The Lover

I.

IT is said that a woman always retains a lingering tenderness for a man whom she has refused. What feeling a man entertains for a woman whom he knows he might have married has not been clearly defined ; but Farnhurst knew perfectly well that, if he had so chosen, he might have married Lesbia Crashaw.

Her love story had been so evident and simple that they might read who ran. She was a very pretty girl, of a moonlit sort of beauty, dark and fair together, tall and graceful, with wide-apart, gray, luminous eyes. Sensitive, emotional, and enthusiastic, a mother of like nature had unconsciously fostered and developed these qualities to the utmost, so that when Gerald Farnhurst appeared within the plane of Lesbia’s fair young life, she was just in the proper state to fall helplessly in love.

Gerald was one of the men who can be held by the charm of uncertainty only. To men like him, a woman won ceases to be interesting. He did not know this, nor did Lesbia, but from the moment when, in the fine simplicity of nature, she began to wear her heart upon her sleeve, she began to lose her charm for Gerald. In face and person Farnhurst himself was so extraordinarily handsome that, seen suddenly in a crowd, men and women would pause, catch their breath, and be silent. A second glance simply verified the first. His beauty was complete in itself, and left nothing for the asking, nothing for the imagination to evoke or finish. Consequently, few imaginative women ever looked at him twice. But of course Lesbia was not of these. And Farnhurst, unlike many handsome men, carried off his beauty well. He seemed unconscious of it, and ignorant of its effect. Flattery moved him not; love, even, stirred him not; a cool, gentlemanly self-possession appeared to be his leading trait.

Yes, he might have married Lesbia Crashaw. There were no complexities, no uncertainties ; he had but to put forth his hand, — or speak the word, rather, — and all was as plain and simple as a long, straight line of railroad track stretching to an assured end. But that was the difficulty. He knew it all so well beforehand, and knew just what would happen. It would be perfectly easy, comfortable, happy in the ordinary sense, — a devoted wife, a charming home, a reasonably satisfactory future, — but it would scarcely be interesting, and hardly suggestive. That was the rub.

Too lax, then, to refrain from charming a very attractive girl, and not lordly enough, her love being won unasked, to marry her, Farnhurst almost drained the heart out of a proud, sensitive nature. Some of the golden years of youth were passed by Lesbia in a state of tense, passionate expectation of a request that never came. For whether coming or going, present or absent, Farnhurst contrived to keep himself before her mind’s eye, and to be the focus of her imagination, so that, going finally, he left a blank. Why he had lingered so long even he could not have said ; yet, after all, love is the most exquisite incense, and it is hard to quit the place of its offering. But when he had gone indefinitely to Europe, and his one or two impersonal letters alone remained, Lesbia, and even her sentimental mother, felt that further hope was too much like self-inflicted injury. No wonder that Lesbia’s beauty was lunar rather than auroral, for she had been fed literally on dreams.

From boyhood Farnhurst had possessed “ a little something,” — property just enough to take away the incentive of necessity, yet hardly enough to enable him to marry. But then Gerald had many talents. He was a good musician, no mean painter, and showed ability as a writer. The danger was lest, in doing several things well, he should fail to concentrate upon any one of them ; but ultimately he gave his whole attention to his pen.

For ten years he had made his home in Europe. Report said that he was very cultivated, and almost hypercritically fastidious. America, he declared, was meant for workers only, while he was not so much a worker as a seeker, and the things he sought after could be found more easily abroad than at home. Of course he had never married, not having the hideous rashness to dwindle into a husband obscured by all the commonplace of domesticity. But before an unexpected inheritance brought him rather suddenly home, there had been coming upon him, from time to time, a vague sense of dreariness, an occasional loneliness, a detachment from people and things, which made him restless and seemed to press him westward.

II.

Among Farnhurst’s earlier associates there had been one, a certain Rufus Deane, who could not but know the whole of the one-sided love story. Deane was a tall, thin young man, whose height would have been awkward but for a fine unconsciousness and ease of manner to which unfailing consideration for others gave a certain distinction and finish. He belonged to the rare dog-fox order of men, like Ulysses, — dog for fidelity, fox for sagacity, — and had, too, a something exquisite superadded.

When, therefore, it became definitely known that Farnhurst had gone indefinitely to Europe, one raw March morning, Deane, on his way downtown, rang Mrs. Crashaw’s door bell, and asked to see Miss Lesbia. And the young lady, on coming into the parlor, found the gentleman, with his overcoat collar about his ears, standing in the middle of the floor. He looked somewhat wind-beaten and stringy, though quite as imperturbable and leisurely as usual. She gave him her hand mechanically, looked at him kindly, and asked if he would not sit down.

“ No, thank you,” said Deane. “ I’ve come but for a second, on a little matter of moment. Here is a rose for you,” he added, and, taking a long-stemmed, large one, wrapped in paper, out of his deep overcoat pocket, he put it into her hand. The one thing noticeable about Deane was an extreme gentleness of speech and manner. Lesbia looked at him in momentary, pleased surprise, and his masking eyeglasses did not altogether hide the keenness of the look he gave her in return. He waited awhile, yet continued to fix her with that look, which somehow seemed to steady her, and to place her, as it were, on a pedestal before him. Presently he said, plunging his hands deep into his pockets: “ I’ve come to ask you to think over a little matter for me. Take as long as you like, but think it over.”

With her wistful half smile, Lesbia questioningly regarded him.

Slowly, in the most matter-of-fact tone imaginable, Deane went on : “ I want you to try to think about marrying me.”

Lesbia gave a stifled cry, and shrank into a little huddled heap on a chair. The pathetic shield of a woman’s pride — poor and insufficient in her case, and yet something — was as if suddenly thrust aside, and she saw in its place a champion. So she could but stare at Deane with amazed, mortally ashamed, yet relieved eyes. His look never wavered, and still held her up.

“ But why, why do you say this — you — when — you must know — don’t you know ” — faltered Lesbia.

“ That I am only the next best thing, which is always miles away from the best thing ? ” he said quietly. “ Yes ; but there are many times in life when we must accept, and make the most of, the next best thing.”

He was standing near her now, and his low voice and gentle manner were like sheltering wings.

Lesbia interlaced her fingers, and her wondering eyes clung to his face in entreaty. “ I don’t see why you care ; I don’t see how you can care,” she murmured.

“ We don’t always explain things to ourselves, and it would be quite impossible to explain them to others. However, I do care,” returned Deane.

“ Is it fair to yourself ? ” she stammered.

“ If we desire lawfully, and can get lawfully what we desire, I think we are fair to ourselves,” answered he gently. Then, after a pause, with a touch of hesitation in his tone, he added, “ Of course, seeing I do care, I should naturally have wished for you what you yourself may have desired.”

Lesbia’s face first paled, then crimsoned, but she continued to look at him in shrinking, grateful wonder; so he said more quickly : “ But that is neither here nor there. Love does not always wear the same guise, nor come to all under the same form. Have me or leave me, as you choose. Take your own time, and let me know at your own convenience.”

Deane’s fine voice and exquisite utterance were memorable, and though he spoke now in as even and quiet a tone as if he were talking of the andirons and fire log, the effect of his words and manner was to bring relief, and to make of the impossible a comparatively easy thing. He immediately began a conversation, however, upon indifferent matters, and soon after took his leave. Yet six months later, to the amazement of every one, Lesbia Crashaw became Mrs. Rufus Oslin Deane.

Concerning that marriage there was unanimity of opinion. All said that Deane took Lesbia in the rebound of acute disappointment; and some wondered at his want of proper pride in so doing, and others blamed her for taking advantage of a good man’s love. But after these criticisms the matter perforce dropped. The whole thing was too transparent to afford food for speculation, and as Lesbia appeared to be tranquil and at peace, and Deane perfectly satisfied, there was nothing to do except wish them the traditional joy.

But when, at the unexpected mention of Farnhurst’s return, two little red flames leaped into Lesbia’s cheeks, it was because of the stirring, not of feeling, but of memory, and of surprise at this truth. For, having felt so much, Lesbia had taken it for granted that she must necessarily feel always, and that that fixed feeling would be her “ judgment ” for having given away her heart unasked. She did not know that the waters of life never pass the same point twice, although, in the shifting currents of this world, there are meetings, readjustments, rapprochements, which may appear, for the time, like a return to the past. Instead of still feeling, therefore, Lesbia discovered that she had felt; and instead of being bound to a rock of memory, she found that she had been rescued and borne on.

When, however, one evening at dinner, Lesbia casually and placidly remarked, “ I met Gerald Farnhurst this afternoon, at Mrs. McCartney’s,” her husband keenly regarded her.

“ Lucky man to have time for an afternoon tea ! How does he look ? ” asked Deane.

“ Well,” said Lesbia meditatively, “ I was surprised that he looked so much older.” Then she laughed. “ But of course it’s natural to see the progress of years in others, not in ourselves. However, he looks older than necessary.”

“ Perhaps it is n’t the dimming brush of time only which has passed over him,” said Deane lightly.

Lesbia’s look was interrogatory.

“ It is said that a woman’s eye judges best of a man’s beauty ; but was n’t his that effulgent beauty which, like a dash of sunshine, is soonest overcast ? ”

Lesbia leaned back in her chair. “ Yes ; but it seems to me,” she answered thoughtfully, “that in what you call a fine and harmonious development there ought to be something in heart and mind which will compensate ” — She spoke slowly, tentatively, as if trying to formulate her thought, and now stopped short.

“ Will compensate for the inevitable tarnish of years, ‘ outliving beauty’s outward with a mind that should renew swifter than blood decays ’ ? How do you know there is n’t ? ” asked Deane gayly.

“ He appeared just the same,” returned Lesbia naïvely.

“ Barring the beauty ? What a pity ! ” cried Deane, smiling.

“ Oh, it is n’t that, exactly, and of course he’s still wonderfully handsome,” said Lesbia frankly; “ yet it is a pity when a man grows stout and his hair gets thin on top.”

“ How thankful I am that I ’m thin, and my hair is still stout on top! ”

Even the children joined in the laugh.

“ Rufus, you know just what I mean,” protested Lesbia.

“I know it’s the bounden duty of every man to live up to a woman’s expectation of him, and that he’s a failure if he does n’t,” returned Deane.

“ Not at all,” said Lesbia; “ but I think ” — She stopped again.

“ Perhaps he impressed you as not having grown?” suggested Deane.

“ But what’s the good of life, of Europe, then ? ” asked Lesbia.

Deane shook his head. “ But I hope you explained why I have n’t called, and how I’ve been rushed with this absurd coffee case ? ”

“No,” replied Lesbia reflectively, “I said very little. At all events, Gerald talks more than he used to, and I believe we all simply listened.”

Deane made no reply, and the talk drifted off to other things. But in all that was said, in all the pleasant, homely give and take of family life, Deane watched his wife. She was evidently not aware that this was the first time in her married life that she had ever mentioned Gerald Farnhurst’s name. However obvious to others a spell may be, the one who is spellbound never knows it. Like an echo, there came to Deane’s mind the vague recollection of some old superstition which says that if you can once but firmly name your spell, you are freed from it. He felt that Lesbia, all unconsciously, had named her spell. His heart sang within him. There was a faint color in her usually pale cheeks, and in her eyes, so duskily gray, a touch of light which showed like a hint of dawn. He watched her, first with the feeling of the physician who is well-nigh assured that he has saved his patient; and then with that other feeling, so finely personal, so nobly impersonal, that even love is for it too faint, too common a name,

III.

Farnhurst had made his home in Europe, thinking thereby to mould his work better and more beautifully than at home. But art for art’s sake, while a very pretty theory, lacks central fire, and does not, as we Americans say, eventuate. Having no particular starting point, Gerald’s life had no particular goal. And a man’s work is himself. He can express things neither as they are nor as he sees them, but only as he himself is. Farnhurst loved freedom, and was fain to believe himself free, and while he was a man who would punctiliously have recognized and made good any and all claims, perhaps he took care that there should be no claims ; for he failed to perceive that it is from the responsibilities which a man assumes and fulfills that his eventual intellectual and moral wealth accrues. Farnhurst thought that the issues of life are from the head, and forgot that they are chiefly from the heart. Life, he felt, was working upon him, rather than he upon life ; and as his art grew finer, his touch surer, his hand more pliant, he nevertheless asked himself the numbing question, “ To what purpose, to what good ? ” and felt that life, the thing he worked in, was losing its freshness and its power to interest and suggest. Then, as must often happen with a man of his full, many-sided mind, he would perceive in some cruder, less competent hand a something which would give him, not the corroding stab of envy, — he was too fine-natured for that, — but that thrill of anguish which comes to such a man when he perceives that there has been vouchsafed a revelation of the Beauty he so longs for, and yet has missed. For, to the lovers of Life, the veiled Isis, any glint of an assurance of its unearthly reality and beauty is worth all that men call success.

So, when there came to him the inheritance which made it still less necessary to pursue his art, he said that he would throw all aside for the time, and go home ; he would see things again ; he would renew old friendships and take up old — well, no, one does not exactly take up old loves. Moreover, there were but few old loves to take up, seeing that Gerald’s beauty had had that sufficiency which is beauty’s antidote. And then he could not but recall the old friend who had married the old love, a pair whom to know again would be like enjoying the effect of two luminaries, the moon and the evening star, say, at once. For such a nature as Farnhurst’s is far more apt, eventually, to remember the woman who has loved him than the woman he has loved, since such natures conceive of love, not as a free gift or princely largess, but as something conquering or conquered. They conceive of love as being dragged at another’s chariot wheels, or — most sweet reversal — as gracing a triumph of their own.

There is infinite warmth in love ; no thought of time or age, no lessening sense of life’s power, no question of life’s good. Farnhurst was quite man enough to feel this, even if he had not seized it, and his heart instinctively glowed at the remembrance of Lesbia’s rare flame of devotion, odorous with youth, sincerity, and faith. Recalling it all, he was inclined to blame her. If only she had had more individuality, why, then, perhaps —

But he would go back; he would see that special one to whom he had been so much, — would see whether she were still the same astral creature feminine whom he had liked so well, yet had not cared to marry. Now he was half inclined to wonder why.

Farnhurst was in great demand that winter, for he was that rara avis in America, a man of entire leisure, and he obligingly went everywhere. People said that he was very nice. Occasionally he did, indeed, level a gentle shaft at the national vice of self-complacency, and once asked whether history was supposed to begin with the year 1776. But on the whole he was lenient and non-critical.

As for the Deanes, Farnhurst found Rufus much the same, but concerning Lesbia he doubted. She was prettier than ever, and undeniably finer than in her early youth. There is an open-air life of mind and spirit which is far more subtly beautifying than a mere open-air life of the body, and there were moments when the expression of Lesbia’s face went to show that she had walked on heights where blow the pure, viewless winds of the soul, — heights from which she had faced horizons that do not beckon all. But how had she gone there ? What influence had wrought a development so different from any he could have foreseen ? She met him with an impersonal frankness which left conjecture free, and yet piqued — Farnhurst called it intelligent interest in one’s fellows.

Still, with a slight contraction of the heart, he could not but feel that he probably had no longer so much as a foothold in Lesbia’s life, — he who could once have possessed the whole of it. She was obviously a woman any man might well be proud of, and such a fact weighed heavily with Gerald. For he was no Cophetua, nor was he made of the stuff which declares, “ I please myself first, and the world afterwards.” He felt a twinge of mortification — or regret, he would have said — that Lesbia was no less fickle than her adorable sex in general; though what she had had to be constant to even he would have found it difficult to say. And he was tempted to find out whether she had forgotten the past as completely as she seemed.

IV.

One evening, in Miss Hatley’s oldfashioned parlors, Farnhurst and Lesbia sat apart from the others, near an open window, through which came the warm, moist, caressing wind of an early spring. Above the primrose yellow of her evening dress, Lesbia’s delicate face and dark hair had never looked handsomer, and her expression showed a rest and satisfaction which had not always been there. This look might be variously interpreted, and some people present were variously interpreting it; for Deane, meanwhile, hung over the piano, the length of the rooms away, and joined now and then in the young people’s choruses.

“ As I was saying,” remarked Farnhurst, “just as in Italy the men are, as a rule, handsomer than the women, and in Spain the women are handsomer than the men, so in America the women are more interesting than the men; their wits are nimbler, their minds, on the whole, more complex.”

“ But I thought that modern women were everywhere nimble - witted, and that they were nothing if not complex. Suppleness and complexity, — are not these the mental earmarks of the end of the century ? ” returned Lesbia.

From under fine, slightly frowning brows he gave her a long, half-questioning, half-impatient look, and did not immediately reply.

“But do suppleness and complexity necessarily imply much depth or staying power ? ” she added, after a slight pause.

What was she thinking of? Of late he had asked himself many times that question, as he never had before ; for in the former days Lesbia’s thoughts had been finely transparent, a crystalline mirror which reflected but one image.

“ You have wonderfully changed,” he said slowly. “ You have developed more than any one I know, and in a way I did not foresee.”

“ Like wine, I have improved with age ? ” asked Lesbia lightly.

Farnhurst smiled. “You have acquired the charm of the incalculable, the grace of uncertainty,” he returned, with equal lightness.

“ Oh, surely I was never anything but a woman, no matter how crude a girl,” she said, with deprecatory archness ; “ and is n’t it a world-old tradition that all women are uncertain ”

In the lovely eyes regarding him over the top of the fan there was a touch of gay, winsome raillery which he had never seen in them before. He drank the look down like wine, and found it fiery.

“And,” she continued, “should we say ‘ acquire ’ the charm ? We acquire a language, but I should think we develop a charm.”

The Lesbia of past days had never dreamed of mending his speeches, nor of hazarding any divergence of thought. Now, mentally, she must feel the ground quite her own and very solid beneath her feet, to do either ; and again he wondered what her real thought was.

“ The charm is there, at all events, whether acquired or developed,” was the reply.

She leaned forward a little, and gave him a look of friendly banter.

“ ‘ The charm of the incalculable, the grace of uncertainty,’ — but these are things to please the fanciful. Creative minds, I should think, would care more for certainty. For the deeply imaginative, the great poets and thinkers, take up potentialities, foresee possible results, and work accordingly. Won’t you allow me, then, the merit of a little certainty, too ? ”

He felt that he must bestir himself, or else he should prove wanting.

“ I will allow you any and every merit possible,” was the reply, “ but you must not speak of yourself as ever having been crude.”

“ Oh, crudeness of mind and awkwardness of body are inseparable from youth,” said Lesbia carelessly : “ let us hope that we outgrow both.”

He looked at her, half vexed. “ I think our youth was beautiful,” he said, with emphasis ; “ perhaps it was the best part of our lives.”

“Not of mine, — oh no ! ” exclaimed Lesbia, with involuntary quickness ; then added gently, “ And yet I would not now ask that it should have been different.”

“ And does the now, then, hold so much for you ? ” he demanded, with a touch of irony.

“ It holds a greal deal,” was the answer, “ and, above all, the prospect and hope that every height of the future will be better.”

“ Oh, if you have attained happiness ! ” he murmured, with obvious sarcasm.

Lesbia laughed. “ The gods confound the boaster. But surely it is something so to live as to feel that happiness is, and is attainable.”

“ Then you have made no mistakes ? ” he asked significantly.

“ None who live dare say that, I imagine ; but at least I hope I have made none which were irretrievable.”

She spoke with a touch of noble humility. Farnhurst winced ; yet, bending forward, he said pointedly, “ And have you no regrets ? ”

His eyes held her, and demanded more than his words; but as essentially cool as marble hands which he might have grasped, and as impersonal and free as the night wind which touched his face, were her look and tone, as she replied slowly, “ In a large and general sense, none.”

He leaned back, with a long, deep breath. Was, then, the fire out, the shrine bare and swept clean even of the ashes ? But what drove him on was that, in all this renewed intercourse with Lesbia, he had been dimly conscious from the first that he somehow served; that she was measuring things — but what things ? — by him ; that he was clarifying things for her, putting them into right places, giving them their true meaning and value. He hesitated.

“ When it comes to regret,” remarked Lesbia lightly, and yet as if following up some serious train of thought, — “ when it comes to regret, I, for my part, had rather repent.”

“ Is there so great a difference ? ” he asked, smiling. “To me it seems much like a choice between drowning and asphyxiation : either way you smother.”

“ Oh dear, no ! ” cried Lesbia. “ Repentance is like taking your bearings and going back, or bracing up and going on ; while regret is like standing still and contemplating the place where you’ve broken your pitcher and spilled your milk. One acts ; the other only feels.”

“ And have you, then, gone on ? ” he asked, in that indescribable man’s tone between jest and earnest, which becomes one or the other according to the woman’s reply.

“No,” returned Lesbia musingly ; “I am just beginning to perceive that I have been unconsciously carried on.”

Her look was indrawn. More than ever did Farnhurst feel doubtful, yet he had, too, a tingling sense that certainty might prove very delightful. He sat tensely still, and regarded her steadily.

“ Should you think me ungallant, or should you understand, if I said that women are generally disappointing ? ”

Lesbia laughed. “Are you quite a competent judge ? ” she asked gayly. “ How can you tell the strength of a thing till you test it ? How could you tell what a woman might make of her life until you had put yours in the power of it, — until you were dependent upon her sense of duty, of responsibility, her loyalty and uprightness ? ”

He looked startled. “ It is so hard to find variety in life,” he murmured evasively.

“ I thought we all had to vary life as best we might, and to suit ourselves,” was her reply.

“ To overlook an entire personality, to see the length and breadth of it ” — He paused.

“ Can any one do that ? ” she asked wonderingly.

“ People must be interesting if they expect to hold other people’s liking,” he asserted.

Lesbia made no reply.

“ Women make so little of their lives,” he continued presently.

She lifted her level brows. “ What would become of most men’s lives if they were not watered with some woman’s heart ? ” was the answer.

He looked at her eagerly. “ Mine is not, and has never been, so nourished.”

There were no subsurface memories in Lesbia’s glance ; her regard was as calm as if they had first met yesterday. But at this moment her face was so lovely, charged with a feeling he did not understand, that before he was aware he had exclaimed, “ I made a horrible mistake, Lesbia, and the same opportunity never comes to a man twice! ” and then was surprised at himself for having said it; for while he would not have greatly wondered at some expression of feeling from her, he was amazed at its escaping from him.

“ What mistake ? ” asked Lesbia, in surprise; and he wondered at her wonder. Was it genuine, was she really ignorant of what was passing in his mind, was she unaware of her own charm, and had she indeed forgotten that the man near her had been once unmistakably dear ? Are not all women coquettes ? Is not feigning their strength ? Where does the simplicity of nature end, and the sophistication of civilization begin ?

Was it possible that he, Farnhurst, even here could not tell the real from the unreal, the true feeling from the conventional pretense ? Again he felt how easily life could elude him. Yet he forgot that he had never been willing to ask directly for her love ; was he willing to draw forth now a confession of ignoble weakness ?

“I ought to have married you,” he blurted out regretfully, “ knowing that you cared so much,” and then was aghast that he, a gentleman, had said a scarcely permissible thing. But matters were going beyond him, and the nature within, which he had never recognized, though he had catered well to it, now seemed to rise up and menace him.

Lesbia, however, listened as one who has not clearly heard or fully understood. Then, as if to reassure herself by a grip upon the plain truth of things, she said simply, “Yes, I loved you once.”

Farnhurst was stunned. He sat there mute, staring. For it was bare truth that now challenged him, and he had no precedent of book or custom to be his guide. He felt himself to be at a loss just when his soul, his essential self-possession, was most needed. “ And it’s all over, I suppose,” he said ruefully, and with more genuine feeling than he had ever shown before.

Lesbia was following her own thoughts rather than listening to him, yet she saw in his face, caught in his tone, a something which stirred her ready, sweet generosity. “Love is a great educator; I don’t regret the lesson,” she said nobly.

“ And you married Rufus,” he continued bitterly.

“ Not at all! ” flung back Lesbia, suddenly roused. “ Rufus married me.”

“ If you had only waited ! ” ejaculated Farnhurst.

For the first time there dawned in her eyes a glint of wholesome humor. “ Waited ? For what? Till I had acquired the charm of the incalculable ? But how was I to know what I lacked, and how were you to know what you wanted ? ”

But every look, tone, word, all this confluence of charm was breaking upon Gerald like a surge, and driving him on. “ And I lost you,” he exclaimed, “ to such a man as Rufus Deane ! ”

The effect of his words was magical. She who now faced him was more like a flaming sword than a ray of crystallized moonlight.

“ Why, do you dare to compare yourself with Rufus ? ” she cried, when, out of her amazement, she could speak. “ Are you blind ? Don’t you see he had it in him to be the man, to take, and make, life for himself and me, — never to play with life so as to become eventually life’s plaything? Lost to Rufus Deane ! Why, don’t you know that Rufus was, and is, miles above either of us ? Can’t you appreciate what he did, — a something so daring, yet exquisite, that one’s heart breaks at it ? Suppose you are incapable of a thing yourself, can’t you have the vision of it in others ? ” The rush of words choked her. “ Of course I made a spectacle of myself. No, I don’t blame you, and I don’t care a straw now; all is swallowed up in the splendor of Rufus’ simple goodness. I don’t suppose one man out of a thousand would have done other than you did, — let an overemotionalized girl love him, if she were so minded. But how dare you name yourself in the same lifetime with Rufus ? ” She was royally beautiful, her eyes like fire, her cheeks roseate, her lips red as the flame within, quivering with the words she had uttered, and with the still stronger words, perhaps, which she repressed.

Farnhurst sat spellbound, but said finally, — and not without a touch of nobleness, — “ Forgive me, Lesbia, if, for the moment, I lost my bearings.”

“ Bearings ! ” she cried scornfully. “You have never taken any. I don’t believe you ever made a really deliberate choice in your life. I see there are some men who don’t even sell their birthright; they simply let it fall from their hand.” After a long pause she added, more gently and in another tone : “ But don’t speak of forgiveness ; that’s understood. It’s like asking forgiveness for being blind. In a world like this, to see, and not perceive! ”

Farnhurst had cultivated himself to the utmost, as the art of cultivation is now understood and practiced ; but at this moment he felt that he had worshiped at lesser shrines, that he had gone far to make of life a broken cistern when he might have made of it a living spring. And though he could not help thinking of himself first, and of her afterwards, still all that was best in him rose up to meet and greet her words.

“ Forgive, then, my blindness and stupidity,” he said gently, “seeing that they are both now recoiling heavily on me.”

“ I did not mean to wound,” said Lesbia kindly.

“ I know it,” he returned quickly. “ And if I have been made to wince, it was my own fault. You are a sweet woman, Lesbia, and deserve all happiness. It was worth coming back to see you, and — shall I say to perceive Rufus ? ”

He could smile now, yet was serious, too. They looked at each other during a prolonged silence ; then Lesbia rose.

“Shall we join Miss Hatley?” she asked quietly. And the two moved slowly together down the long rooms.

Ellen Duvall.