summer
+when I was painting a picture by the river, and she used to come down
+the towing-path to watch me work, and sit beside me on the grass for
+hours together, talking, reading aloud, reciting, or silent, according
+to her mood, but always interesting. It was then I learnt to know her
+best. And I am always glad to think of her as I used to see her then,
+coming towards me in one particular grey frock she wore, tight-fitting
+and perfect, yet with no detail evident. It was like an expression of
+herself, that dress, so quiet to all seeming, and yet so rich in
+material, and so complex in design. The wonder and the beauty of it
+grew upon you, and never failed of its effect.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+When I first knew Ideala her religious opinions were all unsettled. "I
+neither believe nor disbelieve," she told me; "I am in a state of don't
+know; or perhaps it would be more exact to say that I both doubt and
+believe at one and the same time. I go indifferently to either church,
+Protestant or Catholic, and am thankful when any note of music, or
+thrill of feeling in the voice, or noble sentiment, elevates me so that
+I can pray. But I am told that both Catholics and Protestants consider
+me a weak waverer, and call me incorrigible. Sometimes I cannot pray
+for months together, and when I do it is generally to ask for something
+I want, not to praise or give thanks. But what a blank it is when one
+cannot pray; when one has lost the power to conceive that there is a
+something greater than man, to whom man is nevertheless all in all, and
+to whom we may look for comfort in all times of our tribulation, and
+for sympathy in all times of our wealth! To be able to give thanks to
+God when one is happy is the most rapturous, and to be able to call
+upon Him in the day of trouble is the most blessed, state of mind I
+know. Yet I believe we should only pray for the possible. The leafless
+tree may pray for the time of buds and blossoms; will the time come the
+sooner? Perhaps not, but it will come."
+
+"I must confess," she said on another occasion, "that I do have moments
+of pure scepticism; but when I cannot believe in the existence of a
+God, and a Beyond, I feel as if the sky were nearer, and weighed upon
+me, so that I could not lift my head."
+
+She thought religion consisted much more in doing right than in
+believing right, and set morality above faith; but I think she had a
+leaning towards the Roman Catholic religion nevertheless.
+
+"It is a grand old faith," she said, "only it has certain ramifications
+with which I should always quarrel, notably that of the Sacred Heart
+with which Catholics deface their lovely Lady in the churches. I always
+feel that such bad art cannot be good religion. When the Roman Catholic
+religion commanded respect it expressed itself better--as in the days
+when it carved itself in harmonies of solid stone, and wrote itself in
+tint and tone on glowing canvases, and learnt to speak in thundering
+mass and mighty hymns of praise! There are people who think these new
+shoots good as a sign of life in the tree, and this consideration might
+perhaps make their appearance welcome; but a great deal of strength is
+expended on their production, and it would be just as well to lop them
+off again. The old tree wants pruning and cutting back occasionally,
+and it is a false sentiment that is letting it fall to decay for the
+sake of these struggling branches.
+
+"There is another thing, too, for which we should all quarrel with the
+Catholic religion. I think the fact his already been noticed by some
+writer; at all events, it is evident enough to have occurred to any
+one. I mean the fact that the Church, by its narrow views about
+education, and its most unspiritual ambition for itself, has retarded
+the world's progress for centuries by interfering with the law of
+natural selection. As a matter of course for ages all the best men went
+into the Church; it was the only career open to them; and so they left
+no descendants."
+
+At our house, on another occasion, when the Roman Catholic religion
+happened to be under discussion, she launched forth some observations
+in her usual emphatic way. There were only two strangers present, a
+lady and her husband. Ideala asked the lady, who was sitting next to
+her, if she were a Catholic, to which the lady answered "No;" and
+Ideala, satisfied, proceeded to remark: "It may be the true religion,
+but it certainly is not the religion of truth. The doctrine of
+expediency, or the latitude they allow themselves on the score of
+expediency--I don't quite know how they put it--but it has much to
+answer for. I never find that my Roman Catholic friends are true, as
+my Protestant friends are. There is always a something kept back, a
+reservation; a want of straightforwardness, even when there is no
+positive deception--I can't describe the thing I mean, but it is quite
+perceptible, and causes an uneasy feeling of distrust, which is all
+the more tormenting from its vagueness and want of definition. The
+low-class Roman Catholics, I find, never hesitate if a lie will serve
+their purpose; and Roman Catholic servants are notoriously
+untrustworthy. That, of course, proves nothing, for one knows that
+low-class people of any religion are not to be depended on--still,
+there is no doubt that one finds deception more rife among Catholics
+than among Protestants, and one wonders why, if the religion is not to
+blame."
+
+My sister, Claudia, had tried to catch Ideala's eye, and stop her, but
+in vain; and the lady next her broke out the moment she paused:
+"Indeed, you are quite wrong. You cannot have known many Catholics.
+They are not untrue."
+
+"O yes, I have known numbers," Ideala answered; "I speak from
+experience. Yet it always seems to me that the Roman Catholic religion
+is good for individuals. There is pleasure in it, and help and comfort
+for them. But then it is death to the progress of nations, and the
+question is: Would an individual be justified in adding a unit more for
+his own benefit to a system which would ruin his country? I think not."
+
+Here, however, she stopped, seeing at last that something was wrong.
+
+"What dreadful mistake did I make this evening?" she asked me
+afterwards. "Mrs. Jervois declared she wasn't a Catholic."
+
+"But her husband is," I answered; "and he heard every word."
+
+Ideala groaned.
+
+Not long afterwards Mrs. Jervois wrote and told us she had entered the
+Catholic Church. "I had, in fact, been received before I went to you,"
+she confessed.
+
+"There!" Ideala exclaimed. "It is just what I said. A want of common
+honesty is a part of the religion; and you see she had begun to
+practise it while she was here."
+
+"What an eternal lie it is they preach when they tell us life is not
+worth having," she said to me once, speaking of preachers generally. "I
+have heard an oleosaccharine priest preach for an hour on this subject,
+detailing the worthlessness of all earthly pleasures, with which he
+seemed to be intimately acquainted--his appearance making one suspect
+that he had not even yet exhausted them all himself--and giving a
+florid account of the glories of the life to come, about which he
+appeared to know as much but to care less; just as if heaven might not
+begin on earth if only men would let it."
+
+One day I had to warn her about acting so often on impulse. She heard
+what I had to say very good-naturedly, and, after thinking about it for
+a while, she said: "What a pity it is one never sees an impulse coming.
+It is impossible to know whether they arise from below, or descend from
+above. I always find if I act on one that it has arisen; and as surely
+if I leave it alone it proves to have been a good opportunity lost. And
+how curiously our thoughts go on, often so irrespective of ourselves. I
+was in a Roman Catholic church the other day, and the priest--a friend
+of mine, who looks like the last of the Mohicans minus the feathers in
+his hair; but a good man, with nice, soft, velvety brown eyes--preached
+most impressively. He told us that the Lord was there--there on that
+very altar, ready to answer our prayers; and, oh dear! when I came to
+think of it, there were so many of my prayers waiting to be answered! I
+'felt like' presenting them all over again, it seemed such a good
+opportunity. And then they sang the _O salutaris Hostia_ divinely--
+so divinely that I thought if the Lord really had been there He would
+certainly have made them sing it again--and I could not pray any more
+after that. You call this rank irreverence, do you not? _I_ do.
+And I wish I had not thought it. Yet it was one of those involuntary
+tricks of the mind for which I cannot believe that we are to be held
+responsible. Theologians would say it was a temptation of the devil,
+but they are wrong. The first cause of these mental lapses is to be
+found in some habit of levity, acquired young, and not easily got rid
+of, but still not hopeless. But prevention is better than cure, and
+children should be taught right-mindedness early. I wish I had been.
+Happy is the child who is started in life with a set of fixed
+principles, and the power to respect."
+
+I used to wish that there might be a universal religion, but Ideala did
+not share my feeling on this subject. "I suppose it is a fine idea,"
+she said; "but while minds run in so many different grooves, it seems
+to me far finer for one system of morality to have found expressions
+enough to satisfy nearly everybody."
+
+She had very decided views about what heaven ought to be.
+
+"The mere material notion of abundance of gold and precious stones,
+which appealed to the early churchmen, has no charm for us," she
+declared. "We must have new powers of perception, and new pleasures
+provided for us, such, for instance, as Mr. Andrew Lang suggests in an
+exquisite little poem about the Homeric Phæacia--the land whose
+inhabitants were friends of the gods, a sort of heaven upon earth." And
+then she quoted:
+
+  The languid sunset, mother of roses,
+    Lingers, a light on the magic seas;
+  The wide fire flames as a flower uncloses;
+    Heavy with odour and loose to the breeze.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  The strange flowers' perfume turns to singing,
+    Heard afar over moonlit seas;
+  The siren's song, grown faint with winging,
+    Falls in scent on the cedar trees.
+
+"Those lines were the first to make me grasp the possibility of having
+new faculties added to our old ones in another state of existence,"
+she said, "faculties which should give us a deeper insight into the
+nature of things, and enable us to discover new pleasures in the unity
+which may be expected to underlie beauty and excellence in all their
+manifestations, as Mr. Norman Pearson puts it. Did you ever read that
+paper of his, 'After Death,' in the _Nineteenth Century_? It embodies
+what I had long felt, but could never grasp before I found his
+admirable expression of it. 'I can see no reason,' he says, in one
+passage in particular which I remember word for word, I think, it
+gives me such pleasure to recall it--'I can see no reason for
+supposing that _some such_ insight would be impossible to the
+quickened faculties of a higher development. With a nature material so
+far as the existence of those faculties might require, but spiritual
+to the highest degree in their exercise and enjoyment: under physical
+conditions which might render us _practically_ independent of space,
+and _actually_ free from the host of physical evils to which we are
+now exposed, we might well attain a consummation of happiness,
+_generally_ akin to that for which we now strive, but idealised into
+something like perfection. The faculties which would enable us to
+obtain a deeper and truer view of all the manifestations of cosmic
+energy would at the same time reveal to us new forms of beauty, new
+possibilities of pleasure on every side: and--to take a single
+instance--the emotions to which the sight of Niagara now appeals might
+then be gratified by a contemplation of the fierce grandeur of some
+sun's chromosphere or the calmer glories of its corona.' That
+satisfies, does it not?" she added, with a sigh. "It suggests such
+infinite possibilities."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One day, when she was making herself miserable for want of a religion,
+I tried to comfort her by talking of the different people whose lives
+had been good and pure and noble, although they had had no faith.
+
+"I suppose my principles are right," she said; "but if they are, they
+have come right by accident. The children of the people are sent to
+Sunday-schools, and taught the difference between right and wrong;
+_we_ seem to be expected to know it instinctively. I think if I had
+learnt I might have profited, because I cling so fondly to the one
+principle I ever heard clearly enunciated. It was on the sin of
+shooting foxes; and I cannot tell you the horror I have of the crime,
+even down to the present day. But, now I think of it, I did receive
+two other scraps of religious training. My governess taught me the Ten
+Commandments by making me say them after her when I was eating bread
+and sugar for breakfast before going to church on Sunday. The thought
+of them always brings back the flavour of bread and sugar. And the
+other scrap I got from a clergyman to whom I was sent on a single
+occasion when I was thought old enough to be confirmed. He asked me
+which was the commandment with promise, and I didn't know, so he told
+me; and then I made him laugh about a horse of mine that used to have
+great fun trying to break my neck, and after that he said I should do.
+I did not agree with him, however, and I positively refused to be
+confirmed until I knew more about it. My mother said I was the most
+disagreeable child she had ever known, which was probably true, but as
+an argument it failed to convince. It was her last remark on the
+subject, happily, and after that the thing was allowed to drop."
+
+Ideala was fourteen when she refused to be confirmed for conscientious
+scruples, and although she made light of it in this way, she had
+suffered a good deal and been severely punished at the time for her
+refusal, but vainly, for she never gave in.
+
+In after-life she held, of course, that Christianity was the highest
+moral revelation the world had ever known; but when she saw that legal
+right was not always moral right, I think she began to look for a
+higher.
+
+By baptism she belonged to the Church of England, but she seems to have
+thought of the Sacrament always with the idea of transubstantiation in
+her mind. She spoke of it reverently, but had never been able to take
+it, and for a curious reason: she said the idea of it nauseated her.
+She felt that the elements were unnatural food, and therefore she could
+not touch them--and this feeling never left her but once, when she was
+dangerously ill, and yearned, as she told me, for the Sacrament more
+than for life and health. Day and night the longing never left her;
+but, not having been confirmed, she did not like to ask for it, and as
+she recovered the old feeling gradually returned.
+
+Religious difficulties always tormented her more or less. As she grew
+older she felt with Shelley that belief is involuntary, and a man is
+neither to be praised nor blamed for it; and she was always ready to
+acknowledge with Sir Philip Sidney that "Reason cannot show itself more
+reasonable than to leave reasoning on things above reason," but
+nevertheless her mind did not rest.
+
+I have also heard her quote, "Credulity is the man's weakness, but the
+child's strength," and add that in matters of faith and religion we are
+all children, and I have thought at times that she had been able to
+leave it so; but something always fell from her sooner or later which
+showed that the old trouble was rankling still--as when she told me
+once: "I have never heard the Divine voice which has called you and all
+my friends. I listen for it, but it does not speak. I call, but there
+is no reply. I wait, but it does not come. The heaven of heavens is
+dark to me, and the yearning of my soul meets no response. Will it be
+so for ever?"
+
+No, not for ever--but she was led by tortuous ways, and left to work
+out her own salvation in very fear and trembling, till the dear human
+love was given to her in pity to help her to know something of that
+which is Divine. And then, I hope, above the trouble of her senses, and
+the turmoil of the world, the Divine voice did call her, and she was
+able at last to hear.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+Ideala often recurred to the subject of work for women.
+
+"There are so many thousands of us," she said, "who have no object in
+life, and nothing to make us take it seriously. My own is a case in
+point. I am not necessary, even to my husband. There is nothing I am
+bound to do for him, or that he requires of me, nothing but to be
+agreeable when he is with me, which would not interfere with a serious
+occupation if I had one, and is scarcely interest enough in life for an
+energetic woman. My household duties take, on an average, half an hour
+a day; and everything in our house is done regularly, and well done. My
+social duties may be got through at odd moments, and the more of a
+pastime I make them the better I fulfil them; and, with the exception
+of these, there is nothing in my life that I cannot have done for me by
+some one better able to do it than I am. And even if I had children I
+should not be much more occupied, for the things they ought to learn
+from their mothers are best taught by example. For all practical
+purposes, parents, as a rule, are bad masters for any but very young
+children. They err on the side of over severity or the reverse. So you
+see I have no obligations of consequence, and there is, therefore,
+nothing in my life to inspire a sense of responsibility. And all this
+seems to me a grievous waste of Me. I remember Lord Wensum telling me,
+when we discussed this subject, that he was travelling once with a
+well-known editor, and, noticing the number of villas that had sprung
+up of late years along the whole line of rail they were on, he said: 'I
+wonder what the ladies in those villas do with their time? I suppose
+their social duties are limited, and they are too well off to be
+obliged to trouble themselves about anything.' 'It is the existence of
+those villas,' the editor answered, 'that makes the present profession
+of the novelist possible.' But I think," said Ideala, "that those women
+might find something better to do than to make a profession for
+novelists."
+
+"But you do a good deal yourself, Ideala," I ventured.
+
+"Yes, in a purposeless way. All my acts are isolated; it would make
+little difference if they had never been done."
+
+"Then you are not content, after all, to be merely a poem?" I said,
+maliciously. "You would like to do as well as to be?"
+
+She laughed. Then, after a little, she said earnestly: "Do you know, I
+always feel as if I _could_ do something--teach something--or help
+others in a small way with some work of importance. I never believe I
+was born just to live and die. But I have a queer feeling about it. I
+am sure I shall be made to go down into some great depth of sin and
+misery myself, in order to learn what it is I have to teach."
+
+She loved music, and painting, and poetry, and science, and none of her
+loves were barren. She embraced them each in turn with an ardour that
+resulted in the production of an offspring--a song, a picture, a poem,
+or book on some most serious subject, and all worthy of note. But she
+was inconstant, and these children of her thought or fancy were
+generally isolated efforts that marked the culminating point of her
+devotion, and lessened her interest if they did not exhaust her
+strength.
+
+Perhaps, though, I wrong her when I call her inconstant. It seems to me
+now that each new interest was a step by which she mounted upwards,
+learning to sympathise practically and perfectly with all men in their
+work as she passed them on her way to find her own.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+She knew the poor of the place well, and took a lively interest in all
+that concerned them; and occasionally she would confide some of her own
+odd observations and reflections to me.
+
+"On Sunday morning all the women wash their doorsteps," she told me; "I
+think it is part of their religion."
+
+And on another occasion she said: "They have such lovely children here,
+and such swarms of them. I am always hard on the women with lovely
+children. People say it is envy, hatred, malice, and all
+uncharitableness, that makes me so; but it really is because I think
+women who have nice children should be better than other women. It
+would be worse for one of them to do a wrong thing than for poor
+childless me."
+
+This conclusion may be quarrelled with as illogical, but the feeling
+that led to it was beautiful beyond question; and, indeed, all her
+ideas on that subject were beautiful.
+
+She went once, soon after she came among us, to comfort a lady in the
+neighbourhood who had lost a baby at its birth.
+
+"It is sad that you should lose your child," Ideala said to her; "but
+you are better off than I am, for I never knew what it was to be a
+mother."
+
+She would have thought it a privilege to have experienced even the
+sorrows of maternity.
+
+Talking about the people, she told me: "They draw such nice
+distinctions. They speak of 'a lady' and 'a real lady.' A 'real lady'
+is a person who gives no trouble. If Mrs. Vanbrugh wants anything from
+the butcher, and he has already sent to her house once that day, she
+does not expect him to send again; she sends to him--and she is 'a real
+lady.' Mrs. Stanton is also thoughtful, but she is something more; she
+is sociable and kind, and talks to them all in a friendly way, just as
+if they were human beings; and she is something more than 'a real
+lady'--she's 'a real nice lady.'
+
+"Do you know Mrs. Polter at the fish-shop? What a fine-looking woman
+she is! Middle-aged, intelligent, and a very good specimen of her
+class, I should think. She has eight children already, and would
+consider the ninth a further blessing. Her husband is a good-looking
+man, too, and most devoted. In fact, they are quite an ideal pair with
+their eight children and their fish-shop. He had to go to Yarmouth the
+other day to buy bloaters, and while he was away she went by the five
+o'clock train every morning to choose the day's supply of fish for the
+shop, and he was quite unhappy about it. He was afraid she would
+'overdo' herself, and rather than that should happen he desired her to
+let the business go to the--ahem! He made her write every day to say
+how she was, and was wretched till he returned to relieve her of her
+arduous duties. She made friends with me during the scarlet fever
+epidemic. Number eight was a baby then, and she was afraid he might
+catch the disease and be taken to the hospital and die for want of her;
+and I sympathised strongly with her denunciations of the cruelty of the
+act. Fancy taking little babies from their mothers! Barbarous, don't
+you think it? One day a lady came into the shop while I was there. She
+was dressed in a bright pink costume, with a large hat all smothered in
+pink feathers. I thought of the Queen of Sheba, and felt alarmed. Mrs.
+Polter told me afterwards she was 'just a lady,' rolling in recently
+acquired wealth, and 'as hard to please as if she had never washed her
+own doorstep.' It was then I learnt the difference between 'a lady' and
+'a real lady.'"
+
+One of Ideala's exploits got into the paper somehow, and she was
+annoyed about it, and anxious to make us believe the account of the
+risk she ran had been greatly exaggerated. I was present when she gave
+her own version of the story, which was characteristic in every way.
+
+"I heard frantic cries from the river," she said. "Some one was
+shrieking, 'The child will be drowned!' and I ran to see what was the
+matter. A man was tearing up and down on the bank, a child was
+struggling in the water, and as there was nobody else to be seen he
+looked to _me_ for assistance! I advised him to go in and bring
+the child out, but the idea did not appear to commend itself to him, so
+he took to running up and down again, bawling, 'The child will be
+drowned!' And indeed it seemed very likely; so I was obliged to go in
+and bring it out myself. The man was overjoyed when I restored it to
+him. He clasped it in his arms with every demonstration of affection;
+and then he looked at me and became embarrassed. He evidently felt that
+he ought to say something, but the difficulty was what to say. At last
+a bright idea seemed to strike him. His countenance cleared, and he
+spoke with much feeling. 'I am afraid you are rather wet,' he observed;
+and then he left me, and a sympathetic landlady, who keeps a little
+public-house by the river, and had witnessed the occurrence, took me in
+and dried me. She gave me whisky and hot water, and entertained me for
+the rest of the afternoon. She is a remarkable woman, and I should
+visit her often were it not for her love of, and faith in, whisky and
+hot water. I tell her there are five things which make the nose red--
+viz., cold, tight-lacing, disease of the right side of the heart,
+dyspepsia, and alcohol, and the greatest of these is alcohol; but she
+says a little colour anywhere would be an improvement to me, and I feel
+that I can have nothing in common with a woman who has such bad taste
+in the distribution of colour."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+Ideala's notions of propriety were altogether unconventional. She never
+could be made to understand that it was not the proper thing to talk
+familiarly to any one she met, and discuss any subject they were equal
+to with them.
+
+"It is good for people to talk, and natural, and therefore proper," she
+said. "If I can give pleasure to a stranger by doing so, or he can give
+pleasure to me, it would not be right to keep silent."
+
+She carried this idea of her duty to her neighbour rather far
+sometimes.
+
+I remember her telling me once about two old gentlemen she had
+travelled with the day before.
+
+"The sun came in and bothered me, and one of them offered to draw the
+blind," she said, "and he remarked it was rather a treat to see the
+sun, we have so little of it now; and I said that was true, and told
+him how I pitied the farmers. I had to stay in my room the other day
+with a bad cold, and I amused myself watching one of them at work in
+some fields opposite. The state of his mind was expressed by his
+boots. On Monday the sun was shining, the air was mild, and it seemed
+as if we were going to have a continuance of fine weather, and the
+farmer appeared of a cheerful countenance, and his boots were polished
+and laced. On Tuesday there was an east wind, veering south, with
+showers, and his boots were laced, but not polished. On Wednesday
+there was frost, fog, and gloom, and they were neither laced nor
+polished. On Thursday there was a snowstorm, and he had no boots at
+all on; and after that I did not see him, and I wondered if he had
+committed suicide--in which case I thought the jury might almost have
+brought in a verdict of 'justifiable _felo-de-se_.' And when I told
+that story the other old gentleman shut his book, and began to talk
+too. And I said I thought the weather was much colder than it used to
+be, for I could remember wearing muslin dresses in May, and I could
+not wear them at all now; but I did not know if the change were in the
+climate or in myself--perhaps a little of both--though, indeed, I knew
+that, to a certain extent, it was in the climate, which had been very
+much altered in different districts by drainage, and cutting, or
+planting--altered for the better, however, as a rule. And one old
+gentleman had heard that before, but did not understand it exactly, so
+I explained it to him; and then I talked about changes of climate in
+general, and the formation of beds of coal, and the ice period, and
+sun-spots, and the theory of comets, and about my husband getting up
+to see the last one, and going out in a felt hat and dressing-gown
+with a bed-candle to look for it--and about that dream of mine, did I
+tell you? I dreamt the comet came into our drawing-room, and the leg
+of a Chinese table turned into a snake and snorted at it, and the
+comet looked so taken aback that I woke myself with a shout of
+laughter. And then we talked of popular superstitions about comets,
+and dreams, and ghosts-- particularly ghosts, and I told a number of
+creepy stories, and one old gentleman pretended he didn't believe in
+them, but he did, and so did the other without any pretence; and we
+talked about Darwinism, and the nature of the soul, and Nihilism, and
+the state of society--and--and a few other things. And they were such
+dear delightful old gentlemen, and they knew such a lot, and were so
+clever; and one of them was a Railway Director, and the other couldn't
+let his farms, and was bothered about his pheasants, and wanted to
+have the trains altered to suit him. I should so like to meet them
+both again."
+
+"And how long did all this take, Ideala?"
+
+"Oh, some hours. I fancy their dreams would be rather confused last
+night," she added, naively.
+
+"Poor old gentlemen!" said I.
+
+This sociability and inclination to talk the matter out, and, I may
+say, a certain amount of innocence and lack of worldly wisdom into the
+bargain, betrayed her occasionally into small improprieties of conduct
+that were not to be excused, and would possibly not have been forgiven
+in any one but Ideala. But such things were allowed in her as certain
+things are allowed in certain people--not because the things are right
+in themselves, but because the people who do them see no harm in them.
+There are people, too, who seem to enjoy the privilege of making wrong
+right by doing it. Society, however, only accords this privilege to a
+limited and distinguished few.
+
+When Ideala saw for herself that she had done an unjustifiable thing
+she was very ready to confess it. I always fancied she had some latent
+idea of making atonement in that way. It never mattered how much a
+story told against herself, nor how much malicious people might make of
+it to her discredit; she told all, inimitably, and with scrupulous
+fidelity to fact.
+
+One day she was standing waiting for a train at the station at York,
+and in her absent way she fixed her eyes on a gentleman who was walking
+about the platform.
+
+Presently he went up to her, and, without any apology or show of
+respect, remarked: "I am sure I have seen you before."
+
+"Probably," Ideala rejoined, as if the occurrence were the most natural
+thing in the world, "but I do not remember you. Perhaps if I heard your
+name----?"
+
+"Oh, I don't suppose you ever heard my name," he said.
+
+"In that case I can never have known you," she answered, calmly. "I
+never know any one except by name. I suppose you are an Englishman?"
+
+"Yes," he said, eagerly; "I am in the 5th----"
+
+"Ah, I thought so," she interrupted, placidly. "Englishmen in the 5th,
+and some other regiments, are apt to have but the one idea----"
+
+"And that is?"
+
+"And that is a bad one."
+
+He looked at her for a moment, and then, hat in hand, he made her a low
+bow, and left her without another word.
+
+"I think he felt ill, and went to have some refreshment," she added,
+when she told me.
+
+From what happened afterwards I am sure that at the time she had no
+idea of the real significance of the position in which she found
+herself placed on this occasion. But, as a rule, if she did or said the
+wrong thing, she became painfully conscious of the fact immediately
+afterwards--indeed, it was generally _afterwards_ that she grasped
+the full meaning of most things. She was ready with repartee without
+being in the least quick of understanding; she had to think things
+over, and even then she was not sure to do the right thing next time.
+
+"Mr. Graves is ten years younger than his wife," she told me once, "and
+only fancy what I said one day. It was in his studio, and she was
+there. I declared a woman could have no sense of propriety at all who
+married a man younger than herself--that no good could possibly come of
+such marriages--and a lot more. Then I suddenly remembered, and you can
+imagine my feelings! But what do you think I did? I went there the next
+year, and said the same thing again exactly!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+When we were a small party of intimate friends, and Ideala was quite at
+her ease with us, it was pleasant to see her lolling, a little
+languidly as was her wont (for physically her energy was fitful), in
+the corner of a couch, looking happy and interested, her face, which
+was sad in repose, lit up for the time with amusement, as she quietly
+listened to our talk, and observed all that was going on around her.
+Even when she did not speak a word she somehow managed to make her
+presence felt, and, as a rule, she spoke little on these occasions. But
+sometimes we managed to draw her out, and sometimes she would burst
+forth suddenly of her own accord, with a torrent of eloquence that
+silenced us all; and even when she was utterly wrong she charmed us.
+Her chance observations were generally noteworthy either for their
+sense or their humour. It was only her sense of humour, I think, that
+saved her from being sentimental; but she gave expression to it in
+season and out of season, and would let it carry her too far sometimes,
+for she made enemies for herself more than once by the way she exposed
+the absurdity of certain things to the very people who believed in
+them. Every lapse of this kind caused her infinite regret, but the
+fault seemed incurable: she was always either repenting of it or
+committing it, although, having so many quirks of her own, she felt
+that she, of all people in the world, should have dealt most tenderly
+with the weaknesses of others.
+
+She knew how narrowly she escaped being sentimental, and would often
+joke about her danger in that respect. "This lovely summer weather
+makes me _sickly_ sentimental," she told me once. "I feel like the
+heroine of a three-volume novel written by a young lady of eighteen,
+and I think continually of _him_. I don't know in the least who
+_he_ is, but that makes no difference. The thought of him delights
+me, and I want to write long letters to him, and make verses about him
+the whole day long. And he wants me to be good."
+
+She had two or three pet abominations of her own, any allusion to which
+was sure to make her outrageous--false sentiment and affectation of any
+kind were amongst them. She had little habits, too, that we were all
+pleased to fall in with. Sitting in the corner of a couch, and of one
+couch in particular in every house, was one of these; and people got
+into the way of giving up that seat to her whenever she appeared. I
+think it would have puzzled us all to say why or wherefore, for she
+never said or looked anything that could make us think she wished to
+appropriate it; she simply took it as a matter of course when it was
+offered to her, and probably did not know that she invariably sat
+there. Ideala was a splendid horsewoman, and swam like a fish; but she
+was not good at tennis or games of any kind, and she did not dance, for
+a curious reason: she objected to be touched by people for whom she had
+no special affection. She even disliked to shake hands, and often
+wished some one would put the custom out of fashion. With regard to
+dancing I have heard her say, too, that she sympathised entirely with
+the Oriental feeling on the subject. She thought it delightful to be
+danced to, to lie still with a pleasant companion near her who would
+not talk too much, and listen to the music, and enjoy the poetry of
+motion coolly and at ease. "I love to see the 'dancers dancing in
+tune,'" she said; "but to have to dance myself would be as great a
+bother as to have to cook my dinner as well as eat it. I suppose it is
+a healthy amusement--indeed, I know it is when you take it as I do; for
+when all you people come down the morning after a dance with haggard
+eyes and no power to do anything, I am as fresh as a lark, and have
+decidedly the best of it."
+
+She was not good at games because she was not ambitious. She did not
+care to have her skill commended, and was content to lose or win with
+equal indifference--so long as only the honour of the thing was
+involved; but when the stakes were more material she showed a vice of
+which she was quite conscious.
+
+"I daren't play for money," she said to me. "I never have, and I have
+always said that I never will. All the women of my family are born
+gamblers. My mother has often told me that regularly, when she was a
+girl, the day after she received her allowance she had either doubled
+it or lost it all; and before she was twenty she hadn't a jewel worth
+anything in her possession--and my aunts were as bad. One of them
+staked herself one night to a gentleman she was playing with, and he
+won, and married her. Gambling was more the custom then than it is now,
+but for me it is as much in the air as if it were still the fashion.
+When there is any talk of play I feel fascinated, and when I see a pack
+of cards the temptation is so irresistible that I have often to go away
+to save my resolution."
+
+Which made me think of a favourite quotation of Lessing's from
+_Minna_:--"_Tout les gens d'esprit aiment le jeu à la folie_."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+Ideala's low esteem for "mere animal courage" was probably due to the
+fact that she possessed it herself in a high degree. Yet soon after I
+met her I began to suspect, and was afterwards convinced, that
+something in her manner which had puzzled me at first arose from fear.
+There was that in her life which made her afraid of the world, which
+would, had it guessed the truth, have pryed with curious eyes into her
+sorrow, and found an interest in seeing her suffer. The trouble was her
+husband. She rarely spoke of him herself, and I think I ought to follow
+her example, and say as little about him as possible. He was jealous of
+her, jealous of her popularity, and jealous of every one who approached
+her. He carried it so far that she scarcely dared to show a preference,
+and was even obliged to be cold and reserved with some of her best
+friends. I was a privileged person, allowed to be intimate with her
+from the first, partly because I insisted on it when I saw how matters
+stood, and partly because my position and reputation gave me a right to
+insist. I never had occasion to brave insults for her sake, but, like
+many others, I would have done so had it been necessary. Her friends
+were constantly being driven from her on one pretext or another. People
+would have taken her part readily enough had she complained, but
+complaint was contrary to her nature and her principles. Some, who
+suspected the truth, blamed her reticence; but I always thought it
+right, and on one occasion when we approached the subject indirectly I
+told her "Silence is best." I ought to have qualified the advice, for
+she carried it too far, and was silent afterwards when she should have
+spoken--that is to say, when it had become evident that endurance was
+useless and degrading.
+
+She fought hard to preserve her dignity, and was determined that "as
+the husband is, the wife is," should not be true in her case. But he
+did lower her insensibly, nevertheless. As her life became more and
+more unendurable she became a little reckless in speech; it was a sort
+of safety-valve by means of which she regained her composure, and I
+soon began to recognise the sign, and to judge of the amount she had
+suffered by the length to which she afterwards went in search of
+relief, and the extent to which suffering made her untrue to herself.
+
+As a rule, when with him, she was yielding, but she had fits of
+determination, too, when she knew she was right. One night, as they
+were driving home from a ball together, her husband suddenly declared
+that he would not allow her to be one of the patronesses of a fancy
+fair which was to be held for a charitable purpose, although she had
+already consented and he had made no objection at the time.
+
+"But why may I not?" Ideala asked.
+
+"Because I object. Do you hear? I will not have it, and you must
+withdraw."
+
+"I must decline to obey any such arbitrary injunction," she answered,
+quietly.
+
+He detained her on the doorstep until the carriage had driven round to
+the stables.
+
+"Now, are you going to obey me?" he asked.
+
+"Yes, if you give me a reason for what you require," she answered,
+wearily.
+
+"Oh, you are obstinate, are you?" he rejoined, in a jeering tone.
+"Well, stay in the garden and think it over. Perhaps reflection will
+make you more dutiful. I shall tell your maid you will not want her
+to-night. When you have made up your mind you can ring." And so saying
+he walked into the house and shut the door upon her.
+
+It was a summer night, but Ideala felt chilly with only a thin shawl
+over her ball dress. She walked about as long as she could, but fatigue
+overcame her at last, and she was obliged to lie down on one of the
+garden seats. She wrapped the train of her dress round her shoulders,
+and lay looking up at the stars. The air was heavy with the scent of
+flowers. The night was very still. Once or twice the rush of a passing
+train in the distance became audible; and the ceaseless, solemn,
+inarticulate murmur of the night was broken by a nightingale that sang
+out at intervals, divinely.
+
+Ideala never thought of submitting; she simply lay there, waiting
+without expecting. The night air overcame her more and more with a
+sense of fatigue, but she could not sleep. She saw the darkness fade
+and the dawn appear, and when at last the servants began to move in the
+house she watched her opportunity and slipped in unobserved. She went
+to one of the spare rooms, undressed, rang, and got into bed. When the
+bell was answered she ordered a hot bath and hot coffee immediately.
+The maid supposed she had slept there, and seemed surprised; but as her
+mistress offered no explanation she could make no remark; and so the
+matter ended.
+
+But I do not think Ideala suffered much on that occasion. Her strong
+young womanhood saved her somewhat--and there was a charm for her in
+the beauty of the night and the novelty of her position, which a less
+healthy organism would not have appreciated, had it been able to
+discover it--at such a time.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+
+Ideala had been married eight years, and two months after that night
+the long-delayed hope of her life, which she had begun to believe was
+beyond hope, was at last realised. Her child was a boy, and her joy in
+him is something that one is glad to have seen. But it was short-lived.
+I do not know if her husband were jealous of her happiness, or if he
+thought the child was more to her than he was, or if he were merely
+making a proposition, by way of experiment, which he never meant to
+carry into effect--probably the latter. At all events, he went to her
+one day when the child was about six weeks old, and told her he thought
+she must give up nursing him.
+
+The mother's nature was up in arms in a moment. I suppose she had not
+quite regained her strength, for she had been very ill, and, being
+weak, she was excitable.
+
+"I will not give my baby up! How can you think it?" she exclaimed.
+
+"Oh, well," he answered, coolly, "just as you like, you know. But I
+should think you'd better--for the child's sake, at least."
+
+"It isn't true. I don't believe it," she said, piteously.
+
+"Ask the doctor, then;" and he sauntered out, smiling, and perhaps not
+dreaming that she would.
+
+But "for the child's sake" had alarmed Ideala, and she sent for the
+doctor. It was hours before he could come to her, and, in the meantime,
+not knowing that her state of mind would affect the child, she had
+fidgeted and fretted herself into a fever, and when the doctor saw her,
+he could only confirm her husband's verdict.
+
+"I am afraid you must give up nursing," he said. "You are in such a
+nervous state it will do the child harm. But he's such a fine fellow!
+He'll thrive all right--you needn't be frightened."
+
+Ideala said nothing, but she sat in her own room night after night for
+a week, and heard the child crying for her, and could not go to him--
+and even when he did not cry she fancied she heard him still. I think
+as the milk slowly and painfully left her, her last spark of affection
+for her husband dried up too.
+
+The child died of diphtheria some time afterwards, and in a little
+while, Ideala, who was then in her twenty-sixth year, returned to her
+old pursuits, and no one ever knew what she felt about it:
+
+  For, it is with feelings as with waters--
+  The shallow murmur, but the deep are dumb!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+My widowed sister, Claudia, was one of Ideala's most intimate friends.
+She was a good deal older than Ideala, whom she loved as a mother loves
+a naughty child, for ever finding fault with her, but ready to be up in
+arms in a moment if any one else ventured to do likewise. She was
+inclined to quarrel with me because, although I never doubted Ideala's
+truth and earnestness (no one could), knowing her weak point, I feared
+for her. I thought if all the passion in her were ever focussed on one
+object she would do something extravagant--a prediction which Claudia,
+with good intent, rashly repeated to her once.
+
+Claudia was mistress of my house, and she and I had agreed from the
+first that, whatever happened, we would watch over Ideala and befriend
+her.
+
+My sister was one of the people who thought it would have been better
+for Ideala to have talked of her troubles. When I praised Ideala's
+loyalty, and her uncomplaining devotion to an uncongenial duty, Claudia
+said: "Loyalty is all very well; but I don't see much merit in a life-
+long devotion to a bad cause. If there were any good to be done by it,
+it would be different, of course; but, as it is, Ideala is simply
+sacrificing herself for nothing--and worse, she is setting a bad
+example by showing men they need not mend their manners since wives
+will endure anything. It is immoral for a woman to live with such a
+husband. I don't understand Ideala's meekness; it amounts to weakness
+sometimes, I think. I believe if he struck her she would say, 'Thank
+you,' and fetch him his slippers. I feel sure she thinks some unknown
+defect in herself is at the bottom of all his misdeeds."
+
+"I don't think she knows half as much about his misdeeds as we do," I
+observed.
+
+"Then I think it would be a charity to enlighten her," Claudia
+answered, decidedly. "One can't touch pitch without being defiled, and
+when it is too late we shall find she has suffered 'some taint in
+nature,' in spite of herself. Will you kindly take us to the Palace
+this evening? The Bishop wants us to go in after dinner, and Ideala has
+promised to come too."
+
+Ideala was fastidious about her dress, and being in one of her moods
+that evening she teased Claudia unmercifully, on the way to the Palace,
+about a blue woollen shawl she was wearing. "A delicate and refined
+nature expresses itself by nothing more certainly than elegant wraps,"
+she said, parodying another famous dictum; "and I should not like to be
+able to understand the state of mind a lady was in when she bought
+herself a blue woollen shawl; but I could believe she was suffering at
+the time from a temporary aberration of intellect--only, if she wore it
+afterwards the thing would be quite inexplicable." Claudia drew the
+wrap round her with dignity, and made no reply; then Ideala laughed and
+turned to me. "Certainly your friend," she said, alluding to a young
+sculptor who was staying with me, "can 'invest his portraits with
+artistic merit.' Claudia's likeness in the Exhibition is capital, and
+the fame of it is being noised abroad with a vengeance. But I think
+something should be done to stop the little newspaper-boy nuisance: the
+reports they spread are quite alarming."
+
+"Ideala, what nonsense are you talking about sculptors and newspaper-
+boys?" Claudia exclaimed.
+
+"I'll tell you," said Ideala. "There was a small boy with a big voice
+standing at the corner of the market-place this afternoon. He had a
+sheaf of evening papers under his arm, and was yelling with much
+enthusiasm to an edified crowd:--'Noose of the War! Hawful mutilation
+of the dead! Fearful collision in the Channel! Eighty-eight lives lost!
+Narrative of survivors! Thrilling details! Shindy in Parl'ment! Hirish
+members to the front again! 'Orrible haccident in our own town! The
+Lady Claudia's bust!'"
+
+"Ideala, how _dare_ you?"--but just then the carriage stopped, and we
+had to get out.
+
+The good Bishop met us in the hall. Ideala positively declined to go
+upstairs when he asked her.
+
+"It is too much trouble," she said, not seeing in her absence what was
+meant. "I would rather leave my things here."
+
+"But I am afraid I _must_ trouble you," the Bishop answered, in
+despair. "The fact is, my wife is not so well this evening, and she
+was afraid of the cold, and is staying in her own sitting-room."
+
+The "sitting-room" was a snug apartment, warm, cosy, luxurious, and we
+found a genial little party of intimate acquaintances there when we
+arrived. Ideala's husband was not one of them. He did not take her out
+much at that time. Probably he was engaged in some private pursuit of
+his own, and insisted on her going everywhere alone to keep her out of
+the way. A little while before he would scarcely allow her to pay a
+call without him. But, as a rule, whatever his mood was, she did as he
+wished--and provoked him sometimes, I think, by her patient compliance;
+a little resistance would have made the exercise of his authority more
+exciting.
+
+When we entered the sitting-room "an ominous silence feel on the
+group," which was broken at last by one of the ladies remarking that a
+kind heart was an admirable thing. Another agreed, and made some
+observations on the merits of self-sacrifice generally.
+
+"But some people are not satisfied with merely _doing_ a good deed," a
+gentleman declared, with profound gravity. "They think there is no
+merit in it if they do not suffer for it in some way themselves."
+
+There was a good deal more of this kind of thing, and we were beginning
+to feel rather out of it, when presently the preternatural gravity of
+the party was broken by a laugh, and then it was explained.
+
+Ideala had gone to a neighbouring town one day by train, and before she
+started a poor woman got into the carriage. The woman had a third-class
+ticket, but she was evidently ill, and when the guard came and wanted
+to turn her out, Ideala took pity on her, insisted on changing tickets,
+and travelled third class herself. The woman had been to the Palace,
+and described the incident to the Bishop's wife that morning, and she
+had just told her guests, wondering who the lady could have been, and
+they in turn had put their heads together and decided that there was no
+one in the community but Ideala who would have done the thing in that
+way.
+
+"But what else could I have done?" she asked, when she saw we were
+laughing at her.
+
+"Well, my dear," said the Bishop, who always treated her with the kind
+indulgence that is accorded to a favourite child, "you might have paid
+the difference for the woman, and travelled comfortably yourself, don't
+you know?"
+
+Ideala never thought of that!
+
+Presently the dear old Bishop nestled back in his chair, and with a
+benign glance round, which, his scapegrace son said, meant: "Bless you,
+my children! Be happy and good in your own way, but don't make a
+noise!" he sank into a gentle doze, and the rest of the party relapsed
+into trivial gossip, some of which I give for what it is worth by way
+of illustration. It shows Ideala at about her worst, but marks a period
+in her career, a turning-point for the better. She was seldom bitter,
+and still more rarely frivolous, after that night.
+
+"Clare Turner will take none of the blame of that affair on his own
+shoulders," some one remarked.
+
+"Mr. Clare Turner is the little boy who always said 'It wasn't me!'
+grown up," Ideala decided, from the corner of her couch. "He is a sort
+of two-reason man."
+
+"How do you mean 'a two-reason man,' Ideala?"
+
+"Well, he has only two reasons for everything; one is his reason for
+doing anything he likes himself, which is always a good one; and the
+other is his reason why the rest of the world should not do likewise,
+which is equally clear--to himself. He thinks there should be one law
+for him and another for everybody else. I don't believe in him."
+
+"Nor I," said one of the gentlemen. "Underhand bowling was all he was
+celebrated for at school; he bowled most frightful sneaks all the time
+he was there."
+
+"Talking about Clare Turner," Charlie Lloyd put in, "I've brought a new
+book of poems--author unknown. I picked it up at the station to-day.
+There's one thing in it, called 'The Passion of Delysle,' that seems to
+be intense; but I've only just glanced at it, and don't really know
+what it's like. Shall I read it?"
+
+"Oh, do!" was the general exclamation, and we all settled ourselves to
+enjoy the following treat.
+
+Charlie began softly:
+
+    O day and night! Oh day and night! and is this madness?
+    O day and night! O day and night! and is this joy?
+    Whence comes this bursting sense of life, and love, and gladness,
+    This pain of pleasure, perfected, without alloy?
+    Lo, flowing past me are the restless rivers,
+    Or swelling round me is the boundless sea;
+    Or else the widening waste of sand that quivers
+    In shining stretches, shuts the world from me--
+  Or seems to shut it, while I would that what it seems might be.
+
+    O day and night! O day and night! this mountain island,
+    This saintly shrine, this fort--I scarce know what 'tis yet--
+    This sand, or sea-girt, rocky, town-clad, church-crown'd highland,
+    This dull and rugged gem in golden deserts set,
+    Has some delicious, unknown charm to hold me,
+    To draw me to itself and keep me here;
+    The old grey walls, it seems, with joy enfold me--
+    Or is it I that make the dead stones dear,
+  And send the throbbing summer in my blood thro' all things near?
+
+    O day and night! O day and night! where else do flowers
+    Open their velvet lids like these to greet the light?
+    Or raise such sun-kissed lips aglow to meet cool showers?
+    Or cast more subtle scents abroad upon the night?
+    These trees and trailing weeds that climb the cliff-side steep,
+    The dusky pine trees, draped with wreaths of vine,
+    Make bowers where love might lie and list the sea-voice deep,
+    And drink the perfumed air, the light, like wine,
+  Which threads intoxication through these hot, glad veins of mine.
+
+    O day and night! O day and night! I sought this haven,
+    From place and power, and wealth I flew in search of rest;
+    They forced and bound me to a hard, detested craven,
+    Who mocked my loathing with his head upon my breast.
+    With deathless love I moaned for my young lover;
+    To make me great they drove him from my side,
+    And foully wrought with shame his name to cover--
+    My boy, my lord, my prince! In vain they lied!
+  But should I always suffer for their false, inhuman pride?
+
+    O day and night! O day and night! I left them flying,
+    I fled by day and night as flies the nomad breeze,
+    Across the silent land when light to dark was dying,
+    And onward like a spirit lost across the seas;
+    And on from sea and shore thro' apple-orchards blooming,
+    Till all things melted in a moving haze;
+    And on with rush and ring by tower and townlet glooming,
+    By wood, and field, and hill, by verdant ways,
+  While dawn to mid-day drew, and noon was lost in sunset blaze.
+
+    O day and night! O day and night! light once more waxing,
+    Still on with courage high, tho' strength was well-nigh spent;
+    Grim spectres of pursuit the wearied brain perplexing,
+    Fear-fraught, but ever met with spirit dedolent.
+    The landscape reeled, there came a sense of slumber,
+    And myriad shadows rose and wanned and waned,
+    And flitting figures, visions without number,
+    Took shape above the land till sight was pained,
+  And floated round me till at last the longed-for goal I gained.
+
+    O day and night! O day and night! with rest abounding,
+    The soothing sinking down on hard-earned holy rest,
+    With grateful ease that grew from all the calm surrounding,
+    A languid, dreamful ease, my soul became possessed.
+    The hoarse sea-wind comes soughing, sighing, singing,
+    Its constant message from the patient waves.
+    While high above cathedral bells were ringing,
+    Or falling voices chanted hymns of praise,
+  And all the land seemed filled with peace and promised length of days.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    O day and night! O day and night! once, all unheeding,
+    By sun and summer wind with tender touch caressed,
+    I wandered where the strains, the sacred strains, were pleading,
+    And, kneeling in the fane, my thoughts to prayer addressed.
+    And softly rose the murmur'd organ mystery,
+    And swell'd around the colonnaded aisle,
+    Where smiled the pictured saints of holy history
+    On prostrate penitents who prayed the while:
+  I could not pray there, but I felt that God Himself might smile.
+
+    O day and night! O day and night! while I was kneeling
+    There came the strangest sense of some loved presence near;
+    A re-awakening rush of well-remembered feeling
+    Thrill'd thro' me, held me still, with vague expectant fear.
+    Half turn'd from me, there stood beside the altar,
+    Where incense-clouds nigh veiled him from my sight,
+    A fair-haired priest--my quicken'd heart-beats falter!
+    Or is he priest, or is he acolyte,
+  Or layman devotee who prays in novice robes bedight?
+
+    O day and night! O day and night! whence comes this feeling?
+    For all unreal seem day and night and life and death,
+    And all unreal the hope that sets my senses reeling,
+    And stills my pulse an instant, checks my lab'ring breath.
+    Yet louder rolls the mighty organ thund'ring.
+    And downward slopes a beam of light divine,
+    The perfumed clouds are cleft: he looks up wond'ring--
+    Looks up--what does he there before the shrine?
+  He could not give himself to God, for he is mine, is mine!
+
+    O day and night! O day and night! I go forth trembling,
+    He did not meet my eyes, he never saw my face.
+    My bosom swells with joy and jealousy resembling
+    A war of good and evil waged in a holy place.
+    No longer soft the day, the sun in splendour
+    Pours all his might upon this green incline;
+    I lie and watch the cirrus clouds surrender,
+    Their glowing forms to one hot kiss resign--
+  How could he give himself to God when he is mine, is mine?
+
+    O day and night! O day and night! beneath your glory
+    The crimson flood of life itself has turned to fire!
+    The rugged brows of those old rocks, storm-rent and hoary,
+    Are quivering in their grim surprise at my desire.
+    The mother earth, throbbing with pain and pleasure,
+    Would sink her voices for the languid noon,
+    But light airs wake a reckless madd'ning measure,
+    And wavelets dance and sparkle to the tune.
+  And mock the mocking malice of yon day-dimm'd gibbous moon.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    O day and night! O day and night! a fisher maiden
+    Is wand'ring up the path to where unseen I lie;
+    She comes with some light spoil from off the shore beladen.
+    And softly singing of the sea goes slowly by.
+    And slowly rise great sun-tipped white cloud masses,
+    Sublimely still their shadows flit and flee:
+    How silently the work of nature passes--
+    The roll of worlds, the growth of flower and tree!
+  Angels of God in heaven! give him to me! give him to me!
+
+    O day and night! O day and night! the hours rolling
+    Bring ev'ry one its change, its song, or chant, or chime:
+    Now solemnly their sounds a distant death-knell tolling.
+    And now the bells above beat forth the flight of time.
+    I lie, unconsciously each trifle noting,
+    The far-off sailors toiling on the quay,
+    Or o'er the sand a broad-wing'd sea-bird floating,
+    Or passing hum of honey-laden'd bee--
+  Angels of God in heaven! give him to me! give him to me!
+
+    O day and night! O day and night! the scene surrounding
+    Grows dim and all unreal beneath the sunset glow;
+    And all the heat and rage pass into peace abounding,
+    I moan, I fear no more, but wait, while still tears flow.
+    The warm sweet airs scarce move the flowerets slender,
+    A pause and hush have settled on the sea,
+    A bird trills forth its love-song low and tender:
+    O bird rejoice! thy love and thou art free-
+  Angels of God in heaven! give him to me! give him to me!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    O day and night! O day and night! ye knew it ever!
+    Ye saw it written in the world's first golden prime!
+    And smiled your giant smile at all my rash endeavour
+    To snatch the cup unfill'd from out the hand of Time.
+    He comes, O day and night! Spirits attending,
+    Swift formless messengers my ev'ry sense apprise!
+    He comes! the bright fair head o'er some old book low bending
+    Dear Lord, at last! his eyes have met my eyes--
+  Gleam of light goes quivering across the happy skies!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    O day and night! O day and night! Love sits between us.
+    Far out the rising tide comas sweeping o'er the sand.
+    The murmurous pine trees lend their purple shade to screen us,
+    And breathe their fragrant sighs above the quiet land.
+    And, like a sigh, the sunset blaze is over,
+    The folding grey has veiled its colours bright;
+    While swift from view fade out the gulls that hover,
+    As round us sinks at last, on pinions light,
+  The dark and radiant clarity of the beautiful still night.
+
+    O day and night! O day and night! no words are spoken.
+    Such pleasant joy profound no words could well express:
+    His wand'ring fingers smooth my hair in silent token,
+    And all my being answers to the tender mute caress.
+    My head is resting on his breast for pillow,
+    And as by music moved my soul is thrill'd;
+    Flow on and clasp the land, O bursting billow!
+    O breezes, tell the mountains many-rill'd!
+  Our hearts now know each other, and our hope is all-fulfill'd.
+
+    O day and night! O day and night! no shadow crosses
+    This long'd-for solemn hour of all-forgetful bliss;
+    No chilling thought, or stalking dread arising, tosses
+    A poison'd drop of bitterness to spoil the ling'ring kiss:
+    No mem'ries past or future fears assailing--
+    As soon might doubt bedim the stars that shine!
+    Or souls released reach Paradise bewailing
+    The end of pain, and clemency divine:
+  The glorious present holds us: I am his and he is mine!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    O day and night! O day and night! and was it madness?
+    Lo! all is changing, even sky, and sea, and shore;
+    The heaving water ebbs itself away in sadness,
+    The waves receding sigh, "Delight returns no more!"
+    Far down the East the dawn is dimly burning,
+    Its first chill breath has shivered thro' my frame,
+    And with the light comes cruel Thought returning,
+    The air seems full of voices speaking blame;
+  Another day commences, but the world is not the same!
+
+    O day and night! O day and night! its rashes pass'd us,
+    We stand upon the brink and watch, the strong deep tide,
+    And shrink already from the howls that soon must blast us,
+    The world that sins unchidden, and the laws that would divide.
+    "O Love, they rest in peace whom ocean covers!"
+    One plunge, one clasp supernal, one long kiss!
+    Then downward, like those old Italian lovers.
+    Descend for ever through the long abyss,
+  And float together, happy, all eternity like this!
+
+The charm of the reader's voice had held us spellbound, and the poem
+was well received; but after the usual compliments there was a pause,
+and then Ideala burst out impetuously: "I am sick of those old Italian
+lovers," she said; "they float into everything. Their story is the
+essence with which two-thirds of our love literature is flavoured. We
+should never have received them in society; why do we tolerate them in
+books? I like my company to be respectable even there; and when an
+author asks me to admire and sympathise with such people he insults
+me."
+
+"They must be brought in, though, for the sake of contrast," somebody
+observed.
+
+"They should be kept in their proper place, then," she answered. "You
+may choose what you please to point a moral, but for pity's sake be
+careful about what you use to adorn a tale."
+
+"Moral or no moral," said the young sculptor, "I think a new poem of
+any kind a thing to be thankful for."
+
+"And do you call that kind of thing new?" said Ideala. "I should say it
+was a fine compound of all the poems of the kind, and several other
+kinds, that have ever been written, with a dash of the peculiarly
+refined immorality of our own times, from which nothing is sacred;
+thrown in to make weight. Such writing,
+
+    Like a new disease, unknown to men,
+  Creeps, no precaution used, among the crowd,
+  . . . . . . . . . . . and saps
+    The fealty of our friends, and stirs the pulse
+  With devil's leaps, and poisons half the young.
+
+It is the feeling of the day accurately defined. Nobody sighs for love
+and peace now. The cry is for the indulgence of some fiery passion for
+an hour, and then, perdition!--if you like--since that is the
+recognised price of it."
+
+"Our loves are more intense than they used to be," said the sculptor,
+sighing.
+
+"Love!" Ideala answered. "Oh, do not desecrate 'the eternal God-word,
+love!' There is little enough of that in the business that goes by its
+name now-a-days. I am a lady--I cannot use the right word. But it is
+none the less the thing I mean because it calls blasphemously on God
+Almighty to help it to fulfil itself."
+
+"Well," said Charlie Lloyd, deprecatingly, "I didn't offer this, you
+know, as an admirable specimen of what our day can produce. I told you
+I hadn't read it, and now that I have I don't suppose any one has
+offered it to the public as a serious expression of sentiment."
+
+"You do not think people write books about what they really feel?" said
+Ideala. "I believe they do when the feeling is shameful. If you want to
+keep a secret, publish the exact truth in a book, and nobody will
+believe a word of it. I think people who publish such productions
+should be burned on a pile of their own works."
+
+"The writer is young, doubtless," I said, apologetically. It gives one
+a shock to hear a woman say harsh things.
+
+"He was evidently not too young to have bad thoughts," said Claudia,
+supporting her friend; "and he was certainly old enough to know
+better."
+
+"He!" ejaculated Ideala. "It is far more likely to be _she_. Do
+you read the reviews? You will find that all the most objectionable
+books are written by women--and condemned by men who lift up their
+voices now, as they have done from time immemorial, and insist that we
+should do as they say, and not as they do."
+
+"I am afraid you are right," said Charlie Lloyd. "So many of our best
+women--I mean the women who are likely to make most impression on the
+age--are going that way now."
+
+"But what horrid things you say, Ideala," one of the ladies chimed in,
+"and you make everybody else say horrid things. That 'Passion of
+Delysle' is not a bit worse than Tennyson's 'Fatima'--and there's a lot
+more in it--that part about 'the roll of worlds,' you know, is quite
+grand."
+
+"I always liked that idea," Ideala observed.
+
+"And--and--" the lady continued, "where she looks at everything, you
+know. She was very properly seeking distraction, and found it for a
+moment in the contemplation of nature, and that softened her mood, so
+that when the inevitable rush of recollection comes and forces the
+thought of him back upon her, her feeling finds expression in a prayer
+--instead of--instead of--"
+
+"A blasphemous remonstrance," Ideala put in. "Oh, I don't deny that
+there is just enough to be said in favour of all these things to make
+them sell--and this one has two unusual points of interest. It opens
+with a riddle, and the lady's lover is a priest, which gives an
+additional zest to the charm of wrong-doing, a _sauce piquante_ for
+jaded appetites."
+
+"Why do you call the opening verses a riddle?" said Charlie Lloyd.
+
+"Because I fancy no one will ever guess what kind of a place it was--
+
+    This mountain island,
+  This saintly shrine, this fort--
+
+I forget how it goes on."
+
+"Oh, the description of the place is not bad," Charlie answered, after
+reading it over again to himself. "It would do for the Mont St. Michael
+in Normandy."
+
+"Well, let that pass, then," said Ideala; "also the dear familiar
+'subtle scents abroad upon the night.' But what does she mean by 'On
+with rush and ring'?"
+
+"She means the train, obviously."
+
+"What an outlandish periphrasis! And how about
+
+  The rugged brows of those old rocks, storm-rent and hoary,
+  Are quivering in their grim surprise?"
+
+"That is a 'pathetic fallacy.' She is not speaking of the things as
+they were, but as they appeared to her excited fancy. She chronicles
+her own death, though----"
+
+"So did Moses," said Ideala. "If you really want to justify 'The
+Passion of Delysle' I can help you. You see she was dreadfully badly
+treated by her friends, poor thing! and her marriage after all was no
+marriage, because she loved another man all the time; and your husband
+isn't properly your husband if you don't love him, love being the only
+possible sanctification--in fact, the only true marriage. And then her
+lover, thinking he had lost her, became a priest, and vows made under a
+misapprehension like that cannot be binding--it would be too much to
+expect us to suffer always for such mistakes. And then the world--but
+we all know how cruel the world is! And appearances were sadly against
+them, poor things! No one would ever have believed that they had stayed
+out all night to discuss their religious experiences. Suicide is
+shocking, of course; but still, when people are driven to it like that,
+we can only be sorry for them, and hope they will never do it again!"
+She nestled back more comfortably on her couch, and then continued in
+an altered tone: "But it is appalling to think of the quantity of
+machine-made verses like those that are imposed on the public year by
+year, verses the mere result of much reading and writing, without a
+scrap of inspiration in them, and as far removed from even schoolboy
+efforts of genius, as an oleograph is from an oil painting. Poets are
+as rare now as prophets, and inspiration has left us for our sins. I
+think any fairly educated one of us, with a tolerable memory and the
+habit of composition, could write that 'Passion of Delysle' again in
+half-an-hour."
+
+"Oh, could they, though!" said Ralph, the son of the house. "I dare bet
+anything you couldn't do it yourself in twice the time."
+
+"Dare you?" she answered, with a little smile. "Well, to adopt your
+elegant phraseology, Master Ralph, I bet I will produce the same story,
+with the same conclusion, but a different moral, in an hour--since you
+allow me twice the time I named--if I may be permitted to write it in
+blank verse, that is, and of course, with the understanding that what I
+write is not intended to be anything but mere versified prose."
+
+"Done with you!" cried Ralph.
+
+"Hush--h--h!" his mother exclaimed, deprecatingly. "Betting, and
+before the Bishop, too!"
+
+"What the Bishop don't know will do him no harm, Ma," said the youth in
+a stage whisper. "Sit down, Ideala, and begin. It's ten minutes to ten
+now."
+
+The Bishop slept serenely; conversation flagged; and Ideala wrote
+steadily for about three-quarters of an hour; then she gathered up the
+manuscript, rose from the table, and returned to her old seat.
+
+"'The Passion of Delysle' has become 'The Choice,'" she said. "Will you
+read it for me, Mr. Lloyd? I think it should have that advantage, at
+least."
+
+Charlie took the manuscript, and read:
+
+  Once on a time, not very long gone by,
+  A noble lady had a noble choice.
+  The daughter of an ancient house was she,
+  Beauty, and wealth, and highest rank were hers,
+  But love was not, for of a proud, cold race
+  Her people were, caring for nought but lands,
+  Riches, and power; holding all tender thoughts
+  As weakly folly, only fit for babes.
+  The lady learnt their creed; her heart seem'd hard--
+  She thought it so; and when the moment came
+  To choose 'twixt love, young love, and pride of place,
+  She still'd an unwonted feeling that would rise,
+  And saying calmly: "I have got no heart,
+  And love is vain!" she chose to be the wife
+  Of sinful age, corruption, and untruth,
+  Scorning the steadfast love of one who yearn'd
+  To win her from the crooked paths she trod,
+  And break the sordid chains that bound her soul,
+  And sweep the defiling dust of common thoughts
+  From out her mind, until it shone at last
+  With large imaginings of God and good.
+
+  She chose: no more they met: her life was pass'd
+  In constant round of pomp and proud display.
+  But when he went, and never more there came
+  The love-sad eyes to question and entreat,
+  The voice of music praising noble deeds,
+  The graceful presence and the golden hair,
+  She miss'd the boy; but scoff'd at first and said:
+  "One misses all things, common pets one spurn'd,
+  Good slaves and bad alike when both are gone,--
+  A small thing makes the habit of a life!"
+  But days wore on, and adulation palled.
+  She knew not what she lack'd, nor that she loath'd
+  The hollow semblance, the dull mockery,
+  Which she had gain'd for joy by choosing rank,
+  And money's worth, instead of peace and love.
+
+  Yet ever as the long days grew to months
+  More heavy hung the time, moved slower by.
+  And all things troubled her and gave her pain,
+  And morning, noon, and night the thought would rise,
+  And grew insistent when she would not hear:
+  "One loved me! out of all this crowd but one!
+  And he is gone, and I have driven him forth!"
+
+  Then in the silent solitude of night
+  An old weird story that she once had heard
+  Tormented her; a story speaking much
+  Of a rock-island on the Norman coast,
+  A mountain peak rising from barren sand,
+  Or standing sea-girt when the tide returns,
+  And beaten by the winds on ev'ry side,
+  With wall'd-in town, and castle on the height,
+  And high above the castle, strangely placed,
+  A grey cathedral with its summit tipp'd
+  By a gold figure of St. Michael crown'd,
+  With burnished wings and flashing sword that shone
+  A beacon in the sunset, seen for miles,
+  As tho' the Archangel floated in the air.
+  The castle and the church a sanctuary
+  And refuge were, to which men often fled
+  For rest or safety, finding what they sought.
+  And as the lady thought about the place,
+  A notion came that she would like to kneel
+  And pray for peace at that far lonely shrine.
+  The longing grew: she rested not nor slept.
+  And should she fly and leave her wretched wealth?
+  And if she fled she never could return;
+  Yet if she stay'd she felt that she should die.
+  So go or stay meant misery for her--
+  But misery is lessened when we move.
+  Yes, she would go! and then she laugh'd to think
+  Of the wild fury of her harsh old Lord
+  When he should wake one day and find her gone--
+  Laugh'd! the first time for long and weary months.
+
+  By Mont St. Michael, on the Norman coast,
+  A restless river, changing oft its course,
+  Flows sullenly; and racehorse-like the tide,
+  Which, going, leaves a wilderness of sand.
+  Comes rushing back, a foam-topp'd, wat'ry wall;
+  And those who, wand'ring, 'scape the quicksand's grip,
+  Are often caught and drown'd ere help can come.
+  But fair the prospect from the Mount when bright
+  The sunshine falls on Avranches far away,
+  A white town straggling o'er a verdant hill;
+  And on the tree-clad country toward the west,
+  On apple orchards, and the fairy bloom
+  Of feath'ry tam'risk bushes on the shore;
+  Whilst high above in silent majesty
+  Of hue and form the floating clouds support
+  The far-extending vault of azure sky
+
+  Such was the shrine the lady sought, and there
+  In mute appeal for what she lack'd she knelt,
+  Not knowing what she lack'd; but finding peace
+  Steal o'er her soul there as she faintly heard
+  The slow and solemn chanting of the priests,
+  The mild monotony of murmured prayers,
+  And hush of pauses when she seemed to feel
+  The heart she deem'd so hard was melting fast,
+  And listen'd to a voice within her say--
+  "Love is not vain! Love all things and rejoice!"
+  And found warm tears were stealing down her cheeks.
+
+  The mystery of love, of love, of love,
+  Of hope, of joy, of life itself, she felt;
+  The crown of life, which she had sacrificed
+  In scornful pride for lust of power and place.
+  The lady bow'd her head, and o'er her swept
+  A wave of anguish, and she knew despair.
+  "Could I but see him once again!" she moan'd,
+  "See him, and beg forgiveness, and then die!"
+  Did the Archangel Michael, standing there
+  Upon her left, in shining silver, hear?
+  Who knows? Her prayer was answer'd like a flash;
+  For at that moment, clear and sweet o'er all
+  The mingled music of the chanting choir,
+  There rose a voice that thrill'd her inmost soul:
+  It breathed a blessing; utter'd soft a prayer.
+  No need to look: and yet she look'd, and saw
+  A hooded monk before the altar kneel,
+  A graceful presence, tho' in sordid dress.
+  And as she gazed the cowl slipp'd back and show'd
+  (But dimly thro' the incense-perfumed cloud)
+  A pure pale face, a golden tonsured head,
+  And blue eyes raised to heaven. Then the truth
+  Was there reveal'd to her that he had left
+  The world to watch and pray for such as she.
+
+  Out of the castled-gate she hurried forth:
+  What matter'd where she went, to east or west?
+  What matter'd peasant's warning that the sand
+  Was shifting ever, and the rushing tide
+  Gave them no quarter whom it overtook?
+  'Twas death she courted, and with heedless step
+  Onward to meet it swift the lady fled.
+  Death is so beautiful at such a time,
+  When all the land in summer sunshine lies,
+  And lapse of distant waves breaks pleasantly
+  The silence with a soothing dreamy sound,
+  And danger seems no nearer than the sky,
+  He tempts us from afar with hope of rest.
+  She hurried on in search of death, nor heard
+  That eager footsteps followed where she went.
+  The voice that call'd her was not real, she thought,
+  But a sweet portion of a strange sweet dream--
+  For now the terrible anguish quickly pass'd,
+  And sense of peace at hand was all she felt.
+  "O stop!"
+
+    Ah! that was real. She turn'd and saw,
+  Nor saw a moment till she felt his grasp
+  Strong and determined on her rounded arm.
+  "Thou shalt not die!" he cried. "What madness this?"
+  "Madness!" she echoed: "nay, my love, 'tis bliss--
+  The first my life has known--to stand here still
+  With thee beside me, and to wait for death.
+  I know my heart at last, but all too late!
+  I may not love thee, I another's wife;
+  Thou mayst not love me, thou hast wedded heaven.
+  We cannot be together in this world;
+  I cannot live alone and know thee here.
+  And thou art troubled! I for beneath that garb
+  Thy heart beats ever hot with love for me;
+  For love will not be quell'd by monkish vows.
+  But all things change in death! so let us die
+  Thus, hand in hand, and so together pass,
+  And be together thro' eternity!"
+
+  There was a struggle in the young monk's breast;
+  He would not meet her pleading eyes and yield,
+  But gazing up to heaven prayed for strength,
+  Strength to resist, and guidance how to act,
+  For death like that with her was luring--sweet--
+  A strong temptation, but he must resist,
+  And strive to save and show her how to live.
+  "We cannot make hereafter for ourselves,"
+  He answered softly; "all that we can do
+  Is so to live that we shall win reward
+  Of praise, and peace, and happy life to come.
+  Thy duty lies before thee; so does mine.
+  Let each return, and toil and watch and pray,
+  Knowing each other's heart is fix'd on heaven.
+  And do the good we can; not seeking death
+  Nor shunning it, but living pure and true,
+  With conscience clear to meet our God at last,
+  And win each other for our great reward."
+
+  The moving music of his words sank deep
+  Her alter'd heart thrill'd high to holy thoughts.
+  "Be thou my guide," she said. "My duty now
+  Shall bring me peace; so shall I toil like thee
+  To win the love I yearn for in the end."
+
+  It might not be. The treach'rous, working sand
+  Already clutched their feet, and check'd their speed;
+  And dancing, sparkling, like a joyful thing,
+  A glitt'ring, glassy wall of foam-fleck'd wave
+  Towards them glided with that fatal speed
+  You cannot mark because it is so swift.
+  No use to struggle now: no time to fly!
+  He clasp'd her to him: "God hath will'd it thus.
+  Courage, my sister!" "Is this death?" she cried.
+  "Yes, this is death." "It is not death, but joy!"
+  And as she spoke the spot where they were seen
+  Became a wat'ry waste of battling waves:
+  While high above the summer sun shone on--
+  A passing seabird hoarsely shriek'd along!
+  All things were changed, with that vast change which makes
+  It seem as tho' nought else had ever been.
+
+"Well done, Ideala!" said Ralph, patronisingly; "you certainly have a
+memory, and are quite as good at patchwork as the author of 'Delysle.'
+I could criticise on another count, but taking into consideration
+time, place, circumstances, and the female intellect, I refrain. That
+is the generous sort of creature _I_ am. So, without expressing my own
+opinion further--except to remark that, though I don't think much of
+either of them, personally I prefer 'Delysle.' The other is
+wholesomer, doubtless, for those who like a mild diet. Milk and water
+doesn't agree with me. But I put it to the vote. Ladies and gentlemen,
+do you or do you not consider that this lady has won her bet?"
+
+"Oh, won it, most decidedly!" we all agreed.
+
+"By-the-by, what was the bet?" I asked.
+
+"My Pa's gaiters against Ideala's blue stockings. I regret to say that
+circumstances over which I have no control"--and he glanced at the
+unconscious Bishop--"prevent the immediate payment of my debt--unless,
+indeed, he has a second pair;" and he left the room hurriedly as if to
+see.
+
+He did not come back to us that evening, but I believe he was to be
+heard of later at the sign of the "Billiard and Cue."
+
+"Well," said the young sculptor, returning to the old point of
+departure, "for my own part, I find much that is elevating in modern
+works."
+
+"So do I," said Ideala; "I find much that raises me on stilts."
+
+"But even that eminence would enable you to look over other people's
+heads and beyond."
+
+"It would," she answered, "if human nature didn't desire a sense of
+security; but, as it is, when I am artificially set up, I find that all
+I can do is to look at my own feet, and tremble lest I fall. Modern
+literature stimulates; it doesn't nourish. It makes you feel like a
+giant for a moment, but leaves you crushed like a worm, and without
+faith, without love, without hope. It excites you pleasurably, and when
+you see life through its medium you never suspect that the vision is
+distorted. It makes you think the Iconoclast the greatest hero, and
+causes you to feel that you share his glory when you help him with your
+approval to overthrow all the images you ever cherished; but when the
+work of destruction is over, and you look about you once more with
+sober eyes, you find you have sacrificed your all for nothing. Your
+false guide fails you when you want him most. He robs you, and leaves
+you hungry, thirsty, and alone in the wilderness to which he has
+beguiled you. There is no need for new theories of Life and Religion;
+all we require is strength and courage to perfect the old ones.
+[Footnote: She quite changed her mind upon this subject eventually, and
+held that there was not only need of new theories, but good hope that
+we should have them.] What the mind wants is food it can grow upon, not
+stimulants which inflate it for a time with a fancied sense of power
+that has no real existence. But I have small hope for our nation when I
+think of the sparkling trash that the mind of the multitude daily
+imbibes and craves for. I mean our novels. What a fine affectation of
+goodness there is in most of them! And what a perfect moral is tacked
+on to them!--like the _balayeuse_ at the bottom of a lady's dress;
+but, like the _balayeuse_, it is only meant to be a protection and
+a finish, and, however precious it may be, it suffers from contact with
+the dirt, and sooner or later has to be cut out and cast aside, soiled
+and useless. Some doggerel a friend of mine scribbled on one book in
+particular describes dozens of popular novels exactly:
+
+  O what a beautiful history!
+    Think what temptations they passed!
+  Each one more cruelly trying,
+    More tempting, indeed, than the last.
+  And what a lesson it teaches;
+    No passion from evil's exempted--
+  Whilst admiring the moral it preaches,
+    It makes you quite long to be tempted.
+
+I agree with those who tell us that society is breaking up, or will
+break up unless something is done at once to stop the dissolution. We
+have no high ideals of anything. Marriage itself is a mere commercial
+treaty, and only professional preachers speak of it in other terms--and
+those young people, with a passion for each other, who are about to be
+united--a passion that dies the death inevitably for want of knowledge,
+and wholesome principle, and self-control to support it. Some of us
+like our bargains better than others, but you can judge of the
+estimation in which marriage is held when you see how much happiness
+people generally find in it. If men and women were kept apart, and made
+to live purely from their cradles, they would still scarcely be fit for
+marriage; yet any man thinks he may marry, and never cares to be the
+nobler or the better for it. And when you see that this, the only
+perfect state, the most sacred bond of union between man and woman, is
+everywhere lightly considered, don't you think there is reason in the
+fear that we are falling on bad times? Oh, don't quote the Romans to
+me, and the Inevitable. We know better than the Romans, and could do
+better if we chose. But we have to mourn for the death of our manhood!
+Where is our manhood? Where are our men? Is there any wonder that we
+are losing what is best in life when only women are left to defend it?
+Believe me, the degradation of marriage is the tune to which the whole
+fabric of society is going to pieces----"
+
+"Eh, what!" exclaimed the Bishop, waking up with a start--"whole fabric
+of society going to pieces? Nonsense! When so many people come to
+church. And then look at all the societies at work for the--for the--
+ah--prevention of everything. Why, I belong to a dozen at least myself;
+the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and the Rational Dress Reform,
+for doing away with petticoats--no, by-the-by, it is my wife who
+belongs to that. But, at any rate, everything is being done that should
+be done, and you talk nonsense, my dear"--looking at Ideala severely--
+"because you don't know anything about it."
+
+"The faults we are hardest on in others are those we are most conscious
+of in ourselves--perhaps because we know how easy it would be to
+conquer them," Ideala observed vaguely.
+
+"Oh, come, now, my dear," said the Bishop, beaming round on all of us,
+"you must not believe what you hear about society being in such a bad
+state. I know idle people say so, and it is very wrong of them. Why,
+_I_ never see anything wrong."
+
+"Of course not," said Ideala. "We are all on our best behaviour before
+you."
+
+The Bishop patted his apron good-humouredly. "Well, now, take yourself
+for example," he said. "I am sure _you_ never do wrong--tell stories,
+you know, and that kind of thing."
+
+"Haven't I, though!" she answered, mischievously. "Not that it was much
+use, for I always repented and confessed; and now I have abandoned the
+practice to the best of my ability. It is horrid to feel you don't
+deserve the confidence that is placed in you, Bishop, isn't it?"
+
+"Ideala!" Claudia protested.
+
+The Bishop looked puzzled.
+
+"I can assure you I have suffered agonies of remorse because, in an
+idle moment, I deceived my cat--a big, comfortable creature, who used
+to come to me every day to be fed, and preferred to eat out of my hand.
+He was greedy, though, and snapped, and one day I offered him a piece
+of preserved ginger, and he dashed at it as usual, and swallowed it
+before he knew what it was. Then he just looked at me and walked away.
+He trusted me, and I had deceived him. It was an unpardonable breach of
+confidence, and I have always felt that I never could look that cat in
+the face again."
+
+The Bishop smiled and sighed at the little reminiscence. "I think you
+are right, though, in one way, Ideala," he presently observed. "The
+powers of Light and Darkness are certainly having a hard fight for it
+in our day; but we have every reason to hope.
+
+  Oh, yet we trust that somehow good
+  Will be the final goal of ill."
+
+"And, granted that the popular literature of the day is corrupt," the
+young sculptor put in, "and that the standard of society is being
+yearly lowered by it, still there is Art----"
+
+"But there is so little of it," said Ideala; "I mean so little that
+elevates. Most of the subjects chosen are not worth painting; and what
+profit is there in contemplating a thing that is neither grand nor
+beautiful in itself, nor suggestive, by association, of anything that
+is grand or beautiful? The pictures one generally sees are not
+calculated to suggest anything to the minds that need suggestion most.
+The technical part may be good and gratifying to those who understand
+it, but that is the mere trade of the thing. We prefer to see it well
+done, of course, but if the canvas has nothing but the paint to
+recommend it, the artist might have saved himself the trouble of
+putting it on, for all the good it does or the pleasure it gives."
+
+"Oh, Ideala, do you know nothing of the charm of colour?" asked a lady
+who painted.
+
+"_I_ do," said Ideala, "but I may be supposed to have enjoyed
+exceptional advantages. And it is hardly charm we want to elevate us.
+There will always be enough in all conscience to appeal to the senses.
+But there is an absence even of charm."
+
+"Many a noble thought has been expressed in a coat of colour," said the
+lady.
+
+"I know it has," Ideala answered; "and all best thoughts give pleasure.
+I have been so thrilled by a noble idea, well expressed, that I could
+do nothing but sit with closed eyes and revel in the joy of it. But if
+such an idea were placed before you, and you did not know the language
+in which it was written, what good would it do you? An uneducated
+person seeing a picture of a donkey in a field sees only a donkey in a
+field, however well it may be painted; and I fancy very exceptional
+ability would be required to make any of us think a grey donkey
+sublime, or believe an ordinary green field to be one of the Elysian."
+
+"Talking about charm," the sculptor broke in, enthusiastically, "I
+suppose you haven't seen the new picture, 'Venus getting into the
+Bath?' That is a feast of colour, and realism, if you like! She is
+standing beside the bath with a dreamy look on her face. Her lovely
+eyes are fixed on the water. One arched and blue-veined foot is
+slightly raised as if the touch of the marble chilled her. Her limbs
+are in an easy attitude, and beautifully modelled. She is represented
+as a slight young girl, and the figure stands out in exquisite nudity
+from a background of Pompeian red, and the dark green of myrtles. With
+one hand she is holding aloft the masses of her rich brown hair--the
+attitude suggests the stretching of the muscles after repose; with the
+other"--but here his memory failed him. "What _is_ she doing with her
+other hand?"
+
+"Scratching herself!" slipped from Ideala, involuntarily, to her own
+horror and the delight of some. But she recovered herself quickly, and
+turning to the good Bishop, who was looking mildly astonished and much
+amused, she said: "There, my Lord, is an instance of the corrupt state
+of society in our own day. You see, even your restraining presence
+doesn't always keep us in order. I hope," she whispered to me, "I'm not
+going to be made the horrid example to prove the truth of all my
+theories."
+
+Soon after this the party broke up. Claudia returned in her wraps to
+say good-night to the Bishop's wife.
+
+"Claudia!" Ideala exclaimed, "you have forgotten that detestable old
+blue shawl."
+
+Claudia tried to stop her with a significant gesture, but in vain.
+Ideala was obtuse.
+
+"Claudia came out this evening in the most extraordinary covering I
+ever saw a lady wear," she said to the Bishop's wife. "I really think
+she must have borrowed it from one of the maids."
+
+"I am afraid you must mean the blue shawl I lent to Lady Claudia the
+other evening," the Bishop's wife replied, with a hurt smile.
+
+"Oh!" said Ideala, disconcerted for a moment. "But, really, Bishopess,
+you deserve to be upbraided. You should set a better example, and not
+provoke us to scorn on the subject of your shawls."
+
+Later, when I was alone with my sister, I said: "Ideala did nothing but
+put her foot in it this evening. What was the matter with her? I never
+heard her speak so strongly before, except when she was alone with us.
+And I don't think she ought to discuss such subjects with such people;
+it is hardly delicate."
+
+Claudia sighed wearily. "Who knows what pain is at the bottom of it
+all?" she said. "But one thing always puzzles me. Ideala rails at evils
+that never hurt her, and yet she speaks of marriage, which has been her
+bane, as if it were a holy and perfect state, upon which it is a
+privilege to enter."
+
+"Plenty of people have condemned marriage simply because their own
+experience of it has been unfortunate," I answered; "but Ideala is
+above that. She will let no petty personal mishap prejudice her
+judgment on the subject. She sees and feels the possibility of infinite
+happiness in marriage when there is such love and such devotion on both
+sides as she herself could have brought to it; and she understands that
+her own unhappy experience need only be exceptional."
+
+"I wish it were!" sighed Claudia.
+
+Some years later, Ideala confessed to me that she had written "The
+Passion of Delysle" herself, but had had no idea of its significance
+until she heard it read aloud that night, and then, as she elegantly
+expressed it, she could have cut her throat with shame and
+mortification, which I consider a warning to young ladies not to trust
+to their poetical inspirations, for--if the shade of Shelley will
+pardon the conclusion--alas! _apparently_, they know not what they do
+when they write verses!
+
+"I can't think how you could have criticised it like that, Ideala," I
+said, "now that I know you wrote it."
+
+"Neither can I," she answered.
+
+"You ought to have confessed you had written it, or have said nothing
+about it," I told her, frankly.
+
+"Yes," she assented. "Not doing so was a kind of falsehood. But
+neither course occurred to me." And then she explained: "I never see
+the meaning of what I write till the light of public opinion is turned
+upon it, or some cold critic comes and damps my enthusiasm. When a
+subject possesses me, and shapes itself into verse, it boils in my
+brain, and my pen is the only way of escape for it, the one
+safety-valve I have to ease the pressure. And I can't judge of its
+merits myself for long enough after it _is_ written, because the
+boiling begins again, you see, whenever I read it, and then there is
+such a steam of feeling I cannot see to think. For the verses, however
+poor they appear to you, contain for me the whole poem as I have it in
+my inner consciousness. It is beautiful as it exists there, but the
+power of expression is lacking. If only I could make you feel it as I
+do, I should be the greatest poet alive."
+
+It was a trick of Ideala's to miss the true import of a thing--often an
+act of her own--until the occasion had passed, or to see it strangely
+distorted, as she frequently did at this time--though that gradually
+ceased altogether as she grew older; but it was this peculiarity, so
+strongly marked in her, which first helped me to comprehend a curious
+trait there is in the moral nature of men and women while it is still
+in process of development. Many men, Frenchmen especially, have thought
+the trait peculiar to women. La Bruyére declares that "Women have no
+principles as men understand the word. They are guided by their
+feelings, and have full faith in their guide. Their notions of
+propriety and impropriety, right and wrong, they get from the little
+world embraced by their affections." And Alphonse Karr says: "Never
+attempt to prove anything to a woman: she believes only according to
+her feelings. Endeavour to please and persuade: she may yield to the
+person who reasons with her, not to his arguments"--opinions, however,
+which apply to men as often as not, and only to the young, impressible,
+passionate, and imperfectly educated of either sex. But there is
+scarcely a generalisation for one sex which does not apply equally to
+the other, so perfectly alike in nature are men and women. The
+difference is only in circumstance. Reverse the position of the sexes,
+require men to be modest and obedient, and they will develop every
+woman's weakness in a generation. If a man would comprehend a woman,
+let him consider himself; the woman has the same joys, sorrows, hopes,
+fears, pleasures, and passions--expressed in another way, that is all.
+But, certainly, for a long time Ideala's guide was her feeling about a
+thing. I have often said to her, when at last she decided to take some
+step which had obviously been the only course open to her from the
+first: "But, Ideala, _why_ have you hesitated so long? You knew it
+was right to begin with."
+
+"Yes," she would answer, "I _knew_ it was right; but I have only just
+now _felt_ that it was."
+
+She had never thought of acting on the mere cold knowledge. For feeling
+to knowledge, in young minds, is like the match to a fire laid in a
+grate; knowledge without feeling being as cheerless and impotent as the
+fire unlit.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+
+A little while after that evening at the Palace we learnt to our dismay
+that Ideala's husband had taken a house in one of the rough
+manufacturing districts, to which he meant to remove immediately.
+Business was the pretext, as he had money in some great ironworks
+there; but I think the nearness of a large city, where a man of his
+stamp would be able to indulge all his tastes without let or hindrance,
+had something to do with the change.
+
+Ideala had kept up very well while she was among us, but soon after she
+went away we gathered from the tone of her letters that there was a
+change in her which alarmed us. Her health, which had hitherto been
+splendid, seemed to be giving way, and it was evident that her new
+position did not please her, and that, even after she had been there
+for months, she continued to feel herself "a stranger in a strange
+land." The people were uncongenial, and I think it likely they regarded
+Ideala's oddities with some suspicion, and did not take to her as we
+had done. She had not that extreme youth which had been her excuse when
+she came to us, and which, somehow, we had not missed when she lost it;
+and her habitual reserve on all matters that immediately concerned
+herself must also have tended to make her unpopular with people whose
+predominant quality was "an eminent curiosity."
+
+"They are far above books," Ideala wrote to Claudia; "what they study
+is each other, and in the pursuit of this branch of knowledge they are
+indefatigable. When they can get nothing out of me about myself, they
+question me about my husband and friends, and it is in vain that I
+answer them with those words of wisdom (I feel sure I misquote them)--
+'All that is mine own is yours till the end of my life; but the secret
+of my friend is not mine own'--they persevere.
+
+"Our house is near the town, Eighteen big chimneys darken our daylight
+and deluge us with smuts when the wind brings the smoke, our way; and
+besides the smoke we are subject to unsavoury vapours from chemical
+works in the other direction, so that when the wind shifts we only
+exchange evils. They say these chemical fumes are not unwholesome, and
+quote the death-rate, which is lower than any other place of the size
+in England. In fact, scarcely anybody dies here. They go away as soon
+as they begin to feel ill--perhaps that accounts for it. But those
+horrid chemical fumes have a great deal to answer for. They have killed
+the trees for miles around. It is the oaks that suffer principally. The
+tops are nipped first, and then they gradually die downwards till the
+whole tree is decayed all through. The absence of trees makes the
+country bleak and desolate, and I cannot help thinking the unlovely
+surroundings affect us all. The people themselves are unlovely in
+thought, and word, and deed; but I have found a good deal of rough
+kindliness amongst them nevertheless. They did mob me on one occasion,
+and made most unkind remarks about my nether garments, when I was
+obliged to walk through the town in my riding habit; but, as a rule,
+the mill girls merely observe 'That's a lady,' and let me go by
+unmolested--unless I happen to be carrying flowers. They do so love
+flowers, poor things and I cannot resist their pathetic entreaties when
+they beg for 'One, missus, on'y one!' Some of my lady friends are not
+let off so easily as I am. The girls chaff them unmercifully about
+their dress and personal peculiarities, and if they show signs of
+annoyance they call them names that are not to be repeated. The mill
+girls wear bright-coloured gowns, white aprons, and nothing on their
+heads. If a policeman catches them at any mischief they either clatter
+off in their clogs with shrieks of laughter, or knock him down and kick
+him most unmercifully. They are as strong as men, and as beautiful,
+some of them, as saints; but they are very unsaintlike creatures
+really--irresponsible, and with little or no idea of right and wrong.
+One scarcely believes that they have souls--and I am always surprised
+to find that anything not cruel and coarse can survive in the hearts of
+people, begrimed, body and mind, like these, by their hard
+surroundings; but it is there, nevertheless--the human nature, and the
+poetry, and the something ready to thrill to better things. A gentleman
+has a lovely place not far from us, where the trees have been spared by
+a miracle. Nightingales seldom wander so far north, but a few years ago
+a stray one was heard there, and the wonder and the beauty of its voice
+brought hundreds from the mills and crowded streets to hear it sing.
+Special trains were run from the neighbouring city to accommodate the
+crowds that came nightly to wait in the moonlight and listen; and an
+enterprising trader set up a stall, and sold gingerbeer. The story ends
+there, but I like it, don't you? especially the gingerbeer part of it.
+It was told me by one who remembers the circumstance.
+
+"My greatest pleasure in life is in my flowers, they are dearer to me
+than any I ever had before, because they are all so delicate, and
+require such infinite care and tenderness to keep them alive in this
+uncongenial climate. I have my thrushes also--two, which I stole from
+a nest in a wood one moonlight night, and brought up by hand on bread
+and milk and scraped beef. I had to get up at daylight, and feed them
+every hour until dark; but the clergy will not allow that this
+obligation was a proper excuse for staying away from church, and just
+now I am unhappy in the feeling that their religion must be inhuman.
+But my thrushes have well repaid the trouble. They call me when I go
+into the room, and come to me when I open the door of their cage, and
+perch on my shoulder. One of them, Israfil, sings divinely. People who
+come to hear him see only a little brown bird with speckled breast,
+and call him a thrush; but _I_ know he is Israfil, 'the angel of song,
+and most melodious of God's creatures;' and _he_ thinks that I have
+wings. He told me so!
+
+"I wish you would send me a basket of snails packed up in lettuce
+leaves. I don't know why, but I can find none here, and I cannot hear
+of one ever having been seen in the county. But please do not send them
+unless you are quite sure you can spare them."
+
+"Ideala is trying to hide herself behind these pretty trivialities,"
+Claudia said. "I always suspect that there is something more wrong than
+usual when she adopts this playful tone and childlike simplicity of
+taste."
+
+"It must be trying to have a friend who believes so little in one as
+you do in Ideala," I answered.
+
+"Oh, how exasperating you are!" Claudia exclaimed. "You know what I
+mean quite well enough."
+
+Later, Ideala wrote: "You are anxious about my health. The fact is, I
+have developed a most extraordinary talent for taking cold. I went by
+train to see the museum in the city the other day. I took off my cloak
+while I was there, and stayed an hour, and when I came away, the
+antiquary, who knew I was a precious specimen, wrapped me up carefully
+himself. Nevertheless I caught cold. Then I went to stay with some
+people near here who clamoured much for the pleasure of my company.
+They live in a palace and are entertaining. The lady's papa took me in
+to dinner he first evening. He asked me about Major Gorst, and wanted
+to know, in an impressive tone of voice, if I had heard that he was the
+next heir but one to the Hearldom of Cathcourt.
+
+"The next day my hostess said to her husband: 'Dearest, do let me ride
+Oscar,' and he replied: 'No, my darling, I can't till I know he's safe.
+I must get some one to try him first'--and he looked at me--'Perhaps
+you wouldn't mind?'
+
+"They had never seen me on horseback, and I was longing to distinguish
+myself. I did distinguish myself. Oscar was a merry horse, but one
+never knew how he would take things. The first bridge we came to--I
+was 'sitting easy to a canter' with my foot out of the stirrup and my
+leg _over_ the third crutch--a bad habit I learnt from a foreign
+friend--and an express train rushed by. Oscar went on abruptly, but I
+remained. The next difficulty was at a brook. We ought to have crossed
+it together; but Oscar changed his mind at the last moment, so he
+remained and I went on. And after that we came to cross-roads, and had
+a difference of opinion about which was the right one. That ended in
+our coming over together, which made me feel solemn--disheartened, in
+fact--and then I thought we should never understand each other and be
+friends, so I gave him up. I did not talk much about riding to those
+people after that.
+
+"But I wore my summer habit that day, and of course I caught cold. And
+when that was nearly well I went downstairs to be civil to some people
+who had driven a long way to see me. The drawing-room was damp from
+disuse, and the fire had only just been lighted--and of course I caught
+cold. When that was better I went for a drive. The wind was east, and
+the carriage was open--and of course I caught cold. I don't know how it
+may strike you, but argument seems to me useless when a person has such
+a constitution."
+
+"Can you read between the lines of that letter?" Claudia asked me.
+
+"She seems to be dreadfully _don't care_," I said.
+
+"Exactly. She is more reckless, and therefore more miserable, than she
+used to be. I wouldn't live with him."
+
+"Ideala won't shirk her duty because it is hard and unpalatable," I
+answered.
+
+"I believe she likes it!" Claudia exclaimed; and then, smiling at her
+own inconsistency, she explained, "I mean if she really is miserable
+she ought to speak and let us do something."
+
+"It is contrary to her principles. She would think it wrong to disturb
+_your_ mind for a moment because her own life is a burden to her.
+That is why she always tries to seem happy, and is cheerful on the
+surface. If she made lament, we should suffer in sympathy, and all the
+more because there is so very little we could do to help her. Silence
+is best. If she ever gives way, she will not be able to bear it again."
+
+"But why _should_ she bear it?" Claudia demanded.
+
+"It is her duty."
+
+"I know she thinks so, and is sacrificing her life to that principle.
+But will you kindly tell me where a woman's duty to her husband ends
+and her duty to herself begins? I suppose you will allow that she has a
+duty to herself? And the line should be drawn somewhere."
+
+Claudia's mind was a sort of boomerang just then, returning inevitably
+to this point of departure; but I could make no suggestion that
+satisfied her. And I was uneasy myself. Ideala refused to come to us,
+and had made some excuse to prevent it when Claudia offered to go to
+her. This puzzled me; but we induced her at last to promise to meet us
+in London in May. It was April then, and we thought if she could be
+persuaded to stay two months of the season in town with us, and go with
+us afterwards to a place of mine in the North which she loved, she
+would probably recover her health and spirits.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+
+In the meantime, however, something decisive happened, as we afterwards
+learnt.
+
+It seems that after they left our neighbourhood Ideala had, by
+accident, made a number of small discoveries about her husband which
+had the effect of destroying any remnant of respect she may still have
+felt for him. She found that he was in the habit of examining her
+private papers in her absence, and that he had opened her letters and
+resealed them. His manner to her was unctuous as a rule; but she knew
+he lied to her without hesitation if it suited his purpose--and that
+alone would have been enough to destroy her liking for him, for it is
+not in the nature of such a woman to love a man who has looked her in
+the face and lied to her.
+
+These things, and the loneliness he brought upon her by driving from
+her the few people with whom she had any intellectual fellowship, she
+would have borne in the old uncomplaining way, but he did not stop
+there.
+
+One day she drove into town with a friend who got out to do some
+shopping. Ideala waited in the carriage, which had stopped opposite a
+public-house, and from where she sat she could see the little sitting-
+room behind the bar, and its occupants. They were her husband and the
+barmaid, who was sitting on his knee.
+
+Ideala arranged her parasol so that they might not see her if they
+chanced to look that way, and calmly resumed the conversation when her
+friend returned.
+
+She dined alone with her husband that evening, and talked as usual,
+telling him all she had done and what news there was in the paper, as
+she always did, to save him the trouble of reading it. In return he
+told her he had been at the ironworks all day, only leaving them in
+time to dress for dinner, a piece of news she received with a still
+countenance, and her soft eyes fixed on the fire.
+
+She was standing on the hearth at the time, and as he spoke he laid his
+hand upon her shoulder caressingly, but she could not bear it. Her
+powers of endurance were at an end, and for the first time she shrank
+from him openly.
+
+"How you do loathe me, Ideala," he exclaimed.
+
+"Yes, I loathe you," she answered.
+
+And then, in a sudden burst of rage, he raised his hand and struck her.
+
+Ideala's determination to be faithful to what she conceived to be her
+duty had kept her quiet hitherto, but now a sense of personal
+degradation made her desperate, and she forgot all that. Her first
+impulse was to consult somebody, to speak and find means to put an end
+to her misery; but I was not there, and to whom should she go for
+advice. Her impatience brooked no delay. She must see some one
+instantly. She thought of the Rector of the parish, but felt he would
+not do. He was a fine-looking, well-mannered old gentleman, much
+engaged in scientific pursuits, who always spoke of the Deity as if he
+were on intimate terms with Him, and had probably never been asked to
+administer any but the most formal kind of spiritual consolation in his
+life.
+
+The training and experience of a Roman Catholic priest, accustoming
+them as it does to deal with every phase of human suffering and
+passion, would have been more useful to her in such an emergency, but
+she knew none of the priests in that district, and did not think of
+going to them. But while she was considering the matter, as if by
+inspiration, she remembered something an acquaintance had lately
+written to her. This lady was a person for whom she felt much respect,
+and that doubtless influenced her decision considerably. The lady
+wrote: "It must be convenient to be only twenty minutes by train from
+such a big place. I suppose you go over for shopping, &c.? When you are
+there again I wish you would go and see my cousin Lorrimer. He is
+Adviser in General at the Great Hospital--a responsible position; and I
+am sure, if you go, he will be glad to do the honours of the place,
+which is most interesting."
+
+Ideala had felt from the first that she would rather consult a stranger
+who would be disinterested and unprejudiced. This gentleman's name
+promised well for him, for he belonged to people whose integrity was
+well known; and his position vouched for his ability--and also for his
+age to Ideala, whose imagination had pictured a learned old gentleman,
+bald, spectacled, benevolent, full of knowledge of the world, "wise
+saws and modern instances." No one, she thought, could be better suited
+for her purpose; and accordingly, next day, after attending to her
+household duties, she went by an early train to consult him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+
+The Great Hospital had been founded by an eccentric old gentleman of
+enormous wealth for an entirely original purpose. He observed that
+great buildings were erected everywhere to receive patients suffering
+from all imaginable bodily ills, chronic mania, of course, when the
+brain was diseased, being one of them; but no one had thought of making
+provision for such troubles, mental, moral, and religious, as affect
+the mind; and he held that such suffering was as real, and, without
+proper treatment, as incurable and disastrous, as any form of physical
+ailment. He therefore determined to found an hospital for these unhappy
+ones, which should contain every requisite that Divine Revelation had
+suggested, or human ingenuity could devise, for the promotion of peace
+of mind. The idea had grown out of some great mental trouble with which
+he himself had been afflicted in early life, and for which the world,
+as it was, could offer him no relief.
+
+The first thing he did towards the carrying out of his plan was to buy
+a site for his hospital near a growing town on the banks of a big
+river. The building was to be surrounded by green fields, for the
+colour is refreshing; and within sight of a great volume of calmly
+flowing water, the silent power of which is solemn and tranquillising
+to the spirit; and human society was to be within easy reach, for many
+people find it beneficial. As soon as he had found the site, which was
+entirely satisfactory, he set about maturing his plan for the building.
+Such a scheme could not be carried out in a moment, and he spent thirty
+years in travelling to study human nature, and architecture, and all
+else that should help to bring his work to perfection. At the end of
+thirty years he had finished a plan for the building to his own entire
+satisfaction; but Mr. Ruskin had been growing up in the meantime, and
+had begun to write, and the founder, happening to come across his works
+by accident one day, discovered his own ideas to be wrong from
+beginning to end. However, as it was the Truth he was aiming at, and
+not a justification of himself, he calmly burnt his plans, put his
+fingers in his ears (figuratively speaking) that he might not hear the
+rest of the world bray, and for ten years more devoted himself to the
+study of Mr. Ruskin. At the end of that time he knew something about
+proportion, about masses and intervals of light and shade; about the
+grandeur and sublimity of size, and the grace and beauty of ornament;
+about depth and harmony of colour, and all the other wonders that make
+one sick with longing to behold them; and when he had mastered all this
+he determined to begin at the very beginning, that is to say, with the
+walls that were to enclose his vast experiment. Everything was to be
+real, everything was to be solid, everything had to be endowed with a
+power of expression that could not fail of its effect. And as soon as
+he felt he might safely begin, he hastened away to inspect the long
+neglected site for his wonderful building. But here an unexpected check
+awaited him. While he himself had been so hard at work, his future
+neighbours had not been idle. The town had grown to a city; the river's
+banks were crowded with wharves and human habitations; the river itself
+cradled a fleet on its bosom, its waters, once so sublimely clear and
+still, were turbid and yellow, befouled by the city sewers, and useful
+only; and all that remained to remind him of what had once been were a
+few acres of weeds enclosed by an iron railing--an eyesore to the
+inhabitants of that region, as the Corporation told him, with a polite
+hope that he would either build on it soon or leave it alone, which was
+their diplomatic way of requesting him to hand the lot over to
+themselves. And this he might have done had they said "Please;" but
+when he found the young city so ignorant, he thought it his duty to
+teach it manners, so he took a year or two more to consider the matter.
+Then he perceived that if he built his house on the site as it was now
+he should do even more good than he had intended, for the constant
+contemplation of such a stately pile would help to elevate the citizens
+outside the building, while those within might find comfort in seeing
+themselves surrounded by even greater misery than their own.
+
+And so the building rose and grew to perfection, and they found after
+all that no better site could have been chosen for it; for from every
+side as you approached it, it was seen to advantage, and the majesty
+and power of it were made manifest. Outside, the design was so evident
+in its grandeur that the mind was not wearied and perplexed by an
+effort to understand; it was simply elevated to a state of enjoyment
+bordering on exaltation--exaltation without excitement, and near akin
+to peace. And the interior of the building as you entered it maintained
+this first impression. Such ornament as there was touched you, as the
+clouds do, with a sense of suitability that left nothing to be desired.
+Art was so perfectly hidden that there seemed to have been no striving
+for effect in decoration or construction, it looked like a work of
+Nature, accomplished without effort, and beautiful without design; and
+the mind brought under its influence, and left free of conjecture, was
+gently compelled to revel in the peace which harmonious surroundings
+insensibly produce. Disturbing thoughts vanished as being too common
+and mean, too human, for such a place, and the spirit was soothed with
+a sense of repose--of sensuous restfulness, really, for the pleasure,
+as intended, affected the senses more than the intellect, which could
+here make holiday. Work-wearied brains were thus eased from pressure,
+and minds a prey to doubts and other disturbing thoughts which impaired
+their strength, if they did not render them useless, were at once
+relieved. And this was the beginning of the treatment which was
+afterwards continued in other parts of the building, and by other
+means, until the cure was complete--arrangements being made for the
+removal of cases that proved to be hopeless to those older
+establishments which have long existed at the expense of the country,
+or as the outcomes of private enterprise.
+
+Of course the staff of such a place had to be formed of men of a high
+order. Some of these had been patients themselves, and had been chosen
+on that account, it being thought that those who had suffered from
+certain ills would be apt to detect the symptoms in others, and able to
+devise remedies for them, which proved to be the case. The
+establishment was munificently endowed and liberally supported, and the
+Master, as he was reverently called, lived just long enough to see that
+it was a success.
+
+He had not thought of extending the charity to women, being under the
+impression that no such provision was necessary for them. He
+acknowledged that they had a large share of physical suffering to
+endure, but asserted that Nature, to preserve her balance, must have
+arranged their minds so as to render them incapable of suffering in any
+other way. Sentimentality, hysteria, and silliness, he said, were at
+the bottom of all their mental troubles, which did not, therefore,
+merit serious attention.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+
+But of all this Ideala knew little or nothing when she went there,
+except that the Great Hospital existed for some learned purpose. She
+felt the power of the place, however, preoccupied as she was, and
+stopped involuntarily when she saw the building, ceasing for a moment
+to be conscious of anything but the awe and admiration it inspired.
+Then she passed up the broad steps, beneath the massive pillars of the
+portico, and entered the hall. A man-servant took her card to Mr.
+Lorrimer, and, returning presently, requested her to follow him. They
+left the great hall by a flight of low steps at the end of it, and,
+turning to the right, passed through glass doors into quite another
+part of the building. A long, dimly-lighted gallery led away into the
+distance. A few doors opened on to it, and at one of these the servant
+stopped and knocked. A tall gentleman opened the door himself, and,
+begging Ideala to enter, bade her be seated at a writing-table which
+stood in the middle of the room, and himself took the chair in front of
+it, and looked at Ideala's card which lay before him. Another
+gentleman, whom Lorrimer introduced as "My brother Julian," lounged on
+a high-backed chair at the other side of the table. The room was a good
+size, but so crowded with things that there was scarcely space to turn
+round. The light fell full upon Lorrimer as he sat facing the window,
+and Ideala saw a fair man of about thirty, not at all the sort of man
+she had imagined, and quite impossible for her purpose.
+
+An awkward pause followed her entrance. She was unable to tell him the
+real reason of her visit, and at a loss to invent a fictitious one.
+
+"I don't suppose you know in the least who I am," she said, seeing that
+he glanced at her card again, and then she explained, telling him what
+his cousin had written to her.
+
+
+"And you would like to see the Hospital?" he asked.
+
+"Please."
+
+He rose, took down a bunch of keys, and requested her to follow him.
+She felt no interest in the place, and knew it was a bore to him to
+show it to her; but the thing had to be done. He led her through halls
+and lecture-rooms, places of recreation and places for work; he showed
+her picture galleries, statuary, the library, and a museum, and told
+her the plan of it all clearly, like one reciting a lesson, and
+indifferently, like one performing a task that must be got through
+somehow, but making it all most interesting, nevertheless.
+
+Ideala began to be taken out of herself.
+
+"What a delightful place!" she said, when they came to the library.
+"And there is a whole row of books I want to consult. How I should like
+to come and read them."
+
+"Oh, pray do," he answered, "whenever you like. Ladies frequently do
+so. You have only to write and tell me when you wish to come, and I
+will see that you are properly attended to."
+
+"Thank you," Ideala rejoined. "It is just the very thing for me, for I
+am writing a little book, and cannot get on till I have consulted some
+authorities on the subject." In the museum they stopped to look at a
+mummy.
+
+"Oh, happy mummy!" burst from Ideala, involuntarily.
+
+"Why?" asked Lorrimer, aroused from his apathy.
+
+"It has done with it all, you know," she answered.
+
+Then he turned and looked at her, and she saw that he was something
+more than cold, pale-faced, and indifferent, which had been her first
+idea of him. His eyes were large, dark grey, and penetrating. She would
+have called his face fine, rather than handsome; but the upper part was
+certainly beautiful, in spite of some hard lines on it. There was
+something in the expression, more than in the formation, of the mouth
+and chin, however, that did not satisfy. His head and throat were
+splendid; the former narrowed a little at the back, but the forehead
+made up for the defect, which was not striking. He made Ideala think of
+Tito Melema and of Bayard.
+
+That remark of hers having broken the ice, they began to talk like
+human beings with something in common. But Ideala's mood was not
+calculated to produce a good impression. The failure of her enterprise
+brought on a fit of recklessness such as we understood, and she said
+some things which must have made a stranger think her peculiar.
+Lorrimer had begun to be amused before they returned to the great
+entrance hall. Once or twice he looked at her curiously. "What sort of
+a person are you, I wonder?" he was thinking,
+
+"I was dying of dulness," she said, telling him about the place she
+came from, "and so I came to see you."
+
+He left her for a moment, but presently returned with his brother.
+
+"You had better come and have some luncheon before you go back," he
+said.
+
+And she went.
+
+As they left the building Lorrimer asked her: "Where on earth did my
+cousin meet _you?"_--with the slightest possible emphasis. Ideala
+understood him, and laughed.
+
+"Upon my word I don't know who introduced her," she answered, standing
+on her dignity nevertheless. "I can't remember."
+
+They went to the refreshment-room at the station. It was crowded, but
+they managed to get a table to themselves. There was a vacant seat at
+it, and an old gentleman begged to be allowed to occupy it as there was
+no other in the room. The three chatted while they waited, each hiding
+him, or her, self beneath the light froth of easy conversation; and
+people, not accustomed to look on the surface for signs of what is
+working beneath, would have thought them merry enough. As she began to
+know her companions better, Ideala was more and more drawn to Lorrimer.
+His brother, who was a dark man, and very different in character, did
+not attract her.
+
+The old gentleman, meanwhile, was absorbed in his newspaper, and he
+marked his enjoyment of it by inhaling his breath and exhaling it again
+in that particular way which is called "blowing like a porpoise."
+
+Lorrimer, by an intelligent glance, expressed what he thought of the
+peculiarity to Ideala, who remarked: "It is the next gale developing
+dangerous energy on its way to the North British and Norwegian coasts."
+
+The laugh that followed caused the old gentleman to fold up his paper,
+and look benignly at the young people over his pince-nez.
+
+It was early in the season, and peas were a rare and forced vegetable.
+A small dish of them was brought, and handed to the dangerous gale, who
+absently took them all.
+
+"You have taken all the peas, sir; allow me to give you all the
+pepper," said Lorrimer, dexterously suiting the action to the word.
+
+The dangerous gale, though disconcerted at first, was finally moved to
+mirth.
+
+"Ah, young people! young people!" he said, and sighed--and being a
+merry and wise old gentleman, he found pleasure in their pleasure, and
+entered into their mood, little suspecting that Black Care was one of
+the party, or that a black bruise which would have aroused all the pity
+and indignation of his honest old heart, had he seen it, was almost
+under his eyes.
+
+And they all loved him.
+
+Presently he rose to go; but before he departed, he observed, looking
+kindly at Ideala and Lorrimer; "You're a handsome pair, my dears! Let
+me congratulate you; and may your children have the mother's sweetness
+and the father's strength, and may the love you have for each other
+last for ever--there's nothing like it. Thank God for it, and remember
+Him always--and keep yourselves unspotted from the world." And so
+saying, he went his way in peace.
+
+"Dear embarrassing old man!" said Lorrimer, regretfully. "I wish I
+hadn't spilt the pepper on his plate.
+
+"Is there a chance for Lorrimer?" his brother asked.
+
+But Ideala only stared at him. There was something in his tone that
+made her feel ill at ease, and brought back the recollection of her
+misery in a moment. Then all at once she became depressed, and both the
+young men noticed it.
+
+"I'm afraid you're rather down about something," Julian said. "You'd
+better tell us what it is. Perhaps we could cheer you up. And I'm a
+lawyer, you know. I might be able to help you."
+
+Lorrimer was looking at her, and seemed to wait for her to speak; but
+she only showed by a change of expression that the fact of his brother
+being a lawyer possessed a special interest for her.
+
+"If you will trust us," he said at last, "perhaps we _can_ help
+you."
+
+"I wish I could," she answered, wistfully; "I came to tell you."
+
+"This sounds serious," Julian said, lightly. "You will have to begin at
+the beginning, you know. Come, Lorrimer, we'll go down the river. And,"
+to Ideala, "you might tell us all about it on the way, you know."
+
+"Yes, come," said Lorrimer. Ideala rose to accompany them without a
+thought. It all came about so easily that no question of propriety
+suggested itself--and if any had occurred to her she would probably
+have considered it an insult to these gentlemen to suppose they would
+allow her to put herself in a questionable position; and when Julian
+lit a cigarette without asking her permission, she was surprised.
+
+On the way to the river Ideala's spirits rose again, and they all
+talked lightly, making a jest of everything; but while they were
+waiting for a boat, Julian took up a bunch of charms that were attached
+to Ideala's watch-chain and began to examine them coolly, and the
+unwonted familiarity startled her. With a sudden revulsion of feeling
+she turned to Lorrimer. She was annoyed by the slight indignity, and
+also a little frightened. Whatever Lorrimer may have thought of her
+before, he understood her look now, and his whole manner changed.
+
+Julian left them for a moment. "I _am_ so ashamed of myself," Ideala
+said. "I have made some dreadful mistake. I have done something
+wrong."
+
+"I am very sorry for you," he answered, gravely--and then, to his
+brother, who had returned--"You can go on if you like. I am going
+back."
+
+"Oh, we can't go on without you," Ideala inter-posed; "and I would
+rather go back too."
+
+They began to retrace their steps, and Lorrimer, as they walked,
+managed, with a few adroit questions, to learn from Ideala that the
+trouble had something to do with her husband.
+
+"Regy Beaumont is coming to me this afternoon," he said to his brother.
+"Would you mind being there to receive him?"
+
+They exchanged glances, and Julian took his leave.
+
+"Now, tell me," Lorrimer said to Ideala.
+
+But an unconquerable fit of shyness came over her the moment they were
+left alone together. "I cannot tell you," she answered. "It is too
+dreadful to speak of."
+
+"Your husband has done you some great wrong?" he said.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Something for which you can get legal redress?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And that made you desperate?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And what did you do?" He put the question abruptly, startling Ideala,
+as he had intended.
+
+"_I_? Oh, I--did nothing," she stammered. There was a pause.
+
+"My ideal of marriage is a high one," he said at last, "and I should be
+very hard on any short-comings of that kind."
+
+Ideala longed to confide in him, but her shyness continued, and she
+walked by his side like one in a dream.
+
+He took her to the station, and when they parted he said, "You will
+write and tell me?"
+
+Ideala looked up. There were no hard lines in his face now; he was
+slightly flushed.
+
+"Yes, I will write," she answered, almost in a whisper.
+
+And then the train, "with rush and ring," bore her away through the
+spring-country; but she neither saw the young green of the hedgerows,
+nor "the young lambs bleating in the meadows," nor the broad river as
+she passed it, nor the fleecy clouds that flecked the blue. She was not
+really conscious of anything for the moment, but that sudden great
+unspeakable uplifting of the spirit, which is joy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+
+The following week Ideala came to London, but not to us--she had
+promised to stay with some other people first. She wrote three times to
+Lorrimer while she was with them--first to thank him for his kindness,
+to which he replied briefly, begging her to confide in him, and let him
+help her.
+
+In her second letter Ideala told him what had occurred. His reply was
+business-like. He urged her to let him consult his legal friends about
+her case; pointed out that she could not be expected to remain with her
+husband now; and showed her that she would not have to suffer much from
+all the publicity which was necessary to free her from him. She replied
+that her first impulse had been to obtain legal redress, but that now
+she could not make up her mind to face the publicity. She would see
+him, however, when she returned, and consult him about it; and she
+would also like to consult those books in the library. Her buoyant
+spirit was already recovering under the influence of a new interest in
+life.
+
+Lorrimer's answer was formal, as his other notes had been. He begged
+her to make any use of the library she pleased, only to let him know
+when to expect her, that she might have no trouble with the officials;
+and offered her any other help in his power.
+
+In the meantime my sister Claudia had seen Ideala, and had been pleased
+to find her, not looking well, certainly, but just as cheerful as
+usual. "It is evident the place does not agree with her," Claudia said;
+"but a few weeks with us will set her all right again."
+
+They drove in the park together one afternoon, and talked, as usual, of
+many things, the state of society being one of them. This was a subject
+upon which my sister descanted frequently, and it was from her that
+Ideala learnt all she knew of it.
+
+"Can you wonder," Claudia said on this occasion, "that men are immoral
+when ladies in society rather pride themselves than otherwise on
+imitating the _demi-monde_?"
+
+"Have you ever noticed," Ideala answered, indirectly, "how frequently a
+word or phrase which you know quite well by sight, but have never
+thought of and do not understand, is suddenly brought home to you as it
+were? You come across it everywhere, and at last take the trouble to
+find out what it means in self-defence. That expression--_demi-
+monde_--has begun to haunt me since I came to town, and I feel I
+shall be obliged to look it up at once to stop the nuisance. We went to
+a theatre the other night, and when we were settled there I saw my
+husband in the stalls with a lady in flame-coloured robes. I didn't
+know he was in town. The rest of our party saw him, too, and the
+gentlemen had a mysterious little consultation at the back of the box.
+Then one of them left us, but returned almost immediately, and told us
+the carriage had not gone, and hadn't we better try some other theatre
+--the piece at that one was not so good as they had supposed. But I knew
+they had taken a lot of trouble, entirely on my account, to get a box
+there, as I had expressed a wish to see that particular piece, and I
+said I had come to enjoy it, and meant to. I did enjoy it, too. It was
+so absorbing that I forgot all about my husband, and don't know when he
+left the theatre. I only know that he disappeared without coming near
+us. When we got back, Lilian came to my room and told me they were all
+saying downstairs that I had behaved splendidly, and I said I was
+delighted to hear it, particularly as I did not know how, or when, or
+where, I had come to deserve such praise. And then she asked me if I
+knew who it was my husband was with. I said, no; some alderman's wife,
+I supposed. 'Nothing half so good,' she answered. 'That woman is
+notorious: she is one of the _demimonde!_' 'Well,' I said, 'I don't
+suppose she is in society.' And then Lilian said, 'Good gracious,
+Ideala! how can you be so tranquil? You _must_ care. I think you are
+the most extraordinary person I ever met.' And I told her that the
+only extraordinary thing about me just then was a great 'exposition of
+sleep' that had come upon me. And then she left me; but she told me
+afterwards that she thought I was acting, and came back later to see
+if I really could sleep."
+
+"And you did sleep, Ideala?"
+
+"Like a top--why not? But now you are following suit with your ill-
+conducted people, and your _demi-monde_. I want to know what you mean
+by that phrase?"
+
+Then Claudia explained it to her.
+
+"But I thought all that had ended with the Roman Empire," Ideala
+protested.
+
+Claudia laughed, and then went on without pity, describing the class as
+they sink lower and lower, and cruelly omitting no detail that might
+complete the picture.
+
+"But the men are as bad," said Ideala.
+
+"Oh, as bad, yes!" was the answer.
+
+Ideala was pale with disgust. "And we have to touch them!" she said.
+
+Her ignorance of this phase of life had been so complete, and her faith
+in those about her so perfect, that the shock of this dreadful
+revelation was almost too much for her. At first, as the carriage drove
+on through the crowded streets, she saw in every woman's face a
+hopeless degradation, and in every man's eyes a loathsome sin; and she
+exclaimed, as another woman had exclaimed on a similar occasion: "Oh,
+Claudia! why did you tell me? It is too dreadful. I cannot bear to know
+it."
+
+"How a woman can be at once so clever and such a fool as you are,
+Ideala, puzzles me," Claudia remonstrated, not unkindly.
+
+She had warmed as she went on, and forgot in her indignation to take
+advantage of this long-looked-for opportunity to speak to Ideala about
+her own troubles; and afterwards, when she showed an inclination to
+open the subject, Ideala put her off with a jest.
+
+"'_Le mariage est beau pour les amants et utile pour les saints,_'"
+she quoted, lightly. "Class me with the saints, and talk of something
+interesting."
+
+A few days later Claudia came to me in dismay.
+
+"What do you think?" she said. "Ideala is not coming to us at all! She
+says she must go back at once."
+
+"Go back!" I exclaimed, "and why?"
+
+"She is going to write something, for which she requires to read a
+great deal, and she says she must go back to work."
+
+"But that is nonsense," I protested. "She can work as much as she likes
+here--I can even help her."
+
+"I know that," Claudia answered; "but she spoke so positively I could
+not insist. I suppose the truth is her husband has ordered her back,
+and she is going to be a good, obedient child, as usual."
+
+"Does she seem at all unhappy?"
+
+"No, and that is the strange part of it. She has coolly broken I don't
+know how many other engagements to return at once, and instead of
+seeming disappointed, she simply 'glows and is glad.' She says nothing,
+but I can see it. I don't know what on earth she is up to now." And
+Claudia left the room, frowning and perplexed.
+
+When I heard she was not unhappy, this sudden whim of Ideala's did not
+disturb me much; indeed, I was rather glad to think she had found
+something to be enthusiastic about. Her fits of enthusiasm were rarer
+now, and I thought this symptom of one a good sign. It was odd, though,
+that I had not seen her while she was in town. I was half inclined to
+believe she had avoided me.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+
+To give the story continuity it will be necessary to piece the events
+together as they followed. Many of them only came to my knowledge some
+time after they occurred, and even then I was left to surmise a good
+deal; but I am able now, with the help of papers that have lately come
+into my possession, to verify most of my conjectures and arrange the
+details.
+
+The summer weather had begun now. Laburnums and lilacs were in full
+flower, the air was sweet with scent and song, and to one who had borne
+the heavy winter with a heavy heart, but was able at last to lay down a
+load of care, the transition must have been like a sudden change from
+painful sickness to perfect health. Ideala went to the Great Hospital
+at once. She had written to fix a day, and Lorrimer was waiting for
+her. She was not taken to his room, however, as on the previous
+occasion, but to another part of the building, a long gallery hung with
+pictures, where she found him superintending the arrangement of some
+precious things in cabinets. Ideala looked better and younger that day
+in her summer dress than she had done in her heavy winter wraps on the
+occasion of their first meeting; but when she found herself face to
+face with Lorrimer she began to tremble, and was overcome with
+nervousness in a way that was new to her. He saw the change in her
+appearance and manner at a glance, and, smiling slightly, begged her to
+follow him, and led the way through long passages and many doors,
+passing numbers of people, to his own room. He spoke to her once or
+twice on the way, but she was only able to answer confusedly, in a
+voice that was rendered strident by the great effort she had to make to
+control it. He busied himself with some papers for a few minutes when
+they reached his room, to give her time to recover herself, and then he
+said, standing with his back to the fireplace, looking down at her, and
+speaking in a tone that was even more musical and caressing than she
+remembered it: "Well, and how are you? And how has it been with you
+since your return?"
+
+"I am utterly shaken and unnerved, as you see," she answered; then
+added passionately: "I cannot bear my life; it is too hateful."
+
+"There is no need to bear it," he said. "Nothing is easier than to get
+a separation after what has occurred. Was there any witness?"
+
+"No; and I don't think any one in the house suspects that there is
+anything wrong. And none of my friends know. I have never told them. I
+wonder why I told you?"
+
+"You wanted me to help you," he suggested.
+
+"I don't think I did," she said. "How could I want you to help me when
+I don't mean to do anything? I fancy I told you because I was afraid
+you would think me a little mad that day, and I would rather you knew
+the truth than think me mad. I don't mean to try for a separation. I
+can't leave him entirely to his own devices. If I did, he would
+certainly go from bad to worse."
+
+"And if you don't what will become of you? I think much more of such a
+life would make you reckless."
+
+She was silent for a little, then she exclaimed: "Help me not to grow
+reckless. I am so alone."
+
+He took her hands and looked down into her eyes. A sudden deep flush
+spread over his face, smoothing out all the lines, as she had seen it
+do once before, and transforming him.
+
+"It is like walking on the edge of a precipice in the dark," he said in
+a low voice, and his grasp tightened as he spoke.
+
+There was something mesmeric in his touch that overpowered Ideala. She
+felt a change in herself at the moment, and she was never the same
+woman again.
+
+"I will help you, if I can," he said, after another pause, and then he
+let her go.
+
+After that they talked for some time. He tried to persuade her to
+reconsider her decision and leave her husband. He honestly believed it
+was the best thing she could do, and told her why he thought so. She
+acknowledged the wisdom of his advice, but declined to follow it, and
+he was somewhat puzzled, for the reasons she gave were hardly enough to
+account for her determination. They wandered away from that subject at
+last, however, and talked of many other things. He told Ideala of his
+first coming to the Great Hospital as a patient, and gave her some of
+the details of his own case, and told her enough of his private history
+to arouse her sympathy and interest; but of the nature of these
+confidences I know nothing. Ideala felt in honour bound not to repeat
+them, as they were made to her in the course of a private conversation,
+and she was always scrupulously faithful to all such trusts. I know,
+however, that he was a man who had suffered acutely, both from unhappy
+circumstances and from those troubles of the mind which beset clever
+men at the outset of their career, and sometimes never leave them
+entirely at peace. But this man was something more than a clever man;
+he was a man in a thousand. He had in a strong degree all that is worst
+and best in a man. The highest and most spiritual aspirations warred in
+him with the most carnal impulses, and he spent his days in fighting to
+attain to the one and subdue the other.
+
+Ideala had never known a man like this man. His talents, his rapid
+changes of mood, as sense or conscience got the upper hand, and his
+versatility charmed her imagination and excited her interest; and he
+had, besides, that magnetic power over her by which it is given to some
+men to compel people of certain temperaments to their will. While she
+was with him he could have made her believe that black was white, and
+not only believe it, but be glad to think that it was so; and he always
+compelled her to say exactly what she had in her mind at the moment,
+even when it was something that she would very much rather not have
+said.
+
+"But I am forgetting my other object in coming," Ideala broke off at
+last. "May I look at the books?"
+
+Lorrimer took out his watch. "You ought to have some lunch first," he
+said. "If you will come now and have some, we can return and look at
+the books afterwards."
+
+Ideala acquiesced, fearing it was his own lunch time, and knowing it
+would detain him if she did not accompany him.
+
+Ladies not being allowed to lunch at the Great Hospital, they went, as
+before, to the station close by, and sat down side by side, perfectly
+happy together, chatting, laughing, talking about their childhood, and
+making those trifling confidences which go so far to promote intimacy,
+and are often the first evidence of affection. Now and then they
+touched on graver matters. He upheld all that was old, and believed we
+can have no better institutions in the future than those which have
+already existed in the past. Ideala had begun to think differently.
+
+"I am sure it is a mistake to be for ever looking back to the past for
+precedents," she said. "The past has its charm, of course, but it is
+the charm of the charnel house--it is the dead past, and what was good
+for one age is bad for another."
+
+"As one man's meat is another man's poison?" he said.
+
+"Proverbs prove nothing," she answered lightly. "Have you noticed that
+they go in pairs? There is always one for each side of an argument.
+'One man's meat is another man's poison' is met by 'What is sauce for
+the goose is sauce for the gander'--and so on. But don't you think it
+absurd to cling to old customs that are dying a natural death? Learn of
+the past, if you like, but live in the present, and make your laws to
+meet its needs. It is this eternal waiting on the past to copy it
+rather than to be warned by its failures, to do as it did, under the
+impression, apparently, that we must succeed better than it did,
+following in its footsteps though we know they led to ruin once, and,
+because the way was pleasant, being surprised to find that it must end
+again in disaster--it is this abandonment of all hope of finding new
+and efficacious remedies for the old diseases of society that has
+checked our progress for hundreds of years, and will keep the world in
+some respects just as it was at the time of the Crucifixion. For my own
+part, I cannot see that history does repeat itself, except in trifling
+details, and in the lives of unimportant individuals.
+
+"I think," he rejoined, "if you have studied the decline of the Roman
+Empire, you must have seen a striking analogy between that and our own
+history at the present time. With the exception of changes of manners,
+which only affect the surface of society, we are in much the same state
+now as the Romans were then."
+
+"I know many people say so, and believe it," Ideala answered; "and
+there is evidence enough to prove it to people who are trying to arrive
+at a foregone conclusion; but it is not the resemblances we should look
+to, but the differences. It is in them that our hope lies, and they
+seem to me to be essential. Take the one grand difference that has been
+made by the teaching for hundreds of years of the perfect morality of
+the Christian religion! Do you think it possible for men, while they
+cling to it, to 'reel back into the beast and be no more'?"
+
+"But are men clinging to it?"
+
+"Yes, in a way, for it has insensibly become a part of all of us, and
+has made it possible for us to show whole communities of moral
+philosophers now in a generation; the ancients had only an occasional
+one in a century."
+
+"But such a one!"
+
+"The old moral philosophers were grand, certainly, but not grander than
+our own men are, of whom we only hear less because there are so many
+more of them."
+
+"But do you mean to say society is less sinful than it was?"
+
+"There is one section of society at the present day, they tell me,
+which is most desperately wicked. It is worse than any class was when
+the world was young, because it knows so much better. But I believe the
+bulk of the people like right so well that they only want a strong
+impulse to make them follow it. I feel sure sometimes that we are all
+living on the brink of a great change for the better, and that there is
+only one thing wanting now--a great calamity, or a great teacher--to
+startle us out of our apathy and set us to work. We are not bold
+enough. We should try more experiments; they can but fail, and if they
+do, we should still have learnt something from them. But I do not think
+we shall fail for ever. What we want is somewhere, and must be found
+eventually."
+
+"They tried some experiments with the marriage laws in France once,"
+Lorrimer observed, tentatively.
+
+"Yes, and failed contemptibly because their motive was contemptible.
+They did not want to improve society, but to make self-indulgence
+possible without shame. I think our own marriage laws might be
+improved."
+
+"People are trying to improve them," he said, with a slight laugh. "A
+friend of mine has just married a girl who objected to take the oath of
+obedience. How absurd it is for a girl of nineteen to imagine she knows
+better than all the ages." "I think," said Ideala, "that it is more
+absurd for 'all the ages' to subscribe to an oath which something
+stronger than themselves makes it impossible for half of them to keep.
+Strength of character must decide the question of place in a household
+as it does elsewhere; and it is surely folly to require, and useless to
+insist on, the submission of the strong to the weak. The marriage oath
+is farcical. A woman is made to swear to love a man who will probably
+prove unlovable, to honour a man who is as likely as not to be
+undeserving of honour, and to obey a man who may be incapable of
+judging what is best either for himself or her. I have no respect for
+the ages that uphold such nonsense. There was never any need to bind us
+with an oath. If men were all they ought to be, wouldn't we obey them
+gladly? To be able to do so is all we ask."
+
+"Well, it is a difficult question," he answered, "and I don't think we
+need trouble ourselves about it any way. Do you like flowers?"
+
+"Yes," she burst out in another tone; "and easy chairs, and pictures,
+and china, and everything that is beautiful, and all sensual
+pleasures."
+
+She said it, but she knew in a moment that she had used the wrong word,
+and was covered with confusion.
+
+Lorrimer looked at her and laughed.
+
+"And so do I," he said.
+
+"Oh! if only I could unsay that!" thought Ideala; but the word had gone
+forth, and was already garnered against her.
+
+Then came an awful moment for her--the moment of going and paying. It
+was hateful to let him pay for her lunch, but she could not help it.
+She was seized with one of those fits of shyness which made it just a
+degree less painful to allow it than to make the effort to prevent it.
+
+They returned to Lorrimer's room and pored together over a catalogue,
+looking up the books she wanted. When they had found their names and
+numbers Lorrimer sent for them from the library, but it was too late to
+do anything that day, and so she rose to go.
+
+Lorrimer walked with her to the station, and saw her into the train. On
+the way they talked of little children. He loved them as she did.
+
+"A friend of mine," he said, "has the most beautiful child I ever saw.
+Just to look at it makes me feel a better man."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+
+In the days that followed a singular change came over Ideala. No
+external circumstance affected her. She moved like one in a dream;
+thought had ceased for her; all life was one delicious sensation, and
+at times she could not bear the delight of it in silence. She would
+tell it in low songs in the twilight; she would make her piano speak it
+in a hundred chords: and it would burst from her in some sudden glow of
+enthusiasm that made people wonder--the apparent cause being too slight
+to account for it. While this lasted nothing hurt her. She saw the
+sufferings of others unmoved. She met her husband's brutalities with a
+smiling countenance, and bore the physical discomfort of a bad sprain
+without much consciousness of pain. And she knew nothing of time, and
+never asked herself to what she owed this joy.
+
+The utter forgetfulness of everything that came upon her when she was
+alone was almost incredible. One evening she spent two hours in walking
+a distance she might easily have done in forty minutes. She had been to
+see a sick person, and when she found herself in the fresh air, after
+having spent some time in a small, close room, the dream-like feeling
+came over her, and her spirit was uplifted with inexpressible gladness.
+The summer air was sweet and warm, a light rain was falling, and she
+took off her hat and wandered on, looking up, but noting nothing, and
+singing Schubert's "Hark! hark! the lark," to herself softly as she
+came. A man standing at a cottage door begged her to go in and shelter.
+She looked at him, and her face was radiant--the rain-drops sparkled on
+her hair. He was only a working man, "clay--and common clay," but the
+light in her eyes passed through him, and the memory of her stayed with
+him, a thing apart from his daily life, held sacred, and not to be
+described. A man might live a hundred years and never see a woman look
+like that.
+
+"I did not know it was raining," she said. "It is only light rain, and
+the air is so sweet, and the glow down there in the west is like
+heaven. How beautiful life is!"
+
+"Ay, lady!" he answered, and stood there spellbound, watching her as
+she passed on slowly, and listening to her singing as she went.
+
+A few days later she saw Lorrimer again. She found him in his room this
+time. He knew she was coming, and flushed with pleasure when he met her
+at the door. Ideala was not nervous; it all seemed a matter of course
+to her now. The books he had got for her from the library were where
+she had left them. He placed a chair for her beside his writing-table,
+and then went on with his own work. She had understood that she was to
+read in the library, but she did not think of that now; she simply
+acquiesced in this arrangement as she would have done in any other he
+might have made for her. A secretary was busy in another part of the
+room when she entered, but after awhile he left them. Then Lorrimer
+looked up and smiled.
+
+"You are looking better to-day," he said. "Tell me what you have been
+doing since I saw you."
+
+"Lotus-eating," she answered. "How lovely the summer is! Since I saw
+you I have wanted to do nothing but rest and dream."
+
+"You have been happy, then?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Is he kind to you?"
+
+"Oh--he! He is just the same. There is no change in my life. The change
+is in me."
+
+"Then you mean to be happy in spite of him? I call that the beginning
+of wisdom. I know two other ladies who hate their husbands, and they
+manage to enjoy life pretty well. And I don't see why _you_ should
+be miserable always because you happen to have married the wrong man.
+How was it you married him? Were you very much in love with him?"
+
+"No, not in the least."
+
+"Spooney, then?"
+
+"Not even 'spooney,' as you call it. I was very young at the time. Very
+young girls know nothing of love and marriage."
+
+"Very young," he repeated thoughtfully. He was drawing figures with his
+pen on the blotting-paper before him. "But why did you marry him,
+then?"
+
+"I can give you no reason--except that I was not happy at home."
+
+"You all say that," slipped from him, with a gesture of impatience.
+
+"I wish I had been more original," said Ideala.
+
+She took up her book again, and he resumed his writing, and for some
+time there was silence. But Ideala's attention wandered. She began to
+examine the room, which was, as usual, in a state of disorder. One side
+of it was lined with cabinets of various sizes and periods. Labels
+indicated the contents of some of them. Only one picture hung on that
+side of the room--it was the portrait of a gentleman--but several
+others stood on the ground against the cabinets. The walls were painted
+some dark colour. A Japanese screen was drawn across the door, and
+beside it was a hard narrow settee covered with dark green velvet.
+Books were piled upon it, and heavily embroidered foreign stuffs, and
+near it a number of Japanese drawings stood on a stand. The mantelpiece
+was crowded with an odd mixture of china and other curios, all looking
+as if they had just been unpacked. Above it another picture was hung, a
+steel engraving. The writing-table by which they sat was nearly in the
+middle of the room. In the window was another table, covered also with
+a miscellaneous collection of curios; and on every other available
+article of furniture books were piled. The high backs of the chairs
+were elaborately carved, the seats being of the same green velvet as
+the settee. A high wire-guard surrounded the fire place, and this
+unusual precaution made one think, that the contents of the room must
+be precious. The occupant of this apartment might have been an artist,
+a man of letters, or a virtuoso--probably the latter; but whatever he
+was, it was evident that his study was a workshop, and not a showroom.
+
+From the room Ideala looked to her companion. He was writing rapidly,
+and seemed absorbed in his subject. He was frowning slightly, his face
+was pale and set, and he looked older by ten years than when he had
+spoken last, and seemed cold and unimpassioned as a judge; but Ideala
+thought again that the face was a fine one.
+
+Presently he became conscious of her earnest gaze. He did not look up,
+but every feature softened, and a warm glow spread from forehead to
+chin; it was as if a deep shadow had been lifted, and a younger, but
+less noble, man revealed.
+
+"How you change!" Ideala exclaimed--"not from day to day, but from
+moment to moment. You are like two men. I wish I could get behind that
+horrid veil of flesh that hides you from me. I want to see your soul."
+
+He smiled. "You are getting tired," he said. "Do let me persuade you to
+come and have some lunch. When you begin to speculate, I know you have
+done enough."
+
+But Ideala could not go through the ordeal of who should pay for lunch
+again. She preferred to starve. The _camaraderie_ between them was
+mental enough to be manlike already, but only as long as there was no
+question of material outlay.
+
+"Mayn't I stay here and read?" she said. "I can have something by-and-
+by, when I want it. Do go and leave me."
+
+And he was obliged to go at last, wondering somewhat at her want of
+appetite.
+
+When he returned she was still working diligently, and they spent the
+rest of the afternoon together, reading, writing, and chatting, until
+it was time for Ideala to go. Lorrimer saw her into her train, and
+fixed another day for her to return and go on with her work.
+
+And so the thing became a settled arrangement. Whenever she could spare
+the time she went and worked beside him, and he was always the same,
+kindly, considerate, helping her now and then, but not, as a rule,
+interfering with her. She just came and went as she pleased, and as she
+would have done had he been her brother. Sometimes they were alone
+together for hours, sometimes his secretary worked in the room with
+them, and always there were people coming and going. There was nothing
+to suggest a thought of impropriety, and they were soon on quarrelling
+terms, falling out about a great many things--which is always the sign
+of a good understanding; but after the first they touched on no
+dangerous subject for a long time. At last, however, there came a
+change. Ideala noticed one day that Lorrimer was restless and
+irritable.
+
+"Am I interfering with your work to-day?" she said. "Do tell me. Any
+other day will suit me just as well."
+
+"Oh, no," he answered. "I am lazy, that is all. How are you getting on?
+Let me see." And he took the paper she was engaged upon, and looked at
+it.
+
+She watched him, and saw that he was not reading, although he held it
+before his eyes for some time. He was paler than usual, and there was a
+look of indecision in his face, very unlike its habitual expression,
+which was serene and self-contained.
+
+Looking up all at once, he met her eyes fixed on him frankly and
+affectionately, but he did not respond to her smile.
+
+"How do you suppose all this is going to end?" he said, abruptly.
+
+"Won't it do?" she answered, thinking of her paper. "Had I better give
+it up, or re-write it?"
+
+He threw the paper down with a gesture of impatience, and got up; and
+then, as if ashamed of his irritability, he took it again, and gave it
+back to her. In doing so his hand accidentally touched hers.
+
+"How cold you are," he said. "Let me warm your hands for you."
+
+"They are benumbed," she answered, letting him take them and rub them.
+
+After a moment he said, without looking at her, "Do you know, it is
+very good of you to come here like this."
+
+"Why?" she asked. "It suits my own convenience."
+
+"I know. But it is refreshing to find some one who will suit their own
+convenience so." "That sounds as if it were not the right thing to do!"
+she exclaimed.
+
+"Nonsense!" he answered. "You misunderstand me."
+
+Ideala withdrew her hands hastily, and half rose.
+
+"What is the matter?" he said. "Come, don't be idle! You should have
+mastered that book by this time."
+
+But Ideala was disturbed. "I can't read," she said. "Tell me what you
+thought of me when I came to you that first day? I fancied you were
+old. And I have been afraid since, in spite of your cousin's
+suggestion, that you may have considered it odd of me to introduce
+myself like that."
+
+"Oh, it is quite customary here," he answered. "But even if it had not
+been, we can't all be bound by the same common laws. The ordinary stars
+and planets have an ordinary course mapped out for them, and they
+daren't diverge an inch. But every now and then a comet comes and goes
+its own eccentric way, and all the lesser lights wonder and admire and
+let it go."
+
+"That would be very fine for us if only we were comets among the
+stars," she said.
+
+"Oh, you might condescend to claim a kindred with them," he answered
+lightly.
+
+"The only heavenly body I ever feel akin to is one of those meteors
+that flash and fall," she said. "They go their own way, too, do they
+not, and are lost?" "There is no question of being lost here," he
+interposed. "The most scrupulous have made an exception in favour of
+one person, and the world has not blamed them. After having endured so
+much you are entitled to some relaxation. I should do as I liked now,
+if I were you."
+
+She looked at him inquiringly. It seemed as if he were not expressing
+himself, but trying the effect of what he said upon her.
+
+He was sitting in his usual place now, drawing figures on the blotting-
+pad.
+
+"You have read, I suppose?" he added, after a pause, and without
+looking up. "I wish I had never read anything," she exclaimed
+passionately. "I wish I could neither read, write, nor think."
+
+But the trouble now was, if only she could have recognised it, that she
+did not think; she only felt.
+
+She got up and went to the mantelpiece; he remained where he was,
+sitting with his back to her. Presently she began to look at the china,
+absently at first, but afterwards with interest. There were some new
+specimens, just unpacked, and all crowded together.
+
+"What a lovely lotus-leaf," she said at last. "Satsuma, I suppose--no,
+Kioto; but what a good specimen. And it is broken, too. What a pity! I
+should so like to mend it."
+
+"Would you?" he said, rousing himself. "Then you shall."
+
+He went to one of the cabinets and got out the materials, and in a few
+minutes they were bending busily over the broken plaque, as interested
+and eager about it as if no subject of more vital importance had ever
+distracted them. They were like two children together, often as
+quarrelsome, always as inconsequent; happy hard at work, and equally
+happy idling; apt to torment each other at times about trifles, but
+always ready to forget and forgive, and with that habit in common of
+forgetting everything utterly but the occupation of the moment.
+
+They talked on now for a little longer, but not brilliantly. They were
+both considered brilliant in conversation, but somehow on these
+occasions neither of them shone. I suppose when two such bright and
+shining lights come together they put each other out.
+
+Then it was time for Ideala to go. A bitter wind met them in the face
+on their way to the station, and before they had gone far Ideala
+noticed that Lorrimer's mood had changed again. His face grew pale, his
+step less elastic, his manner cold and formal. All the brightness, all
+the sympathy, which made their intimacy seem the most natural, because
+it was the pleasantest, thing in the world to Ideala, had gone; he was
+like a man seized with a sudden fit of remorse, disgusted with himself,
+and moved to repent.
+
+"I should bear with your husband, if I were you," he said at last,
+breaking the silence. "He behaves like a brute, but I dare say he can't
+help it. A man can't help his temperament, and probably you provoke him
+more than you think."
+
+Ideala was surprised, it was so long since they had mentioned her
+husband. "I fear I am provoking," she answered, humbly. "But how am I
+to help it? I have tried so hard, and for so long, to be patient. And I
+only want to do right."
+
+They were parting then, and he looked down at her in silence for some
+seconds, and when Ideala saw the expression of his face, her heart
+sank. In that one moment she realised all that his friendship had been
+to her, and foresaw the terrible blank there would be for her if it
+should ever end. That there was any danger, that there could be
+anything but friendship between men and women who must not marry, had
+not even yet occurred to her. Her intimacy with myself had prepared the
+way for Lorrimer, and made this new intimacy seem also perfectly right.
+
+"What is the matter with you to-day?" she said. "What spirit of
+dissatisfaction has got hold of you?"
+
+"I _am_ dissatisfied," he said, raising his hat, and brushing his
+hand back over his hair. Then he looked at her. "Why don't you help
+me?" he asked.
+
+"How can I help you?" she answered. "I don't understand you."
+
+"You ought to. I wish to goodness you did"--and then his face cleared.
+"But you will come again," he added, in the old way. "I shall expect
+you soon."
+
+And so he let her go; and Ideala was glad, because an unpleasant jar
+was over. She did not trouble herself about his private worries; if he
+wished her to know he would tell her. Lorrimer had a temper--but then
+she had known that all along; and Lorrimer was Lorrimer--that was all
+about it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+
+He let her go, somewhat bewildered, and not understanding herself or
+him, nor caring to understand, only happy, dangerously happy. The train
+bore her through an enchanted region of brightness and summer, and,
+although the power of thought was for the moment suspended, she was
+conscious of this, and her own delight was like the unreasoning
+pleasure of earth when the sun is upon it.
+
+There was no carriage to meet her at the station, and she set off to
+walk home. It was the first time she had been alone on foot in the
+squalid disorderly streets of that dingy place, and her way, which she
+was not quite sure of, took her through some of the worst of them. They
+were filled with loud-laughing uncleanly women, and skulking hang-dog-
+looking men, and the grime-clogged atmosphere was heavy with foul
+odours; but she noticed nothing of this. The golden glow the sun made
+in his efforts to shine through the clouds of smoke might have been a
+visible expression of her own ecstatic feeling, and she would have
+thought so at any other time, but now she never saw it.
+
+In a somewhat open and more lonely part of the road she met a tramp, a
+great rude, hulking, common fellow, with fine blue eyes. He stopped in
+the middle of the road and stared at Ideala as she came up to him,
+walking, as usual, with a slight undulating movement that made you
+think of a yacht in a breeze, her face up-raised and her lips parted.
+He took off his cap as she approached. The gesture attracted her
+attention, and, thinking he wanted to beg or ask some question, she
+stopped and looked at him inquiringly.
+
+"Well, you _are_ a nice lady!" he exclaimed.
+
+He hadn't the gift of language, but she saw the soul of a man in his
+eyes, and she understood him.
+
+"Thank you," she answered, and passed on, unsurprised.
+
+In the next street a breathless creature came running after her, a
+tawdry, painted, dishevelled girl. She stopped Ideala and stood
+panting, with hot dry lips, and eyes full of animal suffering. Her
+clothes exhaled the smell of some vile scent that was overpowering.
+Involuntarily Ideala shrank from her, and all the joy left her face.
+
+"I've run"--the girl gasped--"such a way--they said you'd gone this
+road. I've waited about all day to catch you. Come, for God's sake!"
+
+"But where?"
+
+"There's a girl dying"--and she clutched Ideala's arm, trying to drag
+her along with her--"or she would die and have done with it, but she
+can't till she's seen you. She've something on her mind--something to
+tell you. Come, my lady, come, for the love of the Lord and the Blessed
+Virgin. No harm'll happen to you." Ideala made a gesture. "Show me the
+way," she said. "But you don't seem able to walk. There's an empty cab
+coming. Get in and tell the man where to drive to."
+
+They stopped at a row of many-storeyed houses in a low by-street. A
+stout elderly woman with an evil countenance met them at the door. She
+began some speech in a cringing tone to Ideala, but the tawdry girl
+pushed her aside rudely.
+
+"Hold your jaw, and get out of the way," she said. "I'll show the lady
+up."
+
+The woman muttered something which Ideala fortunately did not hear, and
+let them pass. They went upstairs to the very top of the house, and
+entered a low room, furnished with a broken chair and a small bed only.
+On the bed lay a girl, who, in spite of disease and approaching death,
+looked not more than twenty, and was probably two years younger. She
+turned her haggard face to the door as it opened, and a gleam of
+satisfaction caused her eyes to dilate when she saw Ideala. They were
+large dark eyes, but her face was so distorted with suffering and
+discoloured by disease, it was impossible to imagine what it once had
+been.
+
+"Here she is, Polly," said the Tawdry One, triumphantly. "I said I'd
+bring her, now didn't I?"
+
+Ideala knelt down by the bed.
+
+"My! but you're a game un!" said the Tawdry One, admiringly. "You ain't
+afraid of catching nothing! Now, I'd have asked what was up before I'd
+have done that; and I wouldn't touch her with the tongs, nor stay in
+the room with her was it ever so. You just holler when you want me and
+I'll come back." And so saying she left them.
+
+"You are not afraid to touch me--you don't mind?" said the dying girl
+when Ideala had taken off her gloves, and knelt, holding her hands.
+
+"Afraid? Mind?" Ideala whispered, her eyes full of pity. "I only wish
+you would let me do something for you."
+
+At that moment they were startled by an uproar downstairs. A man and
+woman were quarrelling at the top of their voices. At first only their
+tones were audible, but these grew more distinct, and in a few seconds
+Ideala could hear what was said, and it was evident that the combatants
+were approaching.
+
+"I tell you the lady's all right," the woman Ideala had seen downstairs
+was heard to shriek, with sundry vile epithets. "Polly's dying, and
+she've come to visit her."
+
+"Seein' 's believin'," the man rejoined, doggedly. "Just show me the
+lady and shut up, you foul-mouthed devil you."
+
+The door was flung open, and there stood the fat harridan, and towering
+over her was a great red-haired policeman, who seemed both relieved and
+abashed when he saw Ideala.
+
+"What is the meaning of this?" she said, rising, and drawing herself up
+indignantly. "Don't you see how ill this girl is? Such an uproar at
+such a time is indecent."
+
+The woman shrank from her gaze and slunk away. The policeman wiped his
+hot face with a red handkerchief.
+
+"I saw the girl fetch you here, ma'am," he said, apologetically, "and I
+thought it was a trap. It ain't safe for a woman, let alone a lady, to
+come to no such a place. I'll just wait and see you safe out of it."
+
+He shut the door, and Ideala heard him walking up and down on the
+landing outside.
+
+The dying girl seemed scarcely conscious of what was passing. Ideala
+looked round for something to revive her. There was not even a cup of
+water in the room. She knelt once more beside the bed, and raised her
+in her arms, and let her head rest on her shoulder. All the mother in
+her was throbbing with tenderness for this poor outcast. The girl drew
+a long deep sigh.
+
+"Could you take anything?" Ideala asked.
+
+"No, lady, not now. The thirst was awful awhile ago, and I cried and
+cried, although I knew no one would listen to me, or come if they
+heard. They'd rather we'd die when we get ill. It's a bad thing for the
+house." She could only speak in gasps.
+
+"And what have you had?" Ideala asked.
+
+"The scarlet fever, ma'am. There's an awful bad kind about, and I
+caught it. They all die that gets it."
+
+Ideala drew her closer, and laid her own cool cheek on her damp
+forehead.
+
+"Tell me why you wished to see me," she said. "You are so good," the
+girl answered--"I thought you'd better know--and get--away from--that
+low brute." Ideala understood, and would fain have stopped the story,
+but it seemed a relief to the girl to speak, and so she listened. It
+was the old story, the old story aggravated by every incident that
+could make it more repulsive--and her husband was the hero of it.
+
+"Shall I go to hell?" the girl asked, shrinking closer.
+
+"For these Christ died," Ideala murmured. The words flashed through her
+mind, and the meaning of them was new to her. Her heart was wrung for
+the desolate girl, dying alone in sin and sorrow without a creature to
+care for her--dying alone in the arms of a strange woman, with a
+policeman outside guarding her. Ideala cried in her heart with an
+exceeding bitter cry: "God do so to him, and more also."
+
+"Pray for me, lady."
+
+But Ideala could not pray with a curse on her lips--and, besides, the
+power to pray had been taken from her for many a weary day before that.
+She thought of the policeman, and called him in.
+
+"See, she is dying," she said, looking up at him helplessly; "and she
+has asked me to pray, and I can't. Will you?"
+
+And, quite simply and reverently, as if it had been part of his
+ordinary duty, he took off his helmet and knelt down, a great rough-
+looking man in a hideous dress, and prayed: "Dear Lord, forgive her!"
+
+They were the last words she heard.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+
+The people seemed to have deserted the house. Even the Tawdry One had
+disappeared, and Ideala was obliged to lay out the poor dear girl
+herself, and make her ready for decent burial. As soon as she could
+leave the place she went, escorted by the policeman, to the fever
+hospital to have her things fumigated. The risk of infection had not
+troubled her till she remembered the likelihood of taking it to others,
+but as soon as she thought of that she took the necessary precautions
+to prevent it. She sent a message from the hospital to her maid,
+telling her to pack up some things and meet her at the station in time
+for the mail at eleven o'clock that night. She had thought of some
+friends who lived a nine hours' journey from her home, and had
+determined to go to them for a time.
+
+She wrote to her husband also from the hospital. "The girl, Mary
+Morris, died of scarlet fever this afternoon in the house to which you
+sent her when you were tired of her," she said. "I was with her when
+she died. I am going to the Trelawneys to-night; but at present I have
+formed no plans for the future."
+
+During the first few days of her stay with the Trelawneys she just
+lived from hour to hour, not thinking of anything, past, present, or to
+come; but out of this apathy a desire grew by degrees. She wanted to
+see Lorrimer. She could speak to him, and she was sure he would help
+and advise her. She wrote to him, telling him she particularly wished
+to see him on a certain day, and asking him to meet her at the station,
+adding by way of postscript: "I do not think I quite know what you
+meant when you advised me to go my own way; but if any wrong-doing were
+part of the programme I should not be able to carry it out. However, I
+feel sure that you would be the last person in the world to let me do
+wrong, even if I were inclined to."
+
+She knew that her husband was away from home, and her intention had
+been to sleep there that night, and go on to Lorrimer the next morning;
+but she had been misinformed about the trains, and after many changes
+and tedious waits, she found herself alone in the middle of the night
+at a little railway junction, with no chance of a train to take her on
+for several hours; and what was worse, without money enough in her
+purse to pay her bill if she went to an hotel. The waiting-rooms were
+all closed for the night, and there seemed nothing for it but to wander
+about the station till the train came and released her. She told her
+dilemma to an old Scotch inspector who was waiting to see what she
+meant to do. He gave the matter his best consideration, but it
+evidently perplexed him.
+
+"If you was a box," he said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully, "we could
+put you in the left-luggage office."
+
+"But I am not a box," Ideala answered, as if only the most positive
+denial would prevent mistake on the subject.
+
+It was raining hard, and bitterly cold. Only part of the platform was
+roofed in, and every now and then a gust of wind splashed the raindrops
+into their faces as they stood beside Ideala's luggage in a circle of
+yellow light cast upwards by a lantern which the inspector had put on
+the ground at their feet.
+
+"There's me and Tom, the porter," he said at last; "we've got to wait
+for the two o'clock down and the four o'clock up. Tom, he'll come 'ome
+and sit over the kitchen fire with me. I suppose, now, you wouldn't
+like to do that?"
+
+"Indeed I should be very glad to," Ideala answered; "that is," she
+added quickly, "if it would not inconvenience you."
+
+He made an inexplicable gesture, and seemed to consider the matter
+settled.
+
+"I'll just put this here luggage in the office," he said, shouldering a
+box and taking up a portmanteau; but he muttered as he went: "It's a
+pity, now, you wasn't luggage."
+
+Ideala followed him meekly from the luggage-office out into the lane,
+and down a country path to a little cottage. The door opened into the
+kitchen, and a young man in a porter's uniform was sitting over a
+cheery fire reading a newspaper by the light of a tallow candle. The
+kitchen was large for the size of the house. Besides the door they had
+entered by there were two others, both closed. The walls were panelled
+from floor to ceiling with wood darkened by age. Several of the panels
+were doors of cupboards that projected slightly from the wall, and
+shelves had been sunk in flush with it, and placed angle-wise in the
+corners. The shelves were covered with old china. There was a row of
+brass candlesticks of good design on the high mantelpiece, and more
+china stood behind them. On a panel above the mantelpiece a curious
+design of dogs and horses in a wood had been carved with much patience
+and some skill. The furniture of the place was an old oak table
+standing in the window--the window itself had a deep sill, on which
+was arranged a row of flower-pots, from which a faint perfume came at
+intervals--a long narrow oak chest, carved and polished, with the
+date, 1700, on the side of it, a settle, and a dresser covered with
+the ordinary crockery used by poor people. The brick floor was
+_rudded_ and sanded, the hearthstone was yellow, and the part under
+the grate was white. One high-backed old-fashioned chair stood on each
+side of the hearth. Tom the Porter was sitting in one of them, and at
+his elbow was a small round table with a pipe, tobacco jar, and two or
+three books upon it. A square table in the middle of the room was laid
+out for supper, with a dish, two plates, a beer mug, and half a loaf
+of bread. Some potatoes were roasting on the hob.
+
+"The old woman's asleep, I expects. You'll mind and not make a noise,"
+the inspector said to Ideala, as if he were warning a child to be good.
+
+Tom the Porter rose, and gazed at the lady with his mouth open in a
+state of astonishment that was justified by the time and place of her
+advent; but he offered her his chair with the courtesy of a gentleman,
+and the old inspector bade her make herself at home, which she did by
+removing her hat and wraps and taking off her gloves. In a higher
+sphere of life those two men would have stared her out of countenance,
+but Tom the Porter and the old inspector, not from want of
+appreciation, but from the refinement that seems natural to people who
+come of an old stock, whatever their station, and have had china and
+carved oak in their possession from one generation to another--forebore
+even to look at her lest she should be embarrassed by their curiosity.
+They did the honours of the house with dignity, and without vulgar
+apology for a state of things that was natural to them, and Ideala at
+once adapted herself to the circumstances, and burnt her fingers while
+attending to the baked potatoes, which Tom had somewhat neglected.
+
+She always declared afterwards that there was nothing so good in the
+world as baked potatoes and salt, provided the company was agreeable;
+and now and then she would thrill us with reminiscences of that
+evening's entertainment--with wonderful accounts of railway accidents--
+and of one in particular that happened on a pitch-dark night when fires
+had to be made to light the workers as they toiled fearfully amongst
+the wreck of the trains, searching for the mangled and mutilated, the
+dying and the dead, while the air was filled with horrid shrieks and
+groans.
+
+For it seems these three, when they had finished the baked potatoes,
+drew their chairs to the fire and talked. And one can well imagine what
+Ideala's stories were--her tales of the Japanese with whom she had
+lived; of Chinese prisons into which she had peeped; of earthquakes,
+tornadoes and shipwrecks, and other perils by land and sea, all told in
+a voice that thrilled you, whatever it said. Tom the Porter and the old
+Scotch inspector were in luck that night, and they knew it. When at
+last it was time for Ideala to go, and in return for her thanks for his
+kind hospitality, and the contents of her purse, which had rather more
+in it than she had fancied, the inspector expressed his appreciation
+with an earnest smack.
+
+"Well," he said, "you're rare good company. I shan't mind when you come
+along this way again."
+
+The train was late in arriving, and she had only time to rush up to the
+house, change her dress, and return to the station to catch the one by
+which she had asked Lorrimer to meet her. Perhaps it was the thought of
+what she had come to tell him that made her heart beat nervously as the
+train drew up at her destination, and she leant forward to look for him
+among the people on the platform. She looked in vain--he was not there.
+Something, of course, had happened to detain him; doubtless he had sent
+a message to explain. She waited a little, but nobody appeared to be
+looking for her. Then she left the station and walked in the direction
+of the Hospital, thinking he had missed the train, and she should
+probably meet him on the way. Her nervousness increased as she went.
+She was not used to be alone in crowded streets, and she began to feel
+faint and bewildered. Her heart seemed to stop whenever she saw a fair-
+headed man, but she reached the Hospital at last, and no Lorrimer had
+met her.
+
+Then a new fear disturbed her. Perhaps he was ill. She went up to the
+door, and there, just coming out, Lorrimer's secretary met her.
+
+"I was just coming to meet you, madam," he said; "I am sorry I am too
+late. Mr. Lorrimer has been detained by visitors, and sent me to
+apologise for his absence. If you will be so good as to come to the
+library, he will join you there as soon as he is disengaged."
+
+When she was settled in the library a servant brought her books to her.
+She had not come to read, but work was the daily habit of her life, and
+she went on now, mechanically, but carefully as usual, though with a
+curious sinking of the heart, and benumbing sense of loss and pain. As
+she came along in the train she had been thinking how it would amuse
+Lorrimer to hear of her night's adventure, and of the relief it would
+be to tell him of all the other things she had come to tell; but now
+she felt like one bidden to a bridal, and brought to a burial. People
+were going and coming continually in the library. A gentleman sat at a
+table near her, busily writing. Servants went backwards and forwards
+with books. Another gentleman came in and looked at her curiously, and
+then went away. She began to feel uncomfortable, and wondered what was
+keeping Lorrimer so long. She thought, too, of leaving the place at
+once, and going back by an earlier train than she had intended, but it
+would hardly have been polite. A servant came and told her the library
+was closed to visitors at two.
+
+"I am waiting for Mr. Lorrimer," she said.
+
+"Oh, in that case----" and the man withdrew. The name was an open
+sesame to all parts of the building.
+
+At last he came. She rose with a great sense of relief.
+
+"Let me take your books," he said.
+
+"I have done with them," she answered.
+
+And without another word he led the way to his own room.
+
+They took their accustomed seats.
+
+"I am sorry I could not meet you," he said. "I hope you do not think me
+rude. Some wretched people turned up at the last moment, and wanted to
+see everything. Just look at the room!"
+
+Every cabinet seemed to have been ransacked, and treasures of all kinds
+were lying about in most admired disorder. Lorrimer looked round him
+desperately, and pushed his hat back from his forehead. Ideala smiled.
+It was so like him to forget he had it on.
+
+Outside a heavy thundercloud gathered and darkened the room. Presently
+big drops of rain splashed against the window, and it began to lighten.
+Long claps of thunder rolled and muttered incessantly away in the
+distance, and every now and then one would burst directly above them,
+as it seemed, with splendid effect.
+
+Lorrimer looked up at the window straight before him, and played with a
+pen; and Ideala, half turning her back to him, sat silent also,
+watching the storm.
+
+There were some high houses opposite of which only the upper storeys
+were visible. Two children were playing in a dangerous position at an
+open window in one of them. Above the houses a strip of sky, heavy and
+dark and changeful, was all that showed. Ideala felt cold and faint.
+The long fast and fatigue were beginning to tell upon her. She was
+nervous, too; the silence was oppressive, but she could not break it.
+She felt some inexplicable change in her relations with Lorrimer which
+made it impossible to speak. Furtively she watched him, trying to
+discover if he felt it too. The look of age was on his face, and it was
+clouded with discontent. Anxiously she sought some sign of sickness to
+account for it. But, no. There was no trace of physical suffering; the
+trouble was mental.
+
+"You are not looking well," Lorrimer said at last. "I suppose you have
+been starving yourself since I saw you. You have had no lunch to-day
+again. You will kill yourself if you go on like that. I was speaking
+about you to a doctor the other day. He said you could not fast as you
+do without taking _something_--stimulants or sedatives." Ideala
+winced. "What an insulting thing to say," she exclaimed, indignantly.
+"I will not allow you to adopt that tone with me. You have no right to
+scold me."
+
+"I have, and shall," he retorted. "I suppose you want to kill yourself.
+Perhaps it is the best thing people can do who hate their lives."
+
+"I don't hate my life; I don't want to die," she rejoined.
+
+"The other day you said you loathed your life."
+
+"You are accusing me of inconsistency," she said. "You! who are in two
+states of mind every time I see you!" She got up. "And I _do_ mean
+what I say," she resumed. "I loathed the old life, but that is done
+with. I am living a new life now----"
+
+He turned to look at her, red chasing white from his face at every
+breath; then, yielding to an irresistible impulse, he went to her,
+grasped her folded hands in both of his, and looked into her eyes for
+one burning moment. The hot blood flamed to her face. She was startled.
+
+"Don't let us quarrel," he said, hoarsely.
+
+"Why do you try to?" she retorted. "It is always you who begin."
+
+"I think you want pluck," he said.
+
+"Oh, no; not that," she answered.
+
+"Just now you do."
+
+"Then I think you want discernment," she retorted with spirit.
+
+And so they went on, as if neither of them had ever heard of such a
+thing as conventional propriety.
+
+Lorrimer did not answer that last remark. He was standing at a little
+distance from her, watching her. Ideala was looking grave.
+
+"What is your conscience troubling you about now?" he asked. "I never
+listen to my conscience."
+
+"I don't believe you," she answered, promptly.
+
+"That is polite," he observed.
+
+Then there was another pause.
+
+"It must be time for me to go," she said at last.
+
+The rain was still falling in torrents.
+
+"Oh, no!" he exclaimed. "You mustn't go yet. Your train does not leave
+for another hour. Why do you want to go?"
+
+She was struggling with the button of a glove, and he went to help her,
+but she repulsed him, half unconsciously, as she would have brushed off
+a troublesome fly.
+
+The gesture irritated him.
+
+"I cannot believe you are not conscientious," she said, with a frown of
+intentness. "When a man of talent ceases to be true, he loses half his
+power."
+
+He turned from her coldly, sat down at the writing table, and began to
+write.
+
+Ideala was still putting on her gloves.
+
+Outside, the rain fell lightly now, and the clouds were clearing. The
+children were still playing at the open window of the house opposite.
+Lorrimer had often been obliged to answer notes when she was there; she
+thought nothing of that; but he was a long time, and at last she
+interrupted him. "Forgive me if I disturb you," she said, "but I am
+afraid I shall miss my train."
+
+"Oh, pardon me," he answered, jumping up, and looking at his watch.
+"But it is not nearly time yet. I cannot understand why you are in such
+a hurry to-day."
+
+"Yet you know that I always go when I have done my work," she said.
+
+"You have done unusually early then," he replied; "and I wish to
+goodness I had." He looked round the room pettishly, like a schoolboy
+out of temper. "I shall have to put all these things away when you're
+gone--a task I hate, but nobody can do it but myself."
+
+"Why wait till I've gone? Let me help you," said Ideala.
+
+His countenance cleared, and they set to work merrily, he explaining
+the curious histories of coins and cameos, of ancient gems, ornaments
+of gold and silver, and valuable intaglios, as they returned them to
+their places. Both forgot everything in the interest of the collection;
+so that, when the last tray was completed, they were surprised to find
+that two trains had gone while they were busy, and another had become
+due, and there was only time to jump into a hansom to catch it.
+
+Lorrimer was still irritable.
+
+"Why on earth does a lady always carry her purse in her hand?" he said,
+as they drove along.
+
+Ideala laughed, and put hers in her pocket.
+
+"When are you coming to go on with your work?" he asked.
+
+"I will write and fix a day," she said.
+
+"I shall be away a good deal for the next three weeks," he continued.
+"The twenty-third or twenty-sixth would be the most convenient days for
+me, if they would suit you."
+
+"Thank you," she answered, and hurried down the platform, without
+having said a word or given a thought to what she had come to say.
+
+And then at last the twenty-four hours' fasting, fatigue, and mental
+suffering overcame her. A little later she was lying insensible on the
+floor of her room, and she was alone. The servants had not seen her
+enter, and there was not a creature near her to help her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+
+Ideala was unable to exert herself for many days after this. At last,
+however, she began to think of work again, and of Lorrimer. She was
+uneasy about him. He had not been himself on that last occasion.
+Something was wrong, she could not think what, but she felt anxious;
+and out of her anxiety arose an intense longing to see him again. So
+she wrote, first of all fixing the twenty-third for her visit; but when
+the day came she found herself unequal to the exertion, and wrote
+again, begging him to expect her on the twenty-sixth instead.
+
+He did not reply. He was generally overwhelmed with correspondence, and
+she had therefore begged him not to do so if the days she named suited
+him.
+
+Up to this time she had never heard Lorrimer mentioned by any one; but
+now, suddenly, his name seemed to be in everybody's mouth. She thought
+of him incessantly herself, and it was as if the strength of her own
+mind compelled all other minds to think of him while she was present,
+and to yield to her will and tell her all they knew. For, curiously
+enough, she had begun to want to know about him. I call it curious,
+because she was so confiding so unsuspicious, and also so penetrating,
+she never seemed to care to know more of people than she learnt from
+intercourse with them. But with regard to Lorrimer, she had evidently
+begun to distrust her own judgment, which is significant.
+
+One night, at a dinner-party, she was thinking of a gratuitous piece of
+information an old woman, who brought her some milk on one occasion at
+the Great Hospital, had given her. Ideala had noticed that the old
+woman had a bad cough, and had asked her, in her usual kindly way, if
+she were subject to it, and what she did for it, remarking that the
+north country air was trying to people with delicate chests, and warmer
+clothing and greater care were more necessary there than in the south;
+and thereupon the old woman had launched forth, as such people will
+upon the slightest provocation, with minute details of her own
+sufferings, and the sufferings of all the people she ever knew, from
+"the bronchitis" during the winter and spring, Mr. Lorrimer being
+included among the number.
+
+"Does Mr. Lorrimer suffer in that way?" Ideala had asked with interest.
+
+"Indeed, yes," was the answer, given with many shakings of the head
+and that air of importance and pleasure which vulgar bearers of bad
+news assume. "He was very bad in the spring. He coughed so as never
+was, and had to give in at last and keep his room, which he should
+have done at first; but it takes a deal to make him give in, for he
+takes no care of hisself though not strong, and we _were_ in a way!
+Eh! but it would be a bad thing for this place if anything happened to
+Mr. Lorrimer!" Ideala gave the woman half-a-crown.
+
+"People may have bronchitis without being delicate," she asserted. "Mr.
+Lorrimer is very kind to all of you, I suppose?" "If I was to tell you
+all his good deeds, ma'am," the woman said, impressively, "I'd not have
+done before to-morrow morning. But as to his not being delicate," she
+continued--in the hope, perhaps, of scoring another on that point--
+"why, it just depends on what you call delicate."
+
+Ideala absently gave her another half-crown, and another after that,
+but she could not get her to say that Mr. Lorrimer's chest was strong.
+Later, when Lorrimerre turned, and they were both at work, he was
+interrupted in the middle of some cynical remarks on over-population,
+and the good it would do to check it by allowing the spread of
+epidemics and encouraging men to kill each other, by the arrival of
+another old woman in great distress.
+
+His manner changed in a moment. "I am afraid he is worse," he said to
+her most kindly.
+
+She could only shake her head.
+
+"There is the order," he went on, giving her a paper--"get him these
+things at once, and tell him I will come as soon as I am disengaged."
+
+When they were alone again, Ideala looked at Lorrimer and laughed.
+"Another instance, I shrewdly suspect, of the difference between theory
+and practice," she observed.
+
+He brushed his hand back over his forehead and hair, a trifle
+disconcerted. "He was the only son of his mother, and she was a widow,"
+he said.
+
+"And one can approve of capital punishment without having the nerve to
+see it inflicted, I suppose," Ideala commented, "and be convinced that
+it would be good for the human race to have a certain number of their
+children drowned, like kittens, every year, and yet not be able to see
+a single one disposed of in that way without risking one's own life to
+save it. Verily, I have heard this often, and yet I think I am more
+surprised to find it true than if I had never been warned! But that is
+always the way. Things surprise us just as much as we expect them to.
+When we went up the river to Canton and saw the Pagoda, we all
+exclaimed, 'Why, it is just like the pictures--river, and junks, and
+all!' If we had not seen the pictures I believe we should scarcely have
+noticed it, and certainly we should not have been surprised at all."
+
+"Haven't you done being surprised yet?" Lorrimer asked.
+
+"No. Have you?"
+
+"Quite. Nothing ever surprises me."
+
+"I have read somewhere," she said, trying hard to recall the passage,
+"that fast men, stupid men (_I think_), and rascals, profess to
+feel no surprise at anything."
+
+The colour flew over his face, he seemed about to speak, but took up
+his pen again as if the thing were not worth the trouble of a word,
+and went on with his work. The habit of treating men as ideas is not
+to be got rid of in a moment, and it was only when she thought it over
+at dinner this evening that she saw anything to hurt him in what she
+had said. Now that she did think of it, however, it certainly seemed
+natural that he should object to being classed in any category which
+included fast men, stupid men, or rascals; but even while she blamed
+herself, and credited him with much forbearance in that he had allowed
+her rudeness to pass unpunished, she was conscious of the existence,
+in that substratum of thought which goes on continually irrespective
+of our will, of a doubt as to whether he might not after all be one of
+these--say, a fast man. For what _did_ she know about him? Nothing,
+except that his manners were agreeable. True, she had heard of his
+good deeds, and there is never smoke without fire; but a man may
+balance his accounts, and many men do, in that way, topping up the
+scale of good deeds pretty high when the bad ones on the other side
+threaten to turn it; and, seeing that she knew nothing definitely
+about his private character, suppose she had been deceived in him?
+But, no! The thing was impossible. And just as she thought it, a
+gentleman, sitting opposite, one whom she had not met before, looked
+across the table and asked her if she knew Mr. Lorrimer.
+
+"I have seen him," she answered, with a burning blush, being taken
+unawares.
+
+"He's a charming fellow--don't you think so?"
+
+"Yes, I think so," she agreed, with an indescribable sense of relief.
+
+And the next day a young clergyman whom she stopped to speak to in the
+street began at once about Lorrimer. "I met him at dinner the other
+night," he said. "I suppose you know him? There is much truth in 'birds
+of a feather.' He fascinated us all with his talk of art and
+literature. He gave us such new ideas--described such varied
+experiences, and all with such grace and power."
+
+"Yes," she answered, thoughtfully. "I believe he is brilliant."
+
+"Many people are that," was the reply, given with hearty enthusiasm;
+"but Lorrimer is something more. He is good. He makes you feel it, and
+know it, and believe in him, without ever saying a word about himself."
+
+"Ah!" she sighed, "there is power in that. What lovely summer weather!
+It makes me dream. Don't you love the time of nasturtiums? Their
+pungent scent, and their colours? They seem to penetrate and glow
+through everything, and make the time their own."
+
+And so she left him.
+
+But that same day, an old gentleman, who came from another county, and
+looked as if he had come from another century--an old gentleman with
+curious wavy hair, parted in the middle, who worshipped the Idol of
+Days--the past and all that belonged to it--and, for evening dress,
+wore knee-breeches, frilled shirt, black silk stockings, and diamond
+buckles in his shoes; and had a bijou house, filled with a thousand
+relics of his Idol of Days, where noble ladies were wont to loll and
+listen to him, and drink tea out of his wonderful cups, and love him--
+so it was said--this gentleman called on Ideala. He came to charm and
+to be charmed; and he, of all people in the world the one from whom she
+would least have expected it, although she knew they had met, began to
+sing Lorrimer's praises.
+
+"He raises the tone of everything he is engaged upon," this gentleman
+said. "He has not quite kept faith with me about a matter he promised
+to look into for me a year ago, but doubtless he is busy. I suppose you
+know him?"
+
+"Yes, I know him. He seems to be very much above the average."
+
+"Oh, very much above the average," was the warm response. "He's a
+charming fellow, and a thoroughly good fellow, too."
+
+This was the chorus to everything, and there was only one dissentient
+voice--that of a man who admired Ideala, and was a good soul himself,
+having gone out of his way to pay her trifling attentions, and even
+found occasion to do her some small acts of kindness. He began with the
+rest to praise Lorrimer, but when he saw he was doing so at his own
+expense, by diverting her attention from himself to his subject, he
+somewhat lowered his tone.
+
+"Every one seems to like Mr. Lorrimer," Ideala said.
+
+"O yes, he's certainly a nice fellow; but he puts a lot of side on."
+
+"And well he may, being so very good and well-beloved," she answered,
+smiling.
+
+"So spoilt and conceited, you might say," was the rejoinder; but she
+felt that there was jealousy in the tone, and only laughed.
+
+"What an interesting face he has," a lady remarked, who was having tea
+with Ideala, _tete-a-tete_, one afternoon, and had brought the
+conversation round to Lorrimer, as seemed inevitable in those days. "He
+must make a charming portrait."
+
+"Yes, it is a fine face," Ideala answered, dreamily--"a face for a bust
+in white marble; a face from out of the long ago--not Greek, but Roman
+--of the time when men were passing from a strong, simple, manly, into a
+luxuriously effeminate, self-indulgent stage; the face of a man who is
+midway between the two extremes, and a prey to the desires of both. I
+wish I had been his mother."
+
+"His mother was a noble woman."
+
+"I know; but she was not omniscient, and she never could have
+understood the boy. I daresay he was not enough of an ugly duckling to
+attract special attention, and with many other chicks in the brood he
+could not have more than the rest, and yet he required it. He ought to
+have been an only child. If he had been mine, I should have known what
+his dreaminess meant, why he loved to wander away and be alone; what
+was the conflict that began in his cradle--or earlier. Surely a mother
+must remember what there was in her mind to influence her child; she
+must have the key to all that is wrong in him; she must know if his
+soul is likely to be at war with his senses." And then Ideala forgot
+her listener, and burst out with one of those curious flashes of
+insight, irrespective of all knowledge, to which she was subject: "If I
+were only a soul to be saved, he would save me; but I am also a body to
+be loved, and whether he loves me or not, he suffers. It is the eternal
+conflict of mind and matter, spirit and flesh, two prisoners chained
+together--the one despising the other, yet ruled by him, and
+subservient to the needs of his lower nature."
+
+The lady stared at her.
+
+"You know Mr. Lorrimer very well, then, I suppose?" she remarked.
+
+"Let me see," said Ideala, awaking from her trance, "that is a question
+I often ask myself. And sometimes I say I _do_ know him very well,
+and sometimes I say I don't. I go to the Great Hospital frequently to
+read, and to look up information, and he helps me. He is a man who
+makes an instant impression, but he is many-sided, and, now you ask me,
+I think on the whole that I do not know him well. I should not be
+surprised to hear any number of the most contradictory things about
+him."
+
+"It is not a nice character to have," the lady said.
+
+"No," Ideala answered, "not at all nice, but very interesting."
+
+When at last the day arrived she felt an unusual impatience to see him.
+And she was in a strange flutter of nervous excitement. Should she tell
+him of those things which she had not been able to confide to him on
+the last occasion of their meeting? Could she? No; impossible! But she
+must see him, nevertheless. The desire was imperative.
+
+The servant she had been accustomed to see met her at the door of the
+Great Hospital. She fancied he looked at her peculiarly. He said he had
+heard something about Mr. Lorrimer being absent that day, but he would
+inquire. He left her, and, returning in a few minutes, told her Mr.
+Lorrimer was not there.
+
+"Did he leave no note, no message for me?" Ideala asked, faintly.
+
+"No, madam, nothing," was the reply.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+
+For quite three months we heard nothing of Ideala, but we were not
+alarmed, as she often neglected us in this way when she was busy. At
+last, however, Claudia received a note from her, written in pencil, and
+in her usual style.
+
+"It has been dull down here to a degree," she said. "I am beginning to
+think we are all too respectable. Are respectability and imbecility
+nearly allied, I wonder? But don't tell me; I don't want to know. All
+the trouble in the world comes from knowing too much. And then, I'm so
+dreadfully clever! If people take the trouble to explain things to me,
+I am sure to acquire some of the information they try to impart. I
+heard of the block system the other day. It sounded mysterious. I like
+mystery, and I went about in daily dread of having it all made plain to
+me by some officious person. One day I was sitting on a rail above the
+line watching the trains. A workman came and sat down near me. It is
+very hard to have a workman sit down near you and not to talk to him,
+so we talked. And before I knew what was coming, he had explained the
+whole of that block system to me. Only fancy! and I may never forget
+it! It is quite disheartening.
+
+"He said he was a pointsman, and I asked him if he would send a train
+down a wrong line for fifty pounds. He said fifty pounds was a large
+sum, and he had a mother depending on him! The people here are
+delicious. I think I shall write a book about them some day.
+
+"Have you felt the fascination of the trains? My favourite seat here is
+a lovely spot just above where they pass. I can look down on them, and
+into them. The line winds, rather, through meadows and between banks,
+where wild flowers grow; and under an ivied bridge or two, and by some
+woods. And the trains rush past--some slow, some fast; and now and then
+comes one that is just a flash and roar, and I cling to the railing for
+a moment till it passes, and quiver with excitement, feeling as if I
+must be swept away. I look at the carriage windows, too, trying to
+catch a glimpse of the people, and I always hope to see a face I know.
+In that lies all the charm.
+
+"I seem to be expected in town, and some Scotch friends have asked me
+to pay them a visit _en route_. I should like to go that way above
+everything; one would see so much more of the country! But I daren't go
+to London while the Bishop is there. He is making a dead set at me
+again (confirmation this time), and I am afraid if he heard of my
+arrival he would do something rash--dance down the Row in his gaiters,
+perhaps--which might excite comment even if people knew what he was
+after."
+
+And then she went on to say she had been a little out of sorts, and
+very lazy, and she thought the north country air would brace her
+nerves, and, if we would have her, she would like to go to us at once.
+
+She arrived late one afternoon, and I did not see her until she came
+down to the drawing-room dressed for dinner.
+
+I had not thought anything of her illness, she made so light of it, and
+I was therefore startled beyond measure when she appeared.
+
+"Why, my dear!" I exclaimed, involuntarily, "what have they done to
+you? You're a perfect wreck!"
+
+"Well, so _I_ thought," she answered; "but I did not like to tell
+you. I was afraid you might think I was trying to make much of myself--
+wrecks are so interesting."
+
+There was a large party staying in the house, and I had no opportunity
+of speaking to her that evening; but the next morning she came into my
+studio with a brave assumption of her old manner. I cannot tell how it
+was that I knew in a moment she had broken down, but I did know it, and
+I could only look at her. Perhaps something in my look showed her she
+had betrayed herself, for all at once her false composure forsook her,
+and she stretched out her hands to me with a piteous little gesture:
+
+"What am I to do?" she said. "Will it always be like this?"
+
+But I could not help her. I turned to the picture I was working at, and
+went on painting without a word. By-and-by she recovered herself, and
+began to talk of other things.
+
+I blamed myself afterwards. I ought to have let her tell me then; but I
+had no notion of the truth. I only thought of her husband, and I
+selfishly shrank from encouraging her to speak. Complaint seemed to be
+beneath her. But I know now that she never wanted to make any complaint
+of him to me. It was of her new acquaintance that she longed to tell
+me. She had settled the difficulty with her husband without consulting
+any one. She had returned to his house, and remained there as his wife,
+nominally, and because he particularly wished that the world should
+know nothing of the rupture. I believe that she had done it sorely against
+the grain, and only because he represented that by so doing she would
+save his reputation. But from that time forward she would accept nothing
+from him but house-room, for she held that no high-minded woman could
+take anything from a man to whom she was bound by no tie more sacred
+than that of a mere legal contract.
+
+She was very quiet when she first came to us, but beyond that I noticed
+nothing unusual in her manner, and after the first I was inclined to
+think that being out of health accounted for everything. My sister
+Claudia, however, was not so easily deceived. She declared that Ideala
+was suffering from some serious trouble, either mental or bodily; and
+as the days wore on and there was no change for the better in her, but
+rather the contrary, I began to share Claudia's anxiety. Ideala grew
+paler and thinner, and more nervous. She was oftenest depressed, but
+occasionally had unnatural bursts of hilarity that would end suddenly
+in long fits of brooding.
+
+It seems she had at first believed that Lorrimer's absence was an
+intentional slight, and the humiliation, coming as it did upon the long
+train of troubles which had weakened her already both in body and mind,
+nearly killed her. She had been lying for weeks between life and death,
+and we had known nothing of it. But as her strength returned she began
+to think she had been unjust to Lorrimer. She could account for his
+absence in many ways. He had been called out suddenly, and had left no
+message because he expected to be back before she arrived, but had been
+detained; or perhaps he had left a message with one of the servants
+whom she had not seen--there were so many about the place; or it was
+just possible that he had never received her letter at all--a certain
+number are lost in the post every day; and altogether it was more
+difficult to think badly of him than to believe that there had been
+some mistake. But still there was a doubt in her mind, and she bore the
+torment of it rather than ask for an explanation which might only
+confirm her worst fears.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+
+About a month after she came to us, Ideala caught a bad cold. The
+doctor said her chest was very delicate. There was no disease, but she
+required great care, and must not go out of doors. Soon afterwards he
+ordered her to remain in two rooms, and my sister had a favourite
+sitting-room turned into a bedroom for her. It opened into the blue
+drawing-room, and we took to sitting there in the evening, so that
+Ideala might join us without change of temperature. Ideala had always
+been careless about her health, and we expected some trouble with her
+now, but she acquiesced in all our arrangements without a word. It was
+easy to see, however, that her docility arose from indifference. The
+one idea possessed her, and she cared for nothing else. Did he, or did
+he not, mean it? was the question she asked herself, morning, noon, and
+night, till at last she could bear it no longer. Anything was better
+than suspense. She must write to him, she must know the truth one way
+or the other.
+
+I had stayed up in the blue drawing-room to read one night after the
+rest of the party had gone to their rooms, but my mind wandered from
+the book. Ideala had been very still that evening, and I could not help
+thinking about her. Once or twice I had caught her looking at me
+intently. It seemed as if she had something to say, but when I went to
+speak to her she answered quite at random. I was much troubled about
+her, and something happened presently which did not tend to set my mind
+at rest. The room was large, and the fire, though bright, and one
+shaded lamp standing on a low table, left the greater part of it in
+shadow. When I gave up the attempt to read, I had gone to the farther
+end of it to lie on a sofa which was quite in the shade. About midnight
+the door into Ideala's room opened and she stood on the threshold with
+a loose white wrapper round her. She could not see me, and I ought to
+have spoken and let her know I was there, but I was startled at first
+by her sudden appearance, and afterwards I was afraid of startling her.
+She was so nervous and fragile then that a very little might have led
+to serious consequences. I did not like to play the spy, but it was a
+choice of two evils, and I thought she had come for a book or
+something, and would go directly, and if she did discover me she would
+suppose me to be asleep. She walked about the room, however, for a
+little in an objectless way; then she sank down on the floor with a low
+moan beside a chair, and hid her face on her arm. Presently she looked
+up, and I saw she held something in her hand. It was a gold crucifix,
+and she fixed her eyes on it. The lamplight fell on her face, and I
+could see that it was drawn and haggard. Claudia had maintained
+latterly that her illness arose more from mental than from physical
+trouble; did this explain it? And was it a religious difficulty?
+
+A weary while she remained in the same attitude, gazing at the
+crucifix; but evidently there was no pity for her pain, and no relief.
+She neither prayed nor wept, and scarcely moved; and I dared not. At
+last, however, a great drowsiness came over me; and when I awoke I
+almost thought I had dreamt it all, for the daylight was streaming in,
+and I was alone.
+
+Later in the day when I saw Ideala she had just finished writing a
+letter.
+
+"Shall I take it down for you?" I asked. "The man will come for the
+others presently."
+
+She handed it to me without a word. On the way downstairs I saw that it
+was addressed to Lorrimer, of whom I had not then heard, but somehow I
+could not help thinking that this letter had something to do with what
+I had seen the night before.
+
+For a day or two after that Ideala seemed better. Then she grew
+restless, which was a new phase of her malady; she had been so still
+before; and soon it was evident that she was devoured by anxiety which
+she could not conceal. I felt sure she was expecting someone, or
+something, that never came. For days she wandered up and down, up and
+down, and she neither ate nor slept.
+
+One afternoon I went to ask if she had any letters for the post. At
+first she said she had not, then she wanted to know how soon the post
+was going. In a few minutes, I told her. She sat down on the impulse of
+the moment, and hurriedly wrote a note, which she handed to me. It was
+addressed to Lorrimer; but I asked no questions.
+
+Two days afterwards a single letter came by the post for Ideala. I took
+it to her myself, and saw in a moment that it was what she had waited
+for so anxiously: the cruel suspense was over at last.
+
+That evening she was radiant; but she told us she must go home next
+day, and we were thunderstruck. It was the depth of winter; the weather
+was bitterly cold, and she had not been out of the house for months,
+and under the circumstances to take such a journey was utter madness.
+But we remonstrated in vain. She was determined to go, and she went.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+
+In a few days she returned to us, and we were amazed at the change in
+her. Her voice was clear again, her step elastic, her complexion had
+recovered some of its brilliancy; there was a light in her eyes that I
+had never seen there before, and about her lips a perpetual smile
+hovered. She was tranquil again, and self-possessed; but she was more
+than that--she was happy. One could see it in the very poise of her
+figure when she crossed the room.
+
+"This is delightful, is it not?" Claudia whispered to me in the
+drawing-room on the evening of her return.
+
+"Delightful," I answered; but I was puzzled. Ideala's variableness was
+all on the surface, and I felt sure that this sudden change, which
+looked like ease after agony, meant something serious.
+
+She did not keep me long in suspense. The next morning she came to my
+studio door and looked in shyly.
+
+"Come in," I said. "I have been expecting you," and then I went on with
+my painting. I saw she had something to tell me, and thought, as she
+was evidently embarrassed, it would be easier for her to speak if I did
+not look at her. "I hope you are going to stay with us some time now,
+Ideala," I added, glancing up at her as she came and looked over my
+shoulder at the picture.
+
+Her face clouded. "I--I am afraid not," she answered, hesitating, and
+nervously fidgeting with some paint brushes that lay on a table beside
+her.
+
+"I am afraid you will not want me when you know what I am going to do.
+I only came back to tell you."
+
+My heart stood still. "To tell me! Why, what are you going to do?"
+
+"It is very hard to tell you," she faltered. "You and Claudia are my
+dearest friends, and I cannot bear to give you pain. But I must tell
+you at once. It is only right that you should know--especially as you
+will disapprove."
+
+I turned to look at her, but she could not meet my eyes.
+
+"Give us pain! Disapprove!" I exclaimed. "What on earth do you mean,
+Ideala? What are you going to do?"
+
+"An immoral thing," she answered.
+
+"Good heavens!" I exclaimed, throwing down my palette, and rising to
+confront her. "I don't believe it."
+
+"I mean," she stammered--the blood rushing into her face and then
+leaving her white as she spoke--"something which you will consider so.
+
+"I cannot believe it," I reiterated.
+
+"But it is true. He says so."
+
+"_He_--who, in God's name?"
+
+"Lorrimer."
+
+"And who on earth is Lorrimer?"
+
+"That is what I came to tell you," she answered, faintly.
+
+I gathered up my palette and brushes, and sat down to my easel again.
+
+"Tell me, then," I said, as calmly as I could.
+
+I pretended to paint, and after a little while, still standing behind
+me so that I could not see her face, she began in a low voice, and told
+me, with her habitual accuracy, all that had passed between them.
+
+"And what did you think when you found he was not there?" I asked, for
+at that point she had stopped.
+
+"At first I thought he did not want to see me, and had gone away on
+purpose," she answered; "then I was ill; but after that, when I began
+to get better, I was afraid I had been unjust to him. There might have
+been some mistake, and I was half inclined to go and see, but I was
+frightened. And every day the longing grew, and I used to sit and look
+at my watch, and think--'I could be there in an hour;' or, 'I might be
+with him in forty minutes.' But I never went. And after a while I
+could not bear it any longer, and so I came to you. But the thought of
+him came with me, and the desire to know the truth grew and grew,
+until at last I could bear that no longer either, and then I wrote;
+and day after day I waited, and no answer came; and then I was sure he
+had done it on purpose, but yet I could not bear to think it of him.
+And I began not to know what people said when they spoke to me, and I
+think I should have killed myself; but I come of an old race, you
+know, and none of us ever did a cowardly thing, and I would rather
+suffer for ever than be the first--_noblesse oblige_. I don't deserve
+much credit for that, though, for I knew I should die if I did not see
+him again--die of grief, and shame, and humiliation because of what I
+had written, for as the days passed, and no answer came, I was afraid
+I had said too much, and he had misunderstood me, and would despise
+me. If I had only been sure that he did not want to see me again, of
+course I should never have written; but so many people have lost their
+only chance of happiness because they had not the courage to find out
+the truth in some such doubtful matter; and I _did_ believe in him so
+--I could not think he would do a _low_ thing. I was in a difficult
+position, and I did what I thought was right; but when no answer came
+to my letter I began to doubt, and then in a moment of rage, feeling
+myself insulted, I wrote again. Yet I don't know what made me write.
+It was an impulse--the sort of thing that makes one scream when one is
+hurt. It does no good, but the cry is out before you can think of
+that. All I said was: 'I understand your silence. You are cruel and
+unjust. But I can keep my word, and if I live for nothing else, I
+promise that I will make you respect me yet.' I never expected him to
+answer that second note, but he did, at once. And he offered to come
+here and explain--he was dreadfully distressed. But I preferred to go
+to him."
+
+"And you went?"
+
+"Yes. And I was frightened, and he was very kind."
+
+By degrees she told me much of what had passed at that interview. She
+seemed to have had no thought of anything but her desire to see him,
+and have her mind set at rest, until she found herself face to face
+with him, and then she was assailed by all kinds of doubts and fears;
+but he had put her at her ease in five minutes--and in five minutes
+more she had forgotten everything in the rapid change of ideas, the
+delightful intellectual contest and communion, which had made his
+companionship everything to her. She did just remember to ask him why
+he had not answered her first letter.
+
+He searched about amongst a pile of newly-arrived documents on his
+writing table. "There it is," he said, showing her the letter covered
+with stamps and postmarks. "It only arrived this morning--just in time,
+though, to speak for itself. I was abroad when you wrote, and it was
+sent after me, and has followed me from place to place as you see, so
+that I got your second letter first. You might have known there was
+some mistake."
+
+"Pardon me," Ideala answered. "I ought to have known."
+
+And then she had looked up at him and smiled, and never another doubt
+had occurred to her.
+
+"But, Ideala," I said to her, "you used the word 'immoral' just now.
+You were talking at random, surely? You are nervous. For heaven's sake
+collect yourself, and tell me what all this means."
+
+"No, I am not nervous," she answered. "See! my hand is quite steady. It
+is you who are trembling. I am calm now, and relieved, because I have
+told you. But, oh! I am so sorry to give you pain."
+
+"I do not yet understand," I answered, hoarsely.
+
+"He wants me to give up everything, and go to him," she said; "but he
+would not accept my consent until he had explained, and made me
+understand exactly what I was doing. 'The world will consider it an
+immoral thing,' he said, 'and so it would be if the arrangement were
+not to be permanent. But any contract which men and women hold to be
+binding on themselves should be sufficient now, and will be sufficient
+again, as it used to be in the old days, provided we can show good
+cause why any previous contract should be broken. You must believe
+that. You must be thoroughly satisfied now. For if your conscience were
+to trouble you afterwards--your troublesome conscience which keeps you
+busy regretting nearly everything you do, but never warns you in time
+to stop you--if you were to have any scruples, then there would be no
+peace for either of us, and you had better give me up at once.'"
+
+"And what did you say, Ideala?"
+
+"I said, perhaps I had. I was beginning to be frightened again."
+
+"And how did it end?"
+
+"He made me go home and consider."
+
+"Yes. And what then?" I demanded impatiently.
+
+"And next day he came to me--to know my decision--and--and--I was
+satisfied. I cannot live without him." I groaned aloud. What was I to
+say? What could I do? An arrangement of this sort is carefully
+concealed, as a rule, by the people concerned, and denied if
+discovered; but here were a lady and gentleman prepared, not only to
+take the step, but to justify it--under somewhat peculiar
+circumstances, certainly--and carefully making their friends acquainted
+with their intention beforehand, as if it were an ordinary engagement.
+I knew Ideala, and could understand her being over-persuaded. Something
+of the kind was what I had always feared for her. But, Lorrimer--what
+sort of a man was he? I own that I was strongly prejudiced against him
+from the moment she pronounced his name, and all she had told me of him
+subsequently only confirmed the prejudice.
+
+"Why was he not there that day to receive you?" I asked at last.
+
+"I don't know," she said. "I quite forgot about that. And I suppose he
+forgot too," she added, "since he never told me."
+
+"Oh, Ideala!" I exclaimed, "how like you that is! It is most important
+that you should know whether he intended to slight you on that occasion
+or not. It is the key to his whole action in this matter."
+
+"But supposing he did mean to be rude? I should have to forgive him,
+you know, because I have been rude to him--often. He does not approve
+of my conduct always, by any means," she placidly assured me.
+
+"And does he, of all people in the world, presume to sit in judgment
+on you?" I answered, indignantly. "I always thought _you_ the most
+extraordinary person in the world, Ideala, until I heard of this--
+_gentleman_."
+
+"Hush!" she protested, as if I had blasphemed. "You must not speak of
+him like that. He _is_ a gentleman--as true and loyal as you are
+yourself. And he is everything to me."
+
+But these assurances were only what I had expected from Ideala, and in
+no way altered my opinion of Mr. Lorrimer. I knew Ideala's peculiar
+conscience well. She might do what all the world would consider wrong
+on occasion; but she would never do so until she had persuaded herself
+that wrong was right--for _her_ at all events.
+
+"He may be everything to you, but he has lowered you, Ideala," I
+resumed, thinking it best not to spare her.
+
+"I was degraded when I met him."
+
+"Circumstances cannot degrade us until they make us act unworthily," I
+rejoined.
+
+"Oh, no, he has not lowered me," she persisted; "quite the contrary. I
+have only begun to know the difference between right and wrong since I
+met him, and to understand how absolutely necessary for our happiness
+is right-doing, even in the veriest trifle. And there is one thing that
+I must always be grateful to him for--I can pray now. But I belied
+myself to him nevertheless. He asked me if I ever prayed, and I was
+shy; I could not tell him, because I only prayed for him. It was easier
+to say that sometimes I reviled. Ah! why can we not be true to
+ourselves?"
+
+"But I can't always pray," she went on sorrowfully; "only sometimes;
+generally when I am in church. The thought of him comes over me then,
+and a great longing to have him beside me, kneeling, with his heart
+made tender, and his soul purified and uplifted to God as mine is,
+possesses me--a longing so great that it fills my whole being, and
+finds a voice: 'My God! my God! give him to me!'"
+
+"'Angels of God in heaven! give him to me! give him to me!'" I
+answered, bitterly.
+
+"Yes, I remember," she rejoined, "I said it in my arrogant ignorance. I
+did not understand, and this is different."
+
+"It is always _different_ in our own case," I answered. "Do you
+remember that passage Ralph Waldo Emerson quotes from Lord Bacon:
+'Moral qualities rule the world, but at short distances the senses are
+despotic'? it seems to me that when you call upon God in that spirit
+you are worshipping Him with your senses only."
+
+"Then I believe it is possible to make the senses the means of saving
+the soul at critical times," she answered; "and at all events I know
+this, that I more earnestly desire to be a good woman now than I ever
+did before."
+
+"It would be a dangerous doctrine," I began.
+
+"Only in cases where the previous moral development had not been of a
+high order," she interrupted. I felt it was useless to pursue that part
+of the subject, so I waited a little, and then I said: "Am I to
+understand, then, that you are going to give up your position in
+society, and all your friends, for the sake of this one man, who
+probably does not care for you, who certainly does not respect you, and
+of whom you know nothing? Verily, he has gained an easy victory! But,
+of course, you know now what his object has been from the first."
+
+"I know what you mean," she answered, indignantly; "but you are quite
+wrong; he does care for me. And if I give up my position in society for
+his sake, he is worth it, and I am content. And it is my own doing,
+too. I know that there cannot be one law for me and another for all the
+other women in the world, and if I break through a social convention I
+am prepared to abide by the consequences. Do you want to make me
+believe that his sympathy was pretended, that he deliberately planned--
+something I have no word to express--and would have carried out his
+plan absolutely in cold blood, without a spark of affection for me? It
+would be hard to believe it of any man; it is impossible to believe it
+of him. He is a man of strong passions, if you will, but of noble
+purpose; and if I make a sacrifice for him, he will be making one for
+me also. He may have been betrayed at times by grief, or other mental
+pain, which weakened his moral nature for the moment, and left him at
+the mercy of bad impulses; but I can believe such impulses were
+isolated, and any action they led him into was bitterly repented of;
+and no one will ever make me alter my conviction that I wronged him
+when I doubted him, even for a moment."
+
+"This is all very well, Ideala," I said, trying not to irritate her by
+direct opposition, "if you appeared to him as you appear to me. Do you
+think you did? Was there anything in your conduct that might have given
+him a low estimate of your character to begin with? Anything that might
+have led him to doubt your honesty, and think, when you made your
+confession, that you were trying to get up a little play in which you
+intended him to take a leading part? That you merely wished to ease
+your mind from some inevitable sense of shame in wrong-doing by finding
+an excuse for yourself to begin with--an excuse by which you would
+excite his interest and sympathy, and save yourself from his contempt?"
+
+"Oh!" she exclaimed, "could he--could any one--think such a thing
+possible?"
+
+"Such things are being done every day, Ideala, and a man of the world
+would naturally be on his guard against deception. If he thought he was
+being deceived, do you think it likely he would feel bound to be
+scrupulous?"
+
+"But he _did_ believe in me," she declared, passionately.
+
+"He pretended to; it was part of the play. You see he only kept it up
+until he thoroughly understood you, and then his real feelings
+appeared, and he was rude to you. For I call his absence on that
+occasion distinctly rude, and intentionally so too, since he sent no
+apology."
+
+"He was only rude to me to save me from myself, then, as Lancelot was
+rude to Elaine," she answered.
+
+"Or is it not just possible that he was disappointed when he found you
+better than he had supposed? that he felt he had wasted his time for
+nothing, and was irritated----"
+
+She interrupted me. "I forgive you," she said, "because you do not know
+him. But I shall never convince you. You are prejudiced. You do not
+think ill of me: why do you think ill of him?"
+
+I made no answer, and she was silent for a little. Then she began
+again, recurring to the point at issue:
+
+"If he did slight me on that occasion," she said--"and I maintain that
+he did not--but if he did, it was accidentally done."
+
+"The evidence is against him," I answered, drily.
+
+"Many innocent persons have suffered because it was," she said, with
+confidence.
+
+"You are infatuated," I answered, roughly. And then my heart sent up an
+exceeding great and bitter cry: "Ideala! Ideala! how did it ever come
+to this?"
+
+She was silent. But her eyes were bright once more, her figure was
+erect, there was new life in her--I could see that--and never a doubt.
+She was satisfied. She was happy.
+
+"Must I give you up?" she said at last, tentatively.
+
+"No, you must give him up," I answered.
+
+"Ah, that is impossible!" she cried. "We were made for each other. We
+cannot live apart."
+
+"Ideala," I exclaimed, exasperated, "he never believed in you. He
+thought you were as so many women of our set are, and he showed it, if
+only you could have understood, when you saw him at the Hospital on
+that last occasion. You felt that there was some change, as you say
+yourself, and that was it. You talked to him of truth then, and it
+irritated him as the devil quoting Scripture might be supposed to
+irritate; and when you went back again he showed what he thought of you
+by his unexplained absence. He thought you were not worth
+consideration, and he gave you none."
+
+"It would have been paying himself a very poor compliment if he had
+thought that only a corrupt woman could care for him," she answered,
+confidently. "But, I tell you, I am sure there is some satisfactory
+explanation of that business. I only wish I had remembered to ask for
+it, that I might satisfy you now. And, at any rate," she added,
+"whatever he may have thought, he knows better by this time."
+
+I could say no more. Baffled and sick at heart, I left her, wondering
+if some happy inspiration would come before it was too late, and help
+me to save her yet.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+
+I went to consult my sister Claudia. The blow was a heavy one for her
+also; but I was surprised to find that she did not share my contempt
+for the person whom I considered responsible for all this trouble.
+
+"Ideala is no common character herself," Claudia argued; "and it isn't
+likely that a common character would fascinate her as this man has
+done."
+
+"Will you speak to her, Claudia, and see what your influence will do?"
+
+"It is no use my speaking to her," she answered, disconsolately.
+"Ideala is a much cleverer woman than I am. She would make me laugh at
+my own advice in five minutes. And, besides, if she be infatuated, as
+you say she is, she will be only too glad to be allowed to talk about
+him, and that will strengthen her feeling for him. No. She has chosen
+you for her confidant, and you had better talk to her yourself--and may
+you succeed!" she added, laying her head on the table beside which she
+was sitting, and giving way to a burst of grief.
+
+I tried to comfort her, but I had little hope myself, and I could not
+speak at all confidently.
+
+"I believe," Claudia said, before we parted, "that there is nothing for
+her now but a choice of two evils. If she gives him up she will never
+care for anything again, and if she does not, she will have done an
+unjustifiable thing; and life after that for such a woman as Ideala
+would be like one of those fairy gifts which were bestowed subject to
+some burdensome condition that made the good of them null and void."
+
+I did not meet Ideala again until the evening, and then I was not sorry
+to see that her manner was less serene. It was just possible that she
+had been thinking over what I had said, and that some of the doubts I
+had suggested were beginning to disturb her perfect security.
+
+After dinner she brought the conversation round to those social laws
+which govern our lives arbitrarily. I did not see what she was driving
+at, neither did the good old Bishop, who was one of the party, nor a
+lawyer who was also present.
+
+"You want to know something," said the latter. "What is it? You must
+state your case clearly."
+
+"I want to know if a thing can be legally right and morally wrong,"
+Ideala answered.
+
+"Of course not," the Bishop rashly asserted.
+
+"That depends," the lawyer said, cautiously.
+
+"If I signed a contract," Ideala explained, "and found out afterwards
+that those who induced me to become a party to it had kept me in
+ignorance of the most important clause in it, so that I really did not
+know to what I was committing myself, would you call that a moral
+contract?"
+
+"I should say that people had not dealt uprightly with you," the Bishop
+answered; "but there might be nothing in the clause to which you could
+object."
+
+"But suppose there _was_ something in the clause to which I very
+strongly objected, something of which my conscience disapproved,
+something that was repugnant to my whole moral nature; and suppose I
+was forced by the law to fulfil it nevertheless, should you say that
+was a moral contract? Should you not say that in acting against my
+conscience I acted immorally?"
+
+We all fell into the trap, and looked an encouraging assent.
+
+"And in that case," she continued, "I suppose my duty would be to evade
+the law, and act on my conscience?"
+
+The Bishop looked puzzled.
+
+"I should only be doing what the early martyrs had to do," she added.
+
+"That is true," he rejoined, with evident relief.
+
+"But I don't see what particular contract you are thinking of," said
+the lawyer.
+
+"The marriage contract," Ideala answered, calmly.
+
+This announcement created a sensation.
+
+The lawyer laughed: the Bishop looked grave.
+
+"Oh, but you cannot describe marriage in that way," he declared, with
+emphasis.
+
+"Humph!" the lawyer observed, meditatively. "I am afraid I must beg to
+differ from your Lordship. Many women might describe their marriages in
+that way with perfect accuracy."
+
+"Marriages are made in heaven!" the Bishop ejaculated, feebly.
+
+"Let us hope that some are, dear Bishop." Claudia sweetly observed, and
+all the married people in the room looked "Amen" at her.
+
+"I think an ideal of marriage should be fixed by law, and lectures
+given in all the colleges to teach it," Ideala went on; "and a standard
+of excellence ought to be set up for people to attain to before they
+could be allowed to marry. They should be obliged to pass examinations
+on the subject, and fit themselves for the perfect state by a perfect
+life. It should be made a reward for merit, and a goal towards which
+goodness only could carry us. Then marriages might seem to have been
+made in heaven, and the blessing of God would sanctify a happy union,
+instead of being impiously pronounced in order to ratify a business
+transaction, or sanction the indulgence of a passing fancy. But only
+the love that lasts can sanctify marriage, and a marriage without such
+love is an immoral contract."
+
+"Marriage an immoral contract!" the Bishop exclaimed. "O dear! O dear!
+This is not right, you know; this is not at all right. I must make a
+note of this--I really must. You are in the habit of saying things of
+this sort, my dear. I remember you said something like it once before;
+and really it is not a subject to joke about. Such an idea is quite
+pernicious; it must not be allowed to spread--even as a joke. I wish,
+my dear, you had not promulgated it, even in that spirit. You have--ah
+--a knack of making things seem plausible, and of giving weight to
+opinions by the way you express them, although the opinions themselves
+are quite erroneous, as on the present occasion. Some of your ideas are
+so very mistaken, you know; and you really ought to leave these matters
+to those who understand them, and can judge. It is very dangerous to
+discuss such subjects, especially--ah--when you know nothing about
+them, and--ah--cannot judge. I really must preach a sermon on the
+subject. Let me see. Next Sunday--ah, yes; next Sunday, if you will
+kindly come and hear me."
+
+We all thanked him as enthusiastically as we could.
+
+Later, I found Ideala alone in one of the conservatories. She took my
+arm affectionately, and we walked up and down for a time in silence.
+She was smiling and happy; so happy, indeed, that I found it hard to
+say anything to disturb her. For a moment I felt almost as she did
+about the step she proposed to take. There had been little joy in her
+life, and she had borne her cross long and bravely; what wonder that
+she should rebel at last, and claim her reward?
+
+"Do you remember how you used to talk about the women of the nineteenth
+century, Ideala," I said at last, "and describe the power for good
+which they never use, and rail at them as artificial, milliner-made,
+man-hunting, self-indulgent _animals?_"
+
+"I know," she answered; "and now you would say I am worse than any of
+them? I used to have big ideas about woman and her mission; but I
+always looked at the question broadly, as it affects the whole world;
+now my vision is narrowed, and I see it only with regard to one
+individual. But I am sure that is the right way to look at it. I think
+every woman will have to answer for one man's soul, and it seems to me
+that the noblest thing a woman can do is to devote her life to that
+soul first of all--to raise it if it be low, to help it to peace if
+peace be lacking, and to gather all the sunshine there is in the world
+for it; and, after that, if her opportunities and powers allow her to
+help others also, she should do what she can for them. I do not know
+all the places which it is legitimate for women to fill in the world,
+but it seems to me that they are many and various, and that the great
+object in life for a woman is to help. To be a Pericles I see that a
+man must have an Aspasia. Was Aspasia vile? some said so--yet she did a
+nobler work, and was finer in her fall, if she fell, than many good
+women in all the glory of uprightness are. And was she impure? then it
+is strange that her mind was not corrupting in its influence. And was
+she low? then whence came her power to raise others? It seems to me
+that it only rests with ourselves to make any position in life, which
+circumstances render it expedient for us to occupy, desirable."
+
+"And you propose to be an Aspasia to this modern Pericles?"
+
+"If you like to put it so. The cases are not dissimilar, as there was
+an obstacle in the way of their marriage also."
+
+"The law was the obstacle."
+
+"Yes; another of those laws which are more honoured in the breach than
+in the observance. They might not marry because she came from Miletus!
+and Lorrimer may not marry me because I came out of the house of
+bondage. Unwise laws make immoral nations."
+
+"But you have gone about this business in such an extraordinary way,
+Ideala," I said. "You seem to have tried to make it appear as bad for
+yourself as you can. Why did you not leave your husband when Lorrimer
+advised you to?"
+
+"If I had gone then I should have been obliged to live somewhere else--
+a long way from Lorrimer; and I might never have seen him again."
+
+"And do you mean to say you decided to endure a life that had become
+hateful to you in every way, simply for the sake of seeing this
+gentleman occasionally?"
+
+"Yes. Ah! you do not know how good he is, nor how he raises me! I never
+knew the sort of creature I was until he told me. He said once, when we
+quarrelled, that I was fanciful, sentimental, lackadaisical,
+hysterical, and in an unhealthy state of mind, and yet--"
+
+I made a gesture of impatience, and she stopped.
+
+"But, Ideala," I asked her, after a little pause, "have you never felt
+that what you are doing is wrong?"
+
+"I cannot say that exactly," she answered. "I knew that certain social
+conventions forbade the thing--at least I began to acknowledge this to
+myself after a time. At first, you know, I thought of nothing. I was
+wholly absorbed in my desire to see him; that excluded every other
+consideration. Do you know what it is to be sure that a thing is wrong,
+and yet not to be able to feel it so--to have your reason acknowledge
+what your conscience does not confirm?"
+
+I made no answer, and we were silent for a little; then she spoke
+again:
+
+"One day when I was in Japan," she said, "I was living up in the hills
+at Hakone, a village on a lake three thousand feet above the level of
+the sea. The Mayor of the village was entertaining me, and whenever I
+went out he sent his son and several of his retainers as an escort,
+that I might not be subject to annoyance or insult from strangers. One
+day I was crossing the hills by a mountain-path there is between Hakone
+and Mianoshita, and after I passed Ashynoyou, where the sulphur springs
+are, I found myself in a dense fog. I could not see anything distinctly
+three yards in front of me. Kashywaya and the other men never walked
+with me; they used to hover about me, leaving me to all intents and
+purposes alone if I preferred it. The Japanese are very delicate in
+some things; it was weeks before I knew that I had a guard of honour at
+all. On that particular day I lost sight of them altogether, but I
+could hear them calling to each other through the fog; and I sat down
+feeling very wretched and lonely. I thought how all the beauty of life
+had been spoiled for me; how, past, present, and to come, it was all a
+blank; and I wished in my heart that I might die, and know no more.
+And, do you know, just at that moment the fog beneath me parted, and I
+saw the sea, sapphire blue and dotted with boats, and the sand a streak
+of silver, and the green earth, and a low horizon of shining clouds,
+and over all the sun! Dear Lord in heaven! how glad a sight it was!"
+She pressed her handkerchief to her eyes. "And I was wandering," she
+continued, "in some such mental mist, lost and despairing, when
+Lorrimer came into my life, and changed everything for me in a moment,
+like the sun. Would you have me believe that he was sent to me then
+only for an evil purpose? That the good God, in whom I scarcely
+believed until in His mercy He allowed me to feel love for one of His
+creatures, and to realise through it the Divine love of which it is
+surely the foreshadowing--would you have me believe myself degraded by
+love so sent? Would you have me turn from it and call it sin, when I
+feel that God Himself is the giver?"
+
+I was silent, not knowing how to answer her.
+
+Presently I asked: "But why not have a legal separation, a divorce,
+from your husband now?"
+
+"I cannot," she answered, sadly. "At one time I had written proof of
+his turpitude, but I could not make up my mind to use it then, and I
+destroyed it eventually; so that now my word would be the only evidence
+against him, and that would not do, I suppose, although you all know,
+better than I do, I fancy, what his life has been."
+
+Other people had by this time come into the conservatory, and we were
+therefore obliged to change the subject.
+
+In the days that followed every one seemed to become conscious of some
+impending trouble. We were all depressed, and one by one our party left
+us, until at last only Ideala remained, for we had not the heart to ask
+other guests, even if it had been expedient, and, under the
+circumstances, Claudia did not consider it so.
+
+Ideala spent much of her time in writing to Lorrimer. Some of these
+letters were never sent. I fancy she wrote exactly as she felt, and
+often feared when she had done so that she had been too frank. How
+these two ever came to such an understanding I am at a loss to imagine,
+and I have searched in vain for any clue to the mystery. Only one thing
+is plain to me, that when at last Ideala understood her feeling for
+Lorrimer, she cherished it. After she found that her husband had broken
+every tie, disregarded every obligation, legal and moral, that bound
+her to him, she seems to have considered herself free. But I feel quite
+sure she had not acknowledged this, even to herself, when she returned
+to Lorrimer, and that simply because she had not contemplated the
+possibility of being asked to take any decided step. When the time
+came, however, she apparently never questioned her right to act on this
+fancied freedom. The circumstances under which they had met were
+probably responsible for a great deal. The whole of their acquaintance
+had had something unusual about it, which would naturally predispose
+their minds to further unaccustomed issues when any question of right
+or expediency arose. The restrictions which men and women have seen fit
+to place upon their intercourse with each other are the outcome of ages
+of experience, and they who disregard them bring upon themselves the
+troubles against which those same restrictions, irksome at times as
+they must be, are the only adequate defence.
+
+One letter I have here shows something of the strength and tenderness
+of Ideala's devotion; and I venture to think that, even under the
+circumstances, it must be good for a man to have been loved once in
+his life like that. The letter begins abruptly--"Oh, the delight of
+being able to write to you," she says, "without fear and without
+constraint. If it were possible to step from the dreary oppression of
+the northern midnight into the full blaze of the southern noon, the
+transition would not be greater than is the sense of rest and relief
+that has come to me after the weary days which are over. Do you know,
+I never believed that any one person could be so much to another as
+you are to me; that any one could be so happy as I am! I think I am
+_too_ happy. But, dear, I want you! I want you always; but most of all
+when anything good or beautiful moves me; I feel nearer to you then,
+and I know you would understand. Every good thought, every worthy
+aspiration, everything that is best in me, and every possibility of
+better things, seems due to your influence, and makes me crave for
+your presence. You have been the one thing wanting to me my whole life
+long. I believe that no soul is perfect alone, and that each of us
+must have a partner-soul _somewhere,_ kept apart from us--by false
+marriages, perhaps, or distance, or death, but still to be ours, if
+not in this state, then in some other, when both are perfect enough to
+make the union possible. We are not all fit for that love which is the
+beginning of heaven, and can have no end. [Transcriber's Note: Lengthy
+footnote relocated to chapter end.] Does this seem fanciful to you? It
+would comfort me if we were ever separated. _If_--I cannot tell you
+how it makes my heart sink just to look at that word, although I know
+it does not suggest anything that is possible in our case. What power
+would take you from me now, when there is no one else in the whole
+wide world for me _but_ you? and always you! and only you! You, with
+your ready sympathy and perfect refinement; your wit, your rapid
+changes, your ideality, your kindness, your cruelty, and the terrible
+discontent which makes you untrue to yourself. You are my world. But
+unless I can be to you what you are to me, you will always be one of
+the lonely ones. Tell me, again, that my absence makes a blank in your
+life. You did not write the word, you only left a space, and do you
+know how I filled it at first? 'It was such a _relief_ when you left
+off coming,' I read, and I raged at you.
+
+"I have heard it said lately that you are fickle, but these people do
+not understand you. You are true to your ideal, but the women you have
+hitherto known were only so many imperfect realisations of it, and so
+you went from one to the other, always searching, but never satisfied.
+And you have it in you to be so much happier or so much more miserable
+than other men--I should have trembled for you if your hopes had never
+been realised.
+
+"But what _would_ satisfy you? I often long to be that mummy you
+have in the Great Hospital, the one with the short nose and thick lips.
+When you looked at me spirit and flesh would grow one with delight, and
+I should come to life, and grow round and soft and warm again, and talk
+to you of Thebes, and you would be enchanted with me--you could not
+help it then. I should be so old, so very old, and genuine!
+
+"Dear, how I laugh at my fears now, or rather, how I bless them. If I
+had never known the horror of doubt, how could I have known what
+certainty is? And I did doubt you; I dare acknowledge it now. I wonder
+if you can understand what the shame of that doubt was? When I thought
+your absence and your silence were intentional slights, I knew how they
+felt when 'they called on the rocks to cover them, and I wished--oh,
+_how_ I wished!--that a thousand years had passed, and my spirit
+could be at the place where we met, and see the pillars broken, and.
+the ivy climbing over the ruins, and the lizards at home amongst them,
+and the shameless sunlight making bare the spot where we stood.
+
+"It was as if I had been punished for some awful unknown sin, and when
+I seemed to be dying, and I dared not write to you, and all hope of
+ever knowing the truth had departed, I used to exclaim in my misery:
+'Verily, Lord, if Thy servant sinned she hath suffered! for the anguish
+of death has been doubled, and the punishment of the lost has begun
+while yet the tortured mind can make its lament and moan with the
+tortured body!'
+
+"But all that bitter past only enhances the present.
+
+"I wonder where you will be to-day. I believe you are always in that
+room of yours. You only leave it to walk to the station with me, after
+which you go back to it, and work there till it is dark; and then you
+rest, waiting for the daylight, and when it comes you go to work again.
+I cannot fancy you anywhere else. I should not like to realise that you
+have an existence of which I can know nothing, a life through which I
+cannot follow you, even in imagination.
+
+"But sometimes you come to me, and then how glad I am! You come to me
+and kiss me, and it is night and I am dreaming, and not ashamed.
+
+"Yes, the days do drag on slowly, for after all I am never quite happy,
+never at peace even, never for a moment, except when I am with you. I
+am sorry I feel so, for it seems ungrateful in the face of all the
+kindness and care that is being lavished on me by my friends. One lady
+here has seven children--another instance of the unequal distribution
+of the good things of this world. She has lent me one of them to
+comfort me because I am jealous. He sleeps in my room, and is a fair-
+haired boy, with eyes that remind me of you. Will he also, when he
+grows up, have 'the conscience of a saint among his warring senses'? I
+hope not, I should think when sense and conscience are equally
+delicate, and apt to thrill simultaneously, life must be a burden.
+Would such a state of things account for moods that vary perpetually, I
+wonder?"
+
+Here she breaks off, and I think these last reflections account for the
+fact that the letter was never sent.
+
+[Relocated Footnote: This passage might have been taken from Plato
+verbatim, but Ideala had not read Plato at the time it was written.
+The inborn passionate longing of the human soul for perfect
+companionship doubtless accounts for the coincidence, which also shows
+how deep-rooted and widely spread the hope of eventually obtaining
+the desired companionship is. Some will maintain that the desire for
+such a possibility has created the belief in it, but others claim to
+have met their partner-souls, and to have become united by a bond so
+perfect that even distance cannot sever it, there being some
+inexplicable means of communication between the two, which enables
+each to know what befalls the other wherever they may be. The idea
+might probably be traced back to that account of Adam which describes
+him as androgynous, or a higher union of man and woman--a union of all
+the attributes of either, which, to punish Adam for a grievous fault,
+was subsequently sundered into the contrast between man and woman,
+leaving each lonely, imperfect, and vainly longing for the other.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+
+Ideala lingered unwillingly, but the reason of her reluctance to go was
+not far to seek. Now that Lorrimer knew she loved him she was ashamed
+to go back. It would have been bad enough had he been able to come to
+her; but going to him was like reversing the natural order of things
+and unsexing herself. I suppose, however, that she forgot her shyness
+in her desire to be with him as the time went on, and the effort it
+cost her to conquer her fear and go to him was not so dreadful as the
+blank she would have been obliged to face had she stayed away. At all
+events, she fixed a day at last, and one morning she announced to us,
+sadly enough, that on the morrow she must say farewell. She made the
+announcement just after breakfast, and Claudia rose and left the room
+without a word. My sister had never been able to speak to Ideala on the
+subject, but she did not cease to urge me to expostulate, and she had
+suggested many arguments which had affected Ideala, and made her
+unhappy, but without altering her determination.
+
+I could not find a word to say to her that morning, and during the slow
+hours of the long day that dragged itself on so wearily for all of us,
+nothing new occurred to me.
+
+"It will be a relief when it is over," I said to my sister.
+
+"Yes," she answered; "it is worse than death."
+
+In the evening she came to my study and said: "Ideala is alone in the
+south drawing-room. I wish you would go to her, and make a last effort
+to dissuade her."
+
+I consented, hopelessly, and went.
+
+Ideala was standing in a window, looking out listlessly. She was very
+pale, and I could see that she had been weeping. I sat down near the
+fire; and presently she came and sat on the floor beside me, and laid
+her head against my knee. In all the years of my love for her she had
+never been so close to me before, and I was glad to let her rest a
+long, long time like that.
+
+"Were you happy while you were with Lorrimer, Ideala?" I asked at last.
+
+She did not answer at once, and when she did, it was almost in a
+whisper.
+
+"No, never quite happy till this last time," she said; "never entirely
+at ease, even. It was when I left him, when I was alone and could think
+of him, that the joy came."
+
+"There was nothing real in your pleasure, then," I went on; "it was
+purely imaginary--due to your trick of idealising everything and
+everybody, you care for?"
+
+"I do not know," she said.
+
+"Do you think it was the same with him?" I asked again--"I mean all
+along. Did it always make him happy to have you there?"
+
+"I cannot tell," she said. "Yes, I think at times he was glad. But a
+word would alter his mood, and then he would grow sad and silent."
+
+"Even on the last occasion?"
+
+"No, not on the last occasion. He was happy then"--and she smiled at
+the recollection--"ah, so happy! It was like new life to him, he was so
+young, so fresh, so glad--like a boy."
+
+"But before, when his moods varied so often, did it ever seem to you
+that he was troubled and dissatisfied with himself? that the intimacy
+had begun on his part under a misapprehension, and that when he began
+to know you better, he had tried to end it, and save you, by not seeing
+you on that occasion?"
+
+"Ah, _that occasion_ again!" she ejaculated. "I forgot to tell you,
+but I asked for an explanation just to satisfy you. Here it is!" And
+she took a note from her pocket-book and handed it to me. It was one
+which she had written to him.
+
+"I do not understand," I said.
+
+"Read it," she answered, "and you will find I asked him to expect me
+on _Monday_, the 26th. It was a clerical error. Tuesday was the 26th,
+and I went on Tuesday. He waited for me the whole long Monday, and
+that night he had to set off suddenly for the Continent on business
+connected with the Great Hospital. He went, wondering what had
+detained me, and expecting an explanation. When he returned he
+inquired, but nobody could tell him whether I had been or not. So he
+waited, and waited, as I did, expecting to hear, and as much perplexed
+and distressed as I was, and as proud, for he never thought of writing
+to me--nor did he think of looking at my note again until I wrote the
+other day, and then he discovered the mistake. Now, are you
+satisfied?"
+
+"About that--yes," I answered, reluctantly. It was no relief to end him
+blameless.
+
+"But what did he mean when he talked of conscience and scruples?"
+
+"He used to laugh at my 'troublesome conscience,' as he called it," she
+answered, evasively.
+
+"Would he have known you had a conscience, do you think, if he had had
+none himself?" I asked her. "Did he ever say anything that showed he
+was yielding to a strong inclination which he could not justify and
+would not conquer?"
+
+"Oh, no!" she said; then added, undecidedly: "at least--he did say
+once: 'Of course, in the opinion of the world the thing cannot be
+justified,' but then he went on as if it had slipped from him
+involuntarily: 'Bah! I am only doing as other men do.'"
+
+"Which shows he was not exactly satisfied to be only as other men are."
+
+"That is what I have often told you," she said; "his ideal of life,
+both for himself and others, is the highest possible, and he suffers
+when he falls below it, or even belies himself with a word."
+
+"Passion never lasts, and love does not lead to evil," I continued,
+meditatively; "if you love him, Ideala, how will you bear to feel that
+he has degraded himself by degrading you?"
+
+"Oh! do not speak like that!" she exclaimed. "There is no degradation
+in love. It is sin that degrades, and sin is something that corrupts
+our minds, is it not? and makes us unfit for any good work, and
+unwilling to undertake any. This is very different."
+
+"Ideala, do you remember telling me once that you had a strange feeling
+about yourself? that you thought you would be made to go down into some
+great depth of sin and suffering, in order to learn what it is you have
+to teach?"
+
+"Ah, yes!" she answered, "but I have not gone down. I must obey my own
+conscience, not yours; and my conscience tells me the thing is right
+which you hold to be wrong. I am quite willing to believe it would be
+wrong for you, but for me it is clearly right. You said the other day
+he had lowered me. What a fiction that is! In what have I changed for
+the worse? Do I fail in any duty of life since I knew him in which I
+previously succeeded? Oh, no! he has not lowered me! Love like this
+rounds a life and brings it to perfection; it could not wreck it."
+
+"But, Ideala, you are going to fail in a duty; you are going to fail in
+the most important duty of your life--your duty to society."
+
+"I owe nothing to society," she answered, obstinately.
+
+"I have always admired you," I pursued, "for not letting your own
+experience warp your judgment. Oh, what a falling-off is here! I have
+heard you wish to be something more than an independent unit of which
+no account need be taken. How can we, any of us, say we owe nothing to
+society, when we owe every pleasure in life to it? Do we owe nothing to
+those who have gone before, and whom we have to thank for the music,
+the painting, the poetry, and all the arts which would leave a big
+blank in _your_ life, Ideala, if they ceased to exist? You would
+have been a mere savage now, without refinement enough to appreciate
+that rose at your waistbelt, but for the labour and self-denial which
+the hundreds and thousands who lived, and loved, and suffered in order
+to make you what you are have bestowed on you, and on all of us. You
+would not say, if you thought a moment, that society had done nothing
+for you; and no one can honestly think that they owe it nothing in
+return. It seems to me that a rigid observance of the laws which hold
+society together, and make life possible for all of us, and pleasant
+for some, is the least we can do; and do you know, Ideala, when a woman
+ever thinks of doing what you propose to do, she has already gone down
+to a low depth--of ingratitude, if of nothing else."
+
+"I do not propose to do anything that will injure any one," she
+answered, coldly. "I am free, am I not, to dispose of myself as I like
+--to give myself to whomsoever I please?"
+
+"We are none of us free in that sense of the word," I replied.
+
+  "All are but parts of one stupendous whole
+   Whose body Nature is, and God the soul.
+
+You are, as I know you have desired to be, part of a system, and an
+important part. All the toil and trouble of the world, and all the work
+which began with the life of man, is directed towards one great end--
+the doing away with sin and suffering, and the establishment of purity
+and peace. And this work seems almost hopeless, not because the
+multitude do not approve of it, but because individuals are cowardly,
+and will not do their share of it. Every act of yours has a meaning; it
+either helps or hinders, what is being done to further this, the object
+of life. Lately, Ideala, you have been talking wildly, without for a
+moment considering the harm you may be doing. You have expressed
+opinions which are calculated to make people discontented with things
+as they are. You rob them of the content which has made them
+comfortable heretofore, and yet you offer them nothing better in return
+for it. You would have society turned topsy-turvy, and all for what?
+Why, simply to make a wrong thing right for yourself! If your example
+were followed by all the unhappy people in the world, how would it end,
+do you think? There must be moral laws, and it is inevitable that they
+should press hardly on individuals occasionally; but it is clearly the
+duty of individuals to sacrifice themselves for the good of the
+community at large."
+
+"I do not understand your morality," she said. "Do you think that,
+although I love another man, it would be right for me to go back and
+live with my husband?"
+
+"Right, but, under the circumstances, not advisable. And, at any rate,
+nothing would make it moral for you to go to that other man."
+
+"Oh! do not fill my mind with doubt," she pleaded, piteously. "I love
+him. Let me go."
+
+I did not answer her, and after a while she began again, passionately--
+"We _are_ free agents in these things. Individuals _must_ know what is
+best for themselves. If I devote my life to him, as I propose, who
+would be hurt by it? Should I be less pure-minded, and would he be
+less upright in all his dealings? When things can be legally right
+though morally wrong, can they not also be morally right though
+legally wrong?"
+
+"I have already tried to show you, Ideala," I answered, preparing to go
+over the old ground again, patiently, "that we none of us stand alone,
+that we are all part of this great system, and that, in cases like
+yours, individuals must suffer, must even be sacrificed, for the good
+of the rest. When the sacrifice is voluntary, we call it noble."
+
+"If I go to him I shall have sacrificed a good deal."
+
+"You will have sacrificed others, not yourself. He is all the world to
+you, Ideala; the loss would be nothing to the gain"--she hid her face
+in her hands--"and what is required of you is self-sacrifice. And
+surely it would be happier in the end for you to give him up now, than
+to live to feel yourself a millstone round his neck."
+
+"I do not understand you," she said, looking up quickly.
+
+"The world, you see, will know nothing of the fine sentiments which
+made you determine to take this step," I said. "You will be spoken of
+contemptuously, and he will be 'the fellow who is living with another
+man's wife, don't you know,' and that will injure him in many ways."
+
+"Do you think so?" she asked, anxiously.
+
+"I know it," I replied. "And look at it from that or any other point of
+view you like, and you must see you are making a mistake. A woman in
+your position sets an example whether she will or not, and even if all
+your best reasons for this step were made public, you would do harm by
+it, for there are only too many people apt enough as it is at finding
+specious excuses for their own shortcomings, who would be glad, if they
+dared, to do likewise. And you would not gain your object after all.
+You would neither be happy yourself, nor make Lorrimer happy. People
+like you are sensitive about their honour--it is the sign of their
+superiority; and the indulgence of love, even at the moment, and under
+the most favourable circumstances of youth, beauty, and intellectual
+equality, does not satisfy such natures, if the indulgence be not
+regulated and sanctified by all that men and women have devised to make
+their relations moral."
+
+This was my last argument, and when I had done she sat there for a long
+time silent, resting her head against my knee, and scarcely breathing.
+She was fighting it out with herself, and I thought it best to leave
+her alone--besides, I had already said all there was to say; repetition
+would only have irritated her, and there was nothing now for it but to
+wait.
+
+Outside, I could hear the dreary drip of raindrops; somewhere in the
+room a clock ticked obtrusively; but it was long past midnight, and the
+house was still. I thought that only the night and silence watched with
+me, and waited upon the suffering of this one poor soul.
+
+At last she moved, uttering a low moan, like one in pain.
+
+"I do see it," she said, almost in a whisper; "and I am willing to give
+him up."
+
+"God in His mercy help you!" I prayed.
+
+"And forgive me," she answered, humbly.
+
+She was quite exhausted, and passively submitted when I led her to her
+room. I closed the shutters to keep out the cheerless dawn, and made
+the fire burn up, and lit the lamps. She sat silently watching me, and
+did not seem to think it odd that I should do this for her. She clung
+to me then as a little child clings to its father, and, like a father,
+I ministered to her, reverently, then left her, as I hoped, to sleep.
+
+My sister opened her door as I passed. She was dressed, and had been
+watching, too, the whole night long.
+
+"Well?" she asked.
+
+I kissed her. "It is well," I answered; and she burst into tears.
+
+"Can I go to her now?" she said.
+
+"Yes, go." I went to Claudia's room, and waited. After a long time she
+returned.
+
+"She is quiet at last," she told me, sorrowfully.
+
+And so the long night ended.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+
+Ideala had returned to us quite under the impression that if she took
+the step she proposed we should think it right to cast her off; and
+that little tentative: "Must I give you up?" was the only protest she
+had offered. But such was not our intention. Far from it! We do not
+forsake our friends in their bodily ailments, and we are poor, pitiful,
+egotistical creatures indeed when we desert them for their mental and
+moral maladies, leaving them to struggle against them and fight them
+out or succumb to them alone, according to their strength and
+circumstances. The world will forsake them fast enough, and that is
+sufficient punishment--if they deserve punishment. Of course, Ideala
+could never have come back to us as an honoured guest again, after
+taking such a step, but she would have continued to fill the same place
+in our affections, if not in our esteem.
+
+"And you will drive everybody else away, and keep the house empty all
+the year round, in order to be able to receive her--_and_ Mr. Lorrimer--
+whenever they choose to visit us," Claudia had declared when we
+discussed the subject.
+
+That was not quite what I intended; but I had made Ideala understand
+that nothing she could do would affect her intercourse with us. I told
+her so at once, because I would not have her alter her determination
+for any consideration but the highest. She might at the last have
+hesitated to separate herself from us for ever; but I felt sure if that
+were the case, and it was not a better motive entirely which deterred
+her, she would not be satisfied eventually; and I know now that I was
+right.
+
+Ideala wrote to Lorrimer, and when she had finished her letter I found
+that she intended to impose a terrible task upon me.
+
+"Until you know him yourself you will always misjudge him," she said.
+"I want you to take him my letter, and make his acquaintance."
+
+I hesitated.
+
+"It is the least you can do," she pleaded. "I shall be easier in my
+mind if you will. It will be better for him to see you, and hear all
+the things I cannot tell him in my letter; and--and--if I must not see
+him myself it will be a comfort to see somebody who has. Do go. I shall
+be pained if you refuse."
+
+This decided me, and I went at once.
+
+It was a long journey, the same that Ideala herself had taken under
+such very different circumstances so short a time before. I thought of
+her going in doubt and uncertainty, her own feelings colouring the
+aspect of all she saw on the way; and returning in the first warm glow
+of her great and unexpected joy--her new-found happiness which was
+destined, alas! to be so short-lived. Miserable fate which robbed her
+of all that would have made her life worth having--a husband on whom
+she could rely; her child; and now the man upon whom she had been
+prepared to lavish the long pent-up passion, the concentrated devotion
+of her great and noble nature! Poor starved heart, crushed back upon
+itself, suffering silently, suffering always, but never hardening--on
+the contrary, growing tenderer for others the more it had to endure
+itself! Would it always be so? Was there no peace on earth for Ideala?
+No one who could be all her own? I felt responsible for this last hard
+blow; had I done well? The rush and rattle of the train shaped itself
+into a sort of sub-chorus to my thoughts as we sped through the
+pleasant fields: _Was it right? Was it right? Was it right?_ And I
+saw Ideala, with soft, sad eyes, pleading--mutely pleading--pleading
+always for some pleasure in life, some natural, womanly joy, while
+youth and the power to love lasted. By an effort of will I banished the
+question. I told myself that my action in the matter had been expedient
+from every point of view; but presently
+
+    The rush of the grinding steel!
+  The thundering crank, and the mighty wheel!
+
+took me to task again, and the chorus now became: _Expediency right!
+Expediency right! Expediency right!_ which, when I banished it,
+resolved itself into: _Cold, proud Puritan! Cold, proud Puritan!_
+for the rest of the way.
+
+But the journey ended at last--though that was little relief with the
+task I had before me still unaccomplished.
+
+A bulbous functionary took my card to Lorrimer when I presented myself
+at the Great Hospital next day, and returning presently informed me
+that Mr. Lorrimer was disengaged, and would see me at once, if I would
+be so good as to come this way. How familiar the whole proceeding
+seemed! And how well I knew the place! the soothing silence, the
+massive grandeur, the long, dimly lighted gallery to the right, the
+door at which the servant stopped and knocked, the man who opened it,
+and met my eyes fearlessly, bowing with natural grace, and bidding me
+enter--a tall, fair man; self-contained and dignified; cold, pale, and
+unimpassioned--so I thought--but my equal in every way: the man who was
+"all the world" to Ideala.
+
+When I saw him I understood.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Lorrimer, after dismissing his secretary, was the first to speak.
+
+"You come to me from Ideala?" he said. "Is there anything wrong? Is she
+ill?"
+
+And I fancied he turned a trifle paler as the fear flashed through his
+mind.
+
+I reassured him. "Physically she is better," I said.
+
+"But mentally?" he interposed. "You give her no peace."
+
+I was silent.
+
+"I know you are no friend of mine," he added.
+
+"On the contrary," I answered. "I hope I am the best friend you have
+just now."
+
+"I know what that means," he said. "You have tried to dissuade Ideala,
+and having failed, you have come here to use your influence with me"
+
+"No," I answered. "I have not come to discuss the subject. I have
+brought you a letter from Ideala at her special request, and I am ready
+to take her any reply which you may think fit to send."
+
+I gave him the letter, and rose to go, but he detained me.
+
+"Stay till I have read it, if you can spare me the time," he said. "It
+is just possible that there is something in it which we _ought_ to
+discuss."
+
+I turned to the mantelpiece, and tried to interest myself in the lovely
+things with which it was crowded; but never in my life did my heart
+sink so for another; never have I endured such moments of pained
+suspense.
+
+I heard him open the envelope; I heard the paper rustle as he turned
+the page; and then there was silence--
+
+  Full of the city's stilly sound--
+
+a moment only, but filled with
+
+    Something which possess'd
+  The darkness of the world, delight,
+  Life, anguish, death, immortal love.
+  Ceasing not, mingled, unrepress'd,
+  Apart from space, witholding time--
+
+a moment's silence, and then a heavy fall. Lorrimer had fainted.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I stayed three days at the Great Hospital, three days of the most
+delightful converse. At first, Lorrimer had rebelled, not realising
+that Ideala's last decision was irrevocable.
+
+"You have over-persuaded her," he said.
+
+"No," I answered; "I have convinced her. And I shall convince you,
+too."
+
+He pleaded for her pathetically, not for himself at all. "She has had
+so little joy!" he said; using the very words that had occurred to me.
+"And I wanted to silence her. I wanted to save her from her fate. For
+she is _une des cinq ou six creatures humaines qui naissent, dans
+tout un siècle, pour aimer la vérité, et pour mourir sans avoir pu la
+faire aimer des autres_. She must suffer terribly if she goes on."
+
+This was a point upon which we differed. He would have given her the
+natural joys of a woman--husband, home, children, friends, and only
+such intellectual pursuits which are pleasant. _I_ had always hoped to
+see her at work in a wider field. But she was one of those rare women
+who are born to fulfil both destinies at once, and worthily, if only
+circumstances had made it possible for her to combine the two.
+
+Before I had been with him many hours, I began to be sensible of that
+difference of feeling on certain subjects which would have made their
+union a veritable linking of the past to the future--his belief that
+nothing can be better than what has been, and that the old institutions
+revised are all that the world wants; and her faith in future
+developments of all good ideas, and further discoveries never yet
+imagined. For one thing, Lorrimer considered famine and war inevitable
+scourges of the human race, necessary for the removal of the surplus
+population, and useless to contend against, because destined to recur,
+so long as there is a human race; but he would have limited
+intellectual pursuits for women, because culture is held to prevent the
+trouble for which the elder expedients only provided a cure--a point
+upon which Ideala did not agree with him at all. "Nothing is more
+disastrous to social prosperity," she held, "or more likely to add to
+the criminal classes, than families which are too large for their
+parents to bring up, and educate comfortably, in their own station. If
+the higher education of women is a natural check on over-production of
+that kind, then encourage it thankfully as a merciful dispensation of
+providence for the prevention of much misery. I can see no reason in
+nature or ethics for a teeming population only brought into existence
+to be removed by famine and war. Why, this old green ball of an earth
+would roll on just as merrily without any of us."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Lorrimer wrote to her at last. He had been obliged to acquiesce; and I
+took Ideala his letter; but she, womanlike, though nothing would have
+altered her decision, was not at first satisfied with his compliance.
+It seemed to her too ready; and that made her doubt if she might not
+have been to blame after all. They wrote to each other once again, and
+when she received his last letter, she spoke to me about it.
+
+"He must have seen it as you do from the first, for he has said no word
+to alter my determination--rather the contrary," she told me. "We are
+not to meet again, nor to correspond; and doubtless it is a relief to
+him to have the matter settled in this way; but one thing puzzles me.
+In my last letter I bade him good-bye, adding 'since that is what you
+wish,' and he has replied: 'I never said I wished it; will you remember
+that?' I do remember it, and it comforts me; but why?"
+
+I knew that Lorrimer had said little in order to make her sacrifice as
+easy for her as possible; and I was silent, too, for the same reason. I
+thought if she felt herself to blame, her pride would come to the
+rescue, and make her loss appear rather inevitable than voluntary. For,
+say what we will, we reconcile ourselves to the inevitable sooner than
+to those sorrows which we might have saved ourselves had we deemed it
+right.
+
+"You insinuated once that it was all my fault," she said. "Perhaps it
+was--if fault there be. But if I tempted him, it must have been
+generosity that made him yield to the temptation. He pitied me, and was
+ready to make me happy by devoting himself to me, since that was what I
+seemed to require. And I agree with you now. I don't think we should,
+either of us, have found any real happiness in that way. But, oh, how I
+long for him! for his friendship! for his companionship! for his love!
+It is hard, hard, hard, if he does not miss me as I do him."
+
+Then I told her: "But he does. And he did not yield to your decision
+until I had convinced him that he could never make you happy in such a
+position."
+
+A great sigh of relief escaped her. And then I saw that I ought to have
+been frank with her from the first. It strengthened her to know that
+they still had something left to them in common, though that something
+was only their grief.
+
+I tried to comfort her by speaking of the many ways in which she might
+still find happiness. She listened patiently until I was obliged to
+stop for want of words, then she said:
+
+"This is all very well, but you know you are talking nonsense. What is
+the use of offering people everything but the one thing needful? What I
+say to myself is:
+
+  Well, I have had my turn, have been
+    Raised from the darkness of the clod,
+  And for a glorious moment seen
+    The brightness of the skirts of God.
+
+And I try to think I have no right to complain, but still I am not
+better satisfied than the child that has eaten its cake and wants to
+have it too. And I suppose there are many who would call me wretched,
+and say that my life, with my sorrowful marriage--which was no
+marriage, but a desecration of that holy state, and a sin--and my
+hopeless love, is a broken life. Certainly _I_ feel it so. And yet I
+don't know. With his nature it seems to me that some wrong-doing was
+inevitable. Do you think my suffering might be taken as expiation for
+his sins? Do you think we are allowed the happiness of bearing each
+other's burdens in that way if we will? If I were sure of that I
+should not fancy, as I used to, that I had a work to do in the world;
+I should know that my work is done, and that now I may rest. Ah, the
+blessing of rest!"
+
+Not long after this a cruel rumour reached us, on good authority, that
+Lorrimer was engaged to be married. I confess that my feeling about it
+was one of unmitigated contempt for the man, and I trembled for the
+effect of the news upon Ideala. She made no sign, however, when first
+she heard it. I was surprised, and fear I showed that I was, in spite
+of myself, for she spoke about it.
+
+"You do not understand," she said. "One event in his career is not of
+more consequence to me than another, because all are of the greatest
+consequence. But I have none of the dog-in-the-manger spirit. I think
+there must be something almost maternal in my feeling for him, which is
+why it does not change. Were I less constant it would prove that my
+affection is of a lower kind, less enduring because less pure. I do not
+care to talk about him, but I think of him always. I think of him as I
+saw him last with the sun on him. Do you know his hair is like light
+gold with the sun on it. Sometimes the memory of him fades a little,
+and I cannot recall his features, and then I am tormented; but of
+course he comes back to me--so vividly that I have started often when I
+looked up and found myself alone, The desire to be with him never
+lessens; it burns in me always, and is both a pain and a pleasure. But
+my love is too great to be selfish. His wishes for himself are my
+wishes, and what is best for him is happiest for me. Am I never
+jealous? Jealous! No! Do you not know that he is mine, mine through
+every change? Neither time nor distance separates us really. No common
+tie can keep him from me. Let him be bound as and to whomsoever he
+pleases, his soul is mine, and must return to me sooner or later. I
+like him to be happy in any way that is right, for I know that what he
+gives to others is not himself. I was not fit for the dear earthly
+love, but perhaps, if I keep myself pure, body and soul, for him, I
+shall be made worthy at last, and of something better. And my love is
+so great it would draw him in spite of himself; but it will not be in
+spite of himself, for he will find by-and-by that he cannot live with a
+smaller soul, and then he will come to me. Do you not understand what I
+want? His soul--purified, strengthened, ennobled--nothing less will
+satisfy me; and his mother might ask as much. If I might be made the
+means of saving it--" Then after a little pause, she added: "Ah, how
+beautiful death is! He will be glad, as I should be now, to meet it--
+and yet more glad! for then the end will have come for him, but I
+should have still to wait."
+
+The rumour of Lorrimer's engagement, however, proved to be false. It
+was another Lorrimer, a cousin of his.
+
+"Lorrimer is restored to your good graces now, I suppose," Claudia
+said, in her half sarcastic way, when the mistake was explained. I had
+not told her what was in my mind; she had read my thoughts. "You think
+that a man whom Ideala has loved should consider himself sacred," she
+added.
+
+I did not answer. But I hold that all men who have felt or inspired
+great love will be sanctified by it if there be any true nobility in
+their nature; and I knew that one man, whom Ideala did not love, had
+been so sanctified by love for her, and held himself sacred always.
+
+But it was a relief to my mind to know that Lorrimer was not unworthy.
+He was a distinguished man then, and I felt sure that he would become
+still more distinguished eventually. He was not one of the many who
+come and go, and are forgotten; but one of those destined to live for
+ever
+
+  In minds made better by their presence.
+
+The good in his nature was certainly as far above the average as were
+his splendid abilities, and Ideala was right when she declared that she
+could answer for his principles. It is impulse that is beyond
+calculation, and for his own or another's impulses no wise man will
+answer.
+
+Ideala continued to droop.
+
+"She will never get over it;" I said to Claudia one day, when we were
+alone together.
+
+"Indeed she will," Claudia answered, confidently. "Out of the depth of
+your profound ignorance of natural history do you speak, my brother. I
+dread the reaction, though. When it comes she will be overwhelmed with
+shame; but it will come. All this is only a phase. She is in a state of
+transition now. It is her pride that makes her nurse her grief, and
+will not let her give him up. She cannot bear to think that she, of all
+women in the world, should have been the victim of anything so trivial
+as a passing fancy. Not that it would have been a passing fancy if they
+had not been separated; but as it is--why, no fire can burn without
+fuel."
+
+Claudia had evidently changed her mind, and she might be right; but my
+own fear was that her first impression would be justified, and that
+Ideala would never be able to take a healthy interest in anything
+again.
+
+"I cannot care," was her constant complaint. "Nothing ever touches me
+either painfully or pleasurably. Nothing will ever make me glad again."
+
+She said this one evening when she was sitting alone with Claudia and
+myself, and there was a long silence after she had finished speaking,
+during which she sat in a dejected attitude, her face buried in her
+hands.
+
+All at once she looked up.
+
+"It is very strange," she said, "but half that feeling seems to have
+gone with the expression of it."
+
+"I think," Claudia decided, in her common-sense tone, "that you are
+nursing this unholy passion, Ideala. You are afraid to give it up lest
+there should be nothing left to you. Can you not free your mind from
+the trammels of it, and grasp something higher, better, and nobler? Can
+you not become mistress of yourself again, and enter on a larger life
+which shall be full of love--not the narrow, selfish passion you are
+cherishing for one, but that pure and holy love which only the best--
+and such women as you may always be of the best--can feel for all? If
+you could but get the fumes of this evil feeling out of yourself, you
+would see, as we see, what a common thing it is, and you would
+recognise, as we recognise, that your very expression of it is just
+such as is given to it by every hysterical man or woman that has ever
+experienced it. It is a physical condition caused by contact, and kept
+up by your own perverse pleasure in it--nothing more. Every one grows
+out of it in time, and any one with proper self-control could conquer
+it. You are wavering yourself. You see, now that you have crystallised
+the feeling into words, that it is a pitiful thing after all, that the
+object is not worth such an expenditure of strength--certainly not
+worth the sacrifice of your power to enjoy anything else. Such
+devotion to the memory of a dead husband has been thought grand by
+some, although for my part I can see nothing grand in any form of self-
+indulgence, whether it be the indulgence of sorrow or joy, which
+narrows our sphere of usefulness, and causes us to neglect the claims
+of those who love us upon our affection, and the claims of our fellow-
+creatures generally upon our consideration; but in your case it is
+simply----" Claudia paused for want of a word.
+
+"You would say it is simply degrading," Ideala interposed. "I do not
+feel it so. I glory in it."
+
+"I know," said Claudia, pitilessly. "You all do." And then she got up,
+and laid her hand on Ideala's shoulder. "It is time," she said,
+earnestly,
+
+  "It is time, O passionate heart and morbid eye,
+  That old hysterical mock-disease should die."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+
+I hoped Claudia's plain speaking had made an impression, but for a long
+time after that it seemed as if Ideala's interest in life had really
+ended, that her sphere of usefulness had contracted, and that she
+herself would become like the rest--a doer of unconnected trifles that
+have meaning only as the straws have meaning which show which way the
+current sets. One cannot help thinking how many of these significant
+straws must go down to the ocean and be lost, their little use
+unrecognised, their little labour unavailing: because it does so little
+good merely to know which way the stream is setting, or what ocean will
+receive it at last, if we have no power to profit by the knowledge. At
+this time Ideala's own life was not unlike one of these hapless straws,
+and it seemed a wretched failure of its early promise, that ending as a
+straw on the common stream, when so little might have made her
+influence in her own sphere like the river itself, strong and
+beautiful. Those who loved her watched her in her trouble with eager
+hope that some good might yet come of it; but the hope diminished
+always as the days wore on. At first her mind had raged and stormed;
+one could see it, though she said so little. Her renunciation was
+perfect, but nevertheless she could not reconcile herself to it. She
+would not go back, but she could not go on, and so she remained midway
+between the past, which was hateful to her, and the future, which was a
+blank, raging at both. But gradually the storm subsided; and then came
+a period of calm, but whether it was the calm of apathy or the calm of
+resignation it was hard to say--and meantime she lost her health again,
+and became so fragile that my sister only expressed what I felt when
+she was speaking of her one day, and said, sadly:
+
+  "Her cheek is so waxenly thin,
+  As if deathward 'twere whitening in,
+  And the cloud of her flesh, still more white,
+  Were clearing till soul is in sight.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  Her large eyes too liquidly glister!
+  Her mouth is too red.
+    Have they kissed her---
+  The angels that bend down to pull
+  Our buds of the Beautiful,
+  And whispered their own little Sister?"
+
+We were anxious to take her abroad, but she would not accompany us.
+She talked of going alone, but she did not go, and after a time we
+gave up thinking about it. Then one day, quite suddenly, she said: "It
+_is_ time this old hysterical mock-disease should die," and she told
+us that she had at last decided to travel--somewhere; nothing more
+definite than that, for she said she had no fixed plans. We concluded,
+however, that she meant to be away some time, for she said something
+about perils of the deep, and the uncertainty of life generally, and
+she confided her private papers to my care, telling me to look at them
+if they would interest me, and make what use of them I pleased; and
+that was how those from which I have gathered much of her story came
+into my possession. And then she left us, and for a whole year we
+heard nothing of her--not one word. Claudia chafed a little, and
+complained, as women will when things do not arrange themselves
+exactly as they would have ordered them; but I was content to wait,
+and, because I expected nothing, the time did not seem so long as
+perhaps it might have done. We lived our usual life--part of the year
+in one of the eastern counties, and part in London, and then we came
+north again. It was winter weather, frosty and clear and bright, and I
+was tempted out a great deal, taking long rides, begun before sunset
+and ending by moonlight, and generally alone. And always when the
+world seemed most beautiful I thought of Ideala, and how she had loved
+its beauty-- mountain and plain, flood and field, forest and flower,
+the snow and the sunshine, and all the alternations of light and
+shade; the wonders of form, and the depth and harmony of colour; the
+blue sky by day, with its glories of sunrise and sunset; the dark sky
+by night, with its moonlight and starlight--the sky always! that
+cloudland to which, when we are wearied by the more monotonous earth,
+we had only to lift our eyes and there the scene is changing for
+ever--the sky--and the sea:
+
+  In all its vague immensity!
+
+Would she ever see it again in the old way? When she left us one might
+have said of her mental state:
+
+  O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon--
+  Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse
+  Without all hope of day!
+
+And where was she now? and was she learning to see again? I own I
+sometimes had the presumption to think that if she had stayed with us I
+might have helped her. It seemed hardly credible that she should be
+able to stand alone at such a time, not to speak of the strength
+required to take her out of herself. And was not the loneliness itself
+an added misery? She never could bear to be alone, and I always thought
+the worst trial of her married life was the mental solitude to which it
+had reduced her by making her feel the necessity for reserve, even with
+her best friends. Of course she had chosen to go alone; it was quite
+her own doing; but I could not help thinking, uneasily at times, that
+she would not have gone at all if she had not noticed how anxious we
+were about her, and fancied she could relieve us of our trouble by
+relieving us of her presence. That would have been so like Ideala! And
+then my thoughts would wander off, recalling her numberless little
+deeds of love, her perfect selflessness, and all the depth and beauty
+of her great and tender nature, as we do recall such things of one who
+has gone and will nevermore return, as in the old days, to make us
+glad. There was the day I had seen her from the club window stoop to
+pick up a little ragged barefooted child that was crying in the street,
+and wrap her furs about it and carry it off, smiling and happy, in her
+arms, with no more thought of the attention such an action would
+attract than if she had been alone with her waif in the desert. But
+many and many a time, and in many a way, she had made glad hearts by
+deeds like that; and now where was she? And was there never a one in
+the whole wide world to help her to bear her own sorrow and ease her
+pain?
+
+One evening in particular I had been more than usually tormented by
+such thoughts. I had been blaming myself bitterly for having allowed
+her to go away alone, and when I rode up to my own door I was conscious
+of a half-formed resolution to follow her without delay and bring her
+back.
+
+Claudia was standing on the steps in the crisp, fresh evening air,
+apparently watching for me. She put her arms round my neck when I
+alighted, and kissed me.
+
+"Has she written?" I exclaimed, for Claudia was not demonstrative, and
+this meant something.
+
+"She is here," was the answer.
+
+My heart gave a great leap, but I could not ask if it were well with
+her. I could only look at Claudia, and wonder if it were the moonlight
+that made the expression of her face so singularly content and sweet. I
+went into the lighted house, and being somewhat dazed and altogether
+too eager to see her at once, I dressed for the evening, leisurely, and
+then I went to find her. There was a change in the house already. It
+was lighted from top to bottom as befits a time of rejoicing, and our
+other guests, whom I passed in my search, seemed gayer--or I fancied
+so. She was not among them, but I took the liberty of going to her
+rooms and knocked at the sitting-room door, and entered. She rose to
+receive me, stretching out her hands, and my first impression was that
+she had grown; afterwards I understood that it was a change in the
+fashion of her dress that made it appear so. She wore a long robe,
+exquisitely draped, which was loose, but yet clung to her, and fell in
+rich folds about her with a grace that satisfied. I cannot describe the
+fashion of this robe, or the form, but I have seen one like it
+somewhere--it must have been in a picture, or on a statue of a grand
+heroic woman or a saint; and it suggested something womanly and strong,
+but not to be defined.
+
+It was Ideala, herself--not as she had been, but as I always hoped she
+would be, and felt she might. She showed the change in every gesture,
+but most of all in her clear and steady eyes, which made you feel she
+had a purpose now, and a future yet before her. She looked as women
+look when they know themselves entrusted with a work, and have the
+courage and resolution to be true and worthy of their trust. She was
+very gracious, but somehow in the first moment of our meeting I felt
+abashed--abashed before this woman who had gone down to the verge of
+dishonour, but whose goodness, with the vitality of all goodness, had
+raised her again above the best; whose trouble had been to her, because
+of this goodness, as is a painful operation which must be gone through
+if the patient would ever be strong.
+
+I fancy she thought me cold because my great respect made me shy, and I
+hesitated to show her all the joy I felt.
+
+"Won't you kiss me once after my long, long voyage?" she said, holding
+up her face like a child to be kissed. And it made me inexpressibly
+glad, to perceive that, while gaining in dignity and purpose, her
+character had lost none of the childlike faith and affection which had
+been one of the greatest charms of the old Ideala. I could not help
+examining her curiously, looking for traces of a conflict, for those
+lines of suffering which are generally left by fierce mental troubles
+like scars after a battle, showing that the fight has been no child's
+play, but a struggle for life or death. Such a conflict there must have
+been, but all trace of it was swept away by the wonderful peace that
+had succeeded it. Ideala looked younger, certainly, but the change
+showed itself most in her perfect serenity, and in the steadfast
+earnestness of her wonderful eyes.
+
+But I had no time to talk to her, for Claudia, in diamonds and velvet
+and lace--her donning of which is her one way of expressing a
+satisfaction too deep for words--blazed in upon us. If it had occurred
+so her, she would certainly have had the bells of the parish rung--
+provided my authority as lay Rector could have accomplished such an
+extravagance. She took us away with her now to join our other guests,
+and when dinner was announced I offered Ideala my arm. She was silent
+as we went, but looked about her with a grave little smile on her lips,
+renewing her acquaintance with familiar objects, and noting every
+change. And so busy was she with her own reflections, so thoroughly
+absorbed, that, when we were seated at table, she put her serviette
+beside her plate and her bread on her lap mechanically, and took up her
+knife and fork to eat her soup. She seemed puzzled for a moment when
+she found that the implements did not answer, and then she laughed!
+Such a fresh, girlish laugh! It did one's heart good to hear her! Yes,
+verily! Ideala was herself again, absent-mindedness and all.
+
+And before dinner was over a wonderful thing had happened. For whereas
+we had hitherto been the most commonplace and prosaic party imaginable,
+getting along smoothly, taking no particular interest in each other, or
+in anything else, and only remarkable for a degree of dulness which
+would have astonished us by its bulk could it have been weighed and
+measured--to-night, for no apparent reason, we suddenly woke up and
+astounded ourselves by more originality than we had been accustomed to
+believe was left in the world altogether--while something put into our
+conversation just the right amount of polite friction to act as a
+counter-irritant, so that, when we left the table, each felt that he
+had been at his best--had been brilliant, in fact, and shone with
+lustre enough to make any man happy.
+
+Once in a London theatre I saw an actress walk across the stage. She
+did not utter a word, she never looked at the audience, she was
+apparently unconscious of everything but what she had in her own mind;
+yet before she was half across the stage the people rose to their feet
+with a roar. Ideala's coming amongst us had produced some such
+startling effect; but _her_ power was altogether occult. The audience
+knew what the actress meant, but we did not understand Ideala, and yet
+we applauded by laying our best before her, and acknowledged the charm
+of her presence in every word. She spoke very little, however. Indeed,
+I remember nothing she said until we went to the drawing-room. On the
+way thither Claudia had picked up a crumpled paper, and, glancing at
+it, had exclaimed--"Why, Ideala, here are some of your verses! Do you
+still write verses?"
+
+It was curious that we all spoke as if she had been away for years.
+
+"Yes," she answered, tranquilly; and Claudia coolly proceeded to read
+the verses aloud, a difficult task, as they were scribbled in pencil on
+half a sheet of note-paper, and were scarcely decipherable. Ideala,
+meanwhile, listened, with calm eyes fixed on vacancy, like one trying
+to be polite, but finding it hard for lack of interest.
+
+  "By Arno, when the tale was o'er,
+  At sunset, as in days of yore,
+    I wandered forth and dreamed.
+  The sky above, the town below.
+  The solemn river's silent flow,
+  The ancient story-haunts I know,
+    In varied colours gleamed.
+
+  By Arno calm my steps I stayed,
+  Just where the river's bank displayed
+    A tangled growth of weeds;
+  Tall houses near, and on the right
+  An arched bridge upreared its height,
+  And boats drew near, and passed from sight--
+    I heard the tramp of steeds.
+
+  I heard, and saw, but heeded not;
+  My feet were rooted to the spot,
+    A fancy checked my breath.
+  'Twas here that Tito lay, I knew.
+  His fair face upward to the blue,
+  His velvet tunic soaking through,
+    Most beautiful in death.
+
+  But Baldassarre was not there,
+  'Twas I that stooped to kiss the hair,
+    Besprent with ooze and dew.
+  Ah, God! light gold the locks caressed--
+  I saw no Greek in velvet dressed--
+  But wildly to my bosom pressed--
+    Not Tito, love, but you!
+
+  The massive, godlike head and throat
+  Belonged not to those days remote,
+    The fine grey eye--the limb;
+  It was the soul I know so well,
+  So full of earth, and heaven, and hell,
+  That came from out that time to dwell
+    In you and make you him.
+
+  And I, the victim of your smiles,
+  And I, the victim of your wiles,
+  My vengeance shall prevail.
+  The river Time shall float you nigh,
+  And earth and hell your soul shall fly.
+  And only heaven remain when I
+    The deed triumphant hail!"
+
+It surprised me to find that Claudia could read those verses to the
+end, their import--to me, at least--was so obvious. But Ideala
+continued unmoved; and when the little buzz of friendly criticism had
+subsided, she remarked, with unimpassioned directness:
+
+"I am quite sure that all my verses are rubbish; but nevertheless they
+delight me. I should feel dumb without the power to make verses; it is
+a means of expression that satisfies when nothing else will. I always
+carry my last about in my pocket. I know them by heart, of course, but
+still it is a pleasure to read them; and so it continues until I write
+some more; and then I immediately perceive that the old ones are bad,
+and I destroy them--when I remember. Those were condemned ages ago, so
+please oblige me, Claudia, by putting them into the fire."
+
+Claudia was about to obey, but I interposed. I had a fancy for keeping
+those verses. They are rubbishy if you will; but the sentiment which
+struggles to find expression in them is far from despicable.
+
+No one smoked that evening; no one played billiards; no one cared for
+music; we just sat round the fire in a circle, and talked.
+
+"And where have you come from, Ideala?" was the first question.
+
+"From China," she answered.
+
+There was a general exclamation. "I have been with the missionaries in
+China," she added.
+
+"Oh, isn't it very strange, the life in China?" some one asked.
+
+"It looks different," she said, "but its feels like our own. To begin
+with, one is struck by the strange appearance of the people, and the
+quaint humour of their art; but when the first effect wears off, and
+you learn to know them, you find after all that theirs is the same
+human nature, only in another garb; the familiar old tune, as it were,
+with a new set of variations. The like in unlikeness is common enough,
+but still the finding of a remarkable similarity in things apparently
+unlike continues to surprise us."
+
+"But, Ideala, you cannot compare the Chinese to ourselves! Think of the
+state of degradation the people are in! Every crime is rife among them
+--infanticide is quite common!"
+
+"Yes," said Ideala, as, if it were the most natural thing in the world.
+"Yes, doubtless, the lower classes in China kill their children; here,
+in certain districts, they insure them," Ideala concluded gravely.
+
+"But then," said Claudia--"Oh! Ideala, I don't think you can establish
+your parallel. We all know the sort of a life a Chinese lady leads."
+
+
+"When the lady is not at the head of her house it is certainly
+vacuous," Ideala agreed, "like the lives of our own ladies when they
+are not forced to do anything. Why, at Scarborough this year they had
+to take to changing their dresses four times a day; so you can imagine
+how they languish for want of occupation."
+
+"Well, at all events, English girls are not sold into a hateful form of
+slavery," some one observed contentedly.
+
+"Are they not?" Ideala rejoined with a flash. "I can assure you that
+both women and men, fathers, husbands, and brothers, of the same class
+in England, do sell their young girls--and I can prove it."
+
+"We have the pull over them in the matter of marriage, then. We don't
+give our daughters away against their will as they do."
+
+"That is not a fair way of putting it. A Chinese girl expects to be so
+disposed of, and accepts the arrangement as a matter of course. And the
+system has its advantages. The girl has no illusions to be shattered,
+she expects no new happiness in her married life, so that any that
+comes to her is clear gain. As to our daughters' inclinations not being
+forced, I suppose they are not, exactly. But have you never been
+conscious of the tender pressure that is brought to bear when a
+desirable suitor offers? Have you never seen a girl who won't marry
+when she is wanted to, wincing from covert stabs, mourning over cold
+looks, and made to feel outside everything--suffering a small martyrdom
+under the general displeasure of all for whom she cares, her world,
+without whose love life is a burden to her; whom she believes to know
+best about everything? As Mrs. Bread said about Madame de Cintre: 'She
+is a delicate creature, and they make her feel wicked'--and she ends by
+thinking any sacrifice light at the moment, if only it wins her back
+the affection and esteem of her friends."
+
+Ideala had been carried away by her earnestness, and now she stopped
+abruptly, somewhat disconcerted to find every one listening to her. The
+ladies sat with their eyes on the floor, the gentlemen exchanged
+glances, but no one spoke for some time.
+
+At last my sister made a move, and the spell was broken. We separated
+for the night, and many were the lady-like whispers that reached my
+ears, all ending in: "So like Ideala!"
+
+But, as Ideala herself remarked on another occasion, "You can't sweep a
+room that requires it without raising a dust; the thing is to let the
+dust settle again, and then remove it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+
+Claudia did not see the change in Ideala all at once. She said: "She is
+looking her best, and is our own Ideala again--faults and all! How she
+talked last night!"
+
+"Just in the old way," I agreed, "but with a difference; for in the old
+days she talked at random, but now I feel sure she has a plan and a
+purpose, and all that she says is part of it."
+
+This suggested new possibilities to Claudia, and when Ideala joined us
+presently, she asked, abruptly: "Are you going back to China?"
+
+Ideala answered deliberately: "I did think of becoming a
+missionary--that was why I went out there. But I know all radical
+reforms take time, and when I saw what the Chinese women were doing for
+themselves, and compared their state with our own, it seemed to me that
+there was work in plenty to be done at home, and so I returned.
+Certainly, the Chinese women of the day bind their feet. When a girl is
+seven or eight years old, her mother binds them for her, and everybody
+approves, If the mother did otherwise, the girl herself would be the
+first to reproach her when she grew up. It is wonderful how they endure
+the torture; but public opinion has sanctioned the custom for
+centuries, and made it as much a duty for a Chinese woman to have small
+feet as it is for us to wear clothes! And yet they do a wonderful
+thing. When they are taught how wrong the practice is, how it cripples
+them, and weakens them, and renders them unfit for their work in the
+world, they take off their bandages! Think of that! and remember that
+they are timid and sensitive in a womanly way to a degree that is
+painful. When I learnt that, and when I remembered that my countrywomen
+bind every organ in their bodies, though they know the harm of it, and
+public opinion is against it, I did not feel that I had time to stay
+and teach the heathen. It seemed to me that there was work enough left
+yet to do at home."
+
+"But, Ideala," Claudia protested, "what is the use of drawing degrading
+comparisons between ourselves and other nations? You gave great offence
+last night."
+
+"I said more than I intended," she answered; "I always do. It was
+Tourgenieff, was it not, who said that the age of talkers must precede
+the age of practical reformers? I seem to have been born in the age of
+talkers. But I shall not say much more. Last night I did not really
+_intend_ to say anything. You led me on. But I _do_ want to make their
+hearts burn within them, and if I succeed, then I shall not care about
+the offence. An English-woman is nothing if she is not patriotic. She
+will not bear the humiliation, if she is made to see that she is
+really no better, with all her opportunities, than a much- despised
+Chinese. She would not like the contempt the women of that nation feel
+for her if she were made to acknowledge the truth--that she deserved
+it. And so much depends on our women now. There are plenty of people,
+you know, who believe that no nation can get beyond a certain point of
+prosperity, and that when it reaches that point it cannot stay there,
+but must begin to go down again; and they say that the English nation
+has now reached its extreme point. They compare it with Rome in the
+days which immediately preceded her decline and fall--when men ceased
+to be brave and self-denying, and became idle, luxurious, and
+effeminate; and women traded on their weakness, and made light of
+their evil deeds. It is a question of the sanctity of marriage now, as
+it was in the days of the decline of Rome. De Quincey traces her fall
+to the loosening of the marriage tie. He says that few indeed, if any,
+were the obligations in a proper sense _moral_ which pressed upon the
+Roman. The main fountains of moral obligation had in Rome, by law or
+custom, been thoroughly poisoned. Marriage had corrupted itself
+through the facility of divorce, and through the consequences of that
+facility (viz., levity in choosing, and fickleness in adhering to the
+choice), into so exquisite a traffic of selfishness, that it could not
+yield so much as a phantom model of sanctity. The relation of husband
+and wife had, for all moral impressions, perished amongst the Romans.
+And, although it is not quite so bad with ourselves at present, that
+is what it is coming to.
+
+"But there are two sides to every question, and the one which we must
+by no means lose sight of just now is not that which shows the respects
+in which we resemble the Romans, so much as the one which shows the
+respects in which we differ from them. It is therein that our hope
+lies. And we differ from them in two important respects. We differ from
+them in the matter of experience, and in the use we are disposed to
+make of our experiences. We are beginning to know the rocks upon which
+they split, and we shall soon be making use of our knowledge to steer
+clear of them. But there is another respect in which we differ from all
+the older nations, not even excepting the Jewish. I mean morality. We
+have the grandest and purest ideal of morality that was ever preached
+upon earth, and, if we do but practise it, there is no doubt that the
+promise will be fulfilled, and our days as a nation will be prolonged
+with rejoicing.
+
+"The future of the race has come to be a question of morality and a
+question of health. Perhaps I should reverse it, and say a question of
+health and morality, since the latter is so dependent on the former. We
+want grander minds, and we must have grander bodies to contain them.
+And it all rests with us women. To us is confided the care of the
+little ones--of the young bodies and the young minds yet unformed. Ours
+will be the joy of success or the shame of failure, and we should fit
+ourselves for the task both morally and physically by the practice of
+every virtue, and by every art known to the science and skill of man."
+
+"Englishwomen could not sit still and know that their lovely homes will
+be wrecked eventually, and left desolate: that this country of theirs
+will become a wilderness of ruin, such as Egypt is, but rank and
+overgrown, its beauty of sweet grass and stately trees, and all its
+rich luxuriance of flowers and fruits and foliage plants, only
+accentuating the ruin--bearing witness to the neglect. No, our
+greatness shall not depart. The decay may have begun, but it shall be
+arrested. I am not afraid."
+
+"But if it is the fate of nations, Ideala----"
+
+"I propose to conquer fate," said Ideala. "Fate itself is no match for
+one woman with a will, let alone for thousands! When horrid war is
+threatened, men flock to fight for their country; and they volunteer
+for every other arduous duty to be done. Do you think women are less
+brave? No. When they realise the truth they will fight for it. They
+will fly to arms. They will use the weapons with which Nature has
+provided them; love, constancy, self-sacrifice, their intellectual
+strength, and will. And so they will save the nation."
+
+Claudia, the unimaginative, sat silent and perplexed.
+
+"I would join," she said at last, "if I were quite sure----Oh, Ideala!
+it is not a sort of Woman's Rights business, and all that, you are
+going in for, is it? A woman can do good in her own sphere only."
+
+Ideala laughed. "But 'her own sphere' is such a very indefinite
+phrase," she observed. "It is nonsense, really. A woman may do anything
+which she can do in a womanly way. They say that our brains are
+lighter, and that therefore we must not be taught too much. But why not
+educate us to the limit of our capacity, and leave it there? Why, if we
+are inferior, should there be any fear of making us superior? We must
+stop when we cannot go any further, and all this old-womanish cackle on
+the subject, the everlasting trying to prove what is already said to be
+proved--the looking for the square in space after laying it down as a
+law that only the circle exists--is a curious way of showing us how to
+control the 'exuberance of our own verbosity.' They say we shall not be
+content when we get what we want, and there they are right, for as soon
+as our own 'higher education' is secure we shall begin to clamour for
+the higher education of men. For the prayer of every woman worth the
+name is not 'Make me superior to my husband,' but, 'Lord, make my
+husband superior to me!' Is there any more pitiful position in the
+world than that of a right-minded woman who is her husband's superior,
+and knows it! There is in every educated and refined woman an inborn
+desire to submit, and she must do violence to what is best in herself
+when she cannot. You know what the history of such marriages is. The
+girl has been taught to expect to find a guide, philosopher, and friend
+in her husband. He is to be head of the house and lord of her life and
+liberty, sole arbiter on all occasions. It is right and convenient to
+have him so; the world requires him to fill that position, and the wife
+prefers that he should. But the probabilities are about equal that he,
+being morally her inferior, will not be fit for it, and that,
+therefore, she will find herself in a false position. There will then
+be an interval of intense misery for the wife. Her education and
+prejudices will make her try to submit at first to what her sense knows
+to be impossible; but eventually she is forced out of her unnatural
+position by circumstances. To save her house and family she must rebel,
+take the reins of government into her own hands, and face life, a
+disappointed and lonely woman."
+
+"Heaven help her!" said Claudia. "One knows that the future of a woman
+in that state of mind is only a question of circumstance and
+temperament; she may rise, but----"
+
+Ideala looked up quickly. "But she may fall, you were going to say--
+yes. But you know if she does it is her own fault. She _must_ know
+better."
+
+"She may not be quite mistress of herself at the time--she may be
+fascinated; she may be led on!" I interposed, quickly. Claudia seemed
+to have forgotten. "But one thing is certain, if she has any real good
+in her she will always stop before it is too late."
+
+"I think," said Claudia, "it would be better, after all, if women were
+taught to expect to find themselves their husbands' equals--the
+disappointment would not be so great if the husband proved inferior;
+but when a woman has been led to look for so much, her imagination is
+full of dreams in which he figures as an infallible being; she expects
+him to be her refuge, support, and comfort at all times; and when a man
+has such a height to fall from in any one's estimation, there can be
+but little of him left if he does fall."
+
+Ideala sighed, and after a short pause she said: "I have been wondering
+what makes it possible for a woman to love a man? Not the flesh that
+she sees and can touch, though that may attract her as the colour of
+the flower attracts. It must be the mind that is in him--the scent of
+the flower, as it were. If she finds eventually that his mind is
+corrupt, she must shrink from it as from any other form of corruption,
+and finally abandon him on account of it, as she would abandon the
+flower if she found its odour fetid--indeed, she has already abandoned
+her husband when she acknowledges that he is not what she thought him."
+She paused a moment, and then went on passionately: "I cannot tell you
+what it was--the battling day by day with a power that was irresistible
+because it had to put forth no strength to accomplish its work; it
+simply was itself, and by being itself it lowered me. I cannot tell you
+what it was to feel myself going down, and not to be able to help it,
+try as I would; to feel the gradual change in my mind as it grew to
+harbour thoughts which were reflections of his thoughts, low thoughts;
+and to be filled with ideas, recollections of his conversations, which
+had caused me infinite disgust at the time, but remained with me like
+the taste of a nauseous drug, until I almost acquired a morbid liking
+for them. Oh, if I could save other women from that!"
+
+Claudia hastily interposed to divert her. "That is a good idea, the
+higher education of men," she said. "I don't know whether they have
+abandoned hope, or whether they think themselves already perfect,
+certain it is the idea of improving themselves does not seem to occur
+to them often. And we want good men in society. If the clergy and
+priests are good, it is only what is required of them, what everybody
+expects, and, therefore, their goodness is accepted as a matter of
+course, and is viewed as indifferently as other matters of course. One
+good man in society has more effect as an example than ten priests."
+
+"But you have not told us what you propose to do, Ideala?" I said.
+
+"I hope it is nothing unwomanly," Claudia interposed, anxiously.
+
+Ideala looked at her and laughed, and Claudia laughed too, the moment
+after she had spoken. The fear of Ideala doing anything unwomanly was
+absurd, even to herself.
+
+"An unwomanly woman is such a dreadful creature," Claudia added,
+apologetically.
+
+"Yes," said Ideala, "but you should pity her. In nine cases out of ten
+there is a great wrong or a great grief at the bottom of all her
+unwomanliness--perhaps both; and if she shrieks you may be sure that
+she is suffering; ease her pain, and she will be quiet enough. The
+average woman who is happy in her marriage does not care to know more
+of the world than she can learn in her own nursery, nor to see more of
+it, as a rule, than she can see from her own garden gate. She is a
+great power; but, unfortunately, there is so very little of her!
+
+"What I want to do is to make women discontented--you have heard of a
+noble spirit of discontent? I thought for a long time that everything
+had been done that could be done to make the world better; but now I
+see that there is still one thing more to be tried. Women have never
+yet united to use their influence steadily and all together against
+that of which they disapprove. They work too much for themselves, each
+trying to make their own life happier. They have yet to learn to take a
+wider view of things, and to be shown that the only way to gain their
+end is by working for everybody else, with intent to make the whole
+world better, which means happier. And in order to accomplish this they
+must be taught that they have only to _will_ it--each in her own
+family and amongst her own friends; that, after having agreed with the
+rest about what they mean to put down, they have only to go home and
+use their influence to that end, quietly, consistently, and without
+wavering, and the thing will be done. Our influence is like those
+strong currents which run beneath the surface of the ocean without
+disturbing it, and yet with irresistible force, and at a rate that may
+be calculated. It is to help in the direction of that force that I am
+going to devote my life. Do not imagine," she went on hurriedly, "that
+I think myself fit for such a work. I have had conscientious scruples--
+been sorely troubled about my own unworthiness, which seemed to unfit
+me for any good work. But now I see things differently. One may be made
+an instrument for good without merit of one's own. So long as we do not
+deceive ourselves by thinking we are worthy, and so long as we are
+trying our best to become so, I think we may hope; I think we may even
+know that we shall eventually----" She stopped and looked at me.
+
+"Be made worthy," said Claudia, kissing her; "and if it were not so,
+Ideala, if everybody had to begin by being as good themselves as they
+want others to be, there would be no good workers left in the world at
+all."
+
+At this moment a noisy party burst in upon our grave debate and carried
+Ideala off for a ride. We saw them leave the house, and watched them
+ride away until the last glimpse of them was veiled by the misty
+brightness of the frosty air and the morning sunshine.
+
+"How well she looks!" Claudia exclaimed; "better than any of them. She
+has quite recovered, and is none the worse."
+
+"I do not know about recovery," I answered, dubiously. "She will never
+----"
+
+But Claudia interrupted hotly: "I know what you are going to say, and I
+do wish you would leave off speaking of Ideala in that way. Any one to
+hear you would suppose she had committed a sin, and you know quite well
+that that was not the case. If she acted without common prudence--and I
+will not deny that she did--it was entirely your own fault. She has
+never been intimate with any man but yourself, and you have made her
+believe that all men are like you. How could she harbour suspicion when
+she did not know what to suspect? Of course she saw everything wrongly
+and awry. The old life had become impossible to her, and she nearly
+made a mistake as to what the new one should be, that was all. I know
+she wavered for a moment, but the weakness was more physical than
+moral, I think. Her vision was clouded at the time, but as soon as she
+was restored to health she saw things clearly enough. She is a great
+and good woman, pure-hearted and full of charity. God bless her for all
+her tenderness, and for her wonderful power to love. He alone can count
+the number who have reason to wish her well."
+
+"That is true," I answered. "And I was merely going to remark, when you
+interrupted me, that she will never think herself 'none the worse'--"
+
+"I don't see what difference that makes," Claudia again interposed.
+"She always did think herself least of the least when she thought of
+herself at all, and that was not often. You are dwelling too long on
+the past, really, and making too much of it. Men, when they are saints,
+are twice as bad as women."
+
+I pointed out to my sister something confusing in her way of expressing
+the fact, but my kindness seemed to exasperate her.
+
+"You know what I mean quite well," she said tartly.
+
+"Yes, _I_ know," I rejoined; "but I wanted to help you to make
+yourself intelligible to other people."
+
+Claudia made a gesture of impatience, but laughed, and left me; and I
+remained for a long time thinking over all that Ideala had said, and
+also thinking of her as she looked at the time; and the subject was so
+inspiring that, although my strong point is landscape, in an ambitious
+mood I began to paint an allegorical picture of her as a mother nursing
+the Infant Goodness of the race. She saw it when it was nearly
+finished, but did not recognise herself, and exclaimed; "What a gaunt
+creature! and that baby weighs at least twelve stone!"
+
+The picture was never finished.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+
+We soon found that Ideala, having at last put her hand to the plough,
+worked with a will, and although she was true to her principle that a
+woman's best work is done beneath the surface, I think her own labours
+will eventually make themselves felt with a good result in the world.
+But the life she has chosen for herself is martyrdom, and her womanly
+shrinking from the suffering she would alleviate is never lessened by
+use. Yet she does not waver. Other women admire her devotion, and
+follow in her footsteps; they do not doubt but that she has chosen the
+better part; but I fancy that most men who have seen her draw the
+little children about her and forget everything for a moment but her
+delight in them, have felt that there must be something wrong in the
+world when such a woman misses her vocation, and has to scatter her
+love to the four winds of heaven, for want of an object upon which to
+concentrate it in all its strength.
+
+I do not know if her feeling for Lorrimer has changed. My sister
+declares in her positive way that of course it has, completely; but my
+sister is not always right. Ideala has never mentioned his name since
+she returned to us, nor given us any other clue by which we could
+judge. Only on one occasion, when some allusion was made to the course
+she had intended to pursue in the past, she exclaimed: "Oh, how could
+I!" and covered her face with her hands.
+
+From where I sit just now I can see her walking up the avenue. She is
+as straight as an arrow, young-looking, and fresh. Her step is firm and
+light and elastic, and she moves with an easy grace only possible when
+every muscle is unconstrained. Her dress is a work of art, light in
+weight, but rich in colour and texture.
+
+"What a beautiful woman!" I think involuntarily. I see her daily, and
+pay her that tribute every time we meet, for--
+
+  Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
+  Her infinite variety.
+
+Her intellect and selflessness preserve her youth. She is changed,
+certainly. She has arisen, and can return no more to the lower walks,
+to the old purposeless life, and desultory ways; but yet she is the
+same Ideala, and holds you always expectant--you, who see beneath the
+surface. The world will call her cold and self-contained till the end,
+and so she is and will be--a snow-crowned volcano, with wonderful force
+of fire working within. And she will not stop where she is; there is
+something yet to come--some further development--something more--
+something beyond! and she makes you feel that there is. What she says
+of other women is true of herself. "Do not stand in their way," she
+begs; "do not hinder them--above all, do not stop them. They are
+running water; if you check them they stagnate, and you must suffer
+yourself from their noisome exhalations. For the moral nature is like
+water; it must have movement and air and sunshine to stay corruption
+and keep it sweet and wholesome; and its movement is good works; its
+air, faith in their efficiency; its sunshine, the evidence of this and
+hope."
+
+Comparative anatomists have proved that the human brain, from its first
+appearance as a semi-fluid and shapeless mass, passes in succession
+through the several structures that constitute the permanent and
+perfect brains of fishes, reptiles, birds, and mammalia; but ultimately
+it passes beyond them all, and acquires a marvellous development of its
+own. And so it is with the human soul. It must rise through analogous
+stages, and add to its own strength and beauty by daily bread of love
+and thought, growing to greatness by help of these aliments only, and
+reaching ultimately to such perfection as we cannot divine, for the end
+is not here. But we might reach it sooner than we do were it not for
+our own impatience. Growth is so exquisitely minute, it bursts upon us
+an accomplished fact. We know this, and yet we would see the process;
+and not seeing it we lose faith, waver, hesitate, stop, and recoil--a
+going back _pour mieux sauter_ it is with the choicer spirit; but
+we all are deficient in hope, all have our retrograde moments of
+despair. We do not look about us enough to see what is being done for
+others, how they are progressing, by what strange paths they are led.
+We keep our eyes on our own ground too much, and, because we will not
+compare cheerfully, we think our own way the roughest, our own journey
+the longest--if there be any end to it at all! Yet all the time we
+might see the end if only we would look up. And we need never despair
+and lag, need never be cold and comfortless, if we would but love and
+remember.
+
+  For, while the tired waves, vainly breaking,
+  Seem here no painful inch to gain,
+  Far out, through creeks and inlets making,
+  Comes silent, flooding in, the main!
+
+Ideala raises her eyes to mine now, and smiles as she passes beneath my
+window.
+
+Another woman--a woman whom Claudia had long refused to know--is
+leaning on her arm, talking to her earnestly. And that is Ideala's
+attitude always. She gathers the useless units of society about her,
+and makes them worthy women. There is no kind of sorrow for which she
+has not found comfort, no folly she has not been successful in
+checking, no vice she has not managed to cure, and no form of despair
+which she has not relieved with hope. Her own experiences have taught
+her to sympathise with every phase of feeling, and be lenient to every
+shortcoming and excess. Wherever she is you may be sure that another
+woman is there also--some one with a sorrowful history, probably; and
+you may be equally sure that she is leaning on Ideala. God bless her!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Ideala, by Sarah Grand
+
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #6855 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6855)