"Father Adrian!"
"I am here!"
"I saw the doctor talking with you aside! How long have I to live? He told you the truth! Repeat his words to me!"
The tall, gaunt young priest drew nearer to the bedside, and shook his head with a slow, pitying gesture.
"The time was short—short indeed. Yet, why should you fear? Your confession has been made! I myself have pronounced your absolution; the holy Church has granted to you her most holy sacrament."
"Fear! Bah! I have no fear! It is a matter of calculation. Shall I see morning break?"
"You may; but you will never see the mid-day sun."
The dying man raised himself with a slow, painful movement, and pointed to the window.
"Throw up the window."
He was obeyed. A servant who had been sitting quietly in the shadows of the vast apartment, with his head buried in his hands, rose and did his master's bidding.
"What hour is it?"
"Three o'clock."
"Gomez, strain your eyes seaward. Is there no light on the horizon?"
"None! The storm has wrapped the earth in darkness. Listen!"
A torrent of rain was swept against the streaming window pane, and a gust of wind shook the frame in its sockets. The watcher turned away from the window with a mute gesture of despair. No eye could pierce that black chaos. He sank again into his seat, and looked around shuddering. The high, vaulted chamber was lit by a pair of candles only, leaving the greater part of it in gloom. Grim, fantastic shadows lurked in the corners, and lay across the bare floor. Even the tall figure of the priest, on his knees before a rude wooden crucifix, seemed weird and ghostly. The heavy, mildewed bed-hangings shook and trembled in the draughts which filled the room, and the candles flickered and burnt low in their sockets. Gomez watched them with a sort of anxious fascination. His master's life was burning out, minute for minute, with those candles. Twenty-five years of constant companionship would be ended in a few brief hours. Gomez was not disposed to trouble much at this; but he bethought himself of a snug little abode in Piccadilly, where the discomforts now surrounding them were quite unknown. Surely, to die there would be a luxury compared with this. He began to feel personally aggrieved that his master should have chosen such an out-of-the-way hole to end his days in. Then came a rush of thought, and he was grave. He knew why! Yes! he knew why!
The dying man lay quite still, almost as though his time were already come. Once he raised himself, and the feeble light flashed across a grey, haggard face and a pair of burning eyes. But his effort was only momentary. He sank back again, and lay there with his eyes half closed, and breathing softly. He was nursing his strength.
One, two, three, four, five! The harsh clanging of a brazen clock somewhere in the building had penetrated to the chamber, followed by a deep, resonant bell. The man on the bed lifted his head.
"How goes the storm?" he asked softly.
Gomez stood up and faced the window.
"The storm dies with the night, sir," he answered. "The wind has fallen."
"When does day break?"
Gomez looked at his watch.
"In one hour, sir."
"Stay by the window, Gomez, and let your eyes watch for the dawn."
The priest frowned. "Surely the time has come when you should quit your hold on earthly things," he said quietly. "What matters the dawn! soon you will lose yourself in an everlasting sleep, and the dawn for you will be eternity. Take this crucifix, and pray with me."
The dying man pushed it away with a gesture almost contemptuous.
"Is there no light on the sea yet, Gomez?" he asked anxiously.
Gomez leant forward till his face touched the window pane. He strained his eyes till they ached; but the darkness was impenetrable. Yet stay—what was that? A feeble yellow light was glimmering far away in the heart of that great gulf of darkness. He held his breath, and watched it steadily. Then he turned round.
"There is a light in the far distance, sir," he said. "I cannot tell what it may be, but there is a light."
A wave of excitement passed over the strong, wasted features of the man upon the bed. He half raised himself, and his voice was almost firm.
"Push my bed to the window," he ordered.
The two men, priest and servant, bent all their strength to the task, and inch by inch they moved the great, creaking structure. When at last they had succeeded, and paused to take breath, the light in the distance had become stronger and more apparent. Together the three men watched it grow; master and servant, with breathless eagerness, the priest with a show of displeasure in his severe face. Suddenly Gomez gave a little cry.
"The dawn!" he exclaimed, pointing to the north of the light. "Morning is breaking."
Sure enough, a grey, pallid light was stealing down upon the water. The darkness was becoming a chaos of grey and black; of towering seas and low-lying clouds, with cold white streaks of light falling through them, and piercing the curtains of night. There was no vestige of colouring—nothing but cold grey and slate white. Yet the dawn moved on, and through it the yellow light in the distance gleamed larger and larger.
"Hold me up," ordered the man on the bed. "Prop me up with pillows!"
They did as he bade them, and for the first time his face was fully revealed in the straggling twilight. A flowing grey beard, still plentifully streaked with black, rested upon his chest; and the eyes, steadily fixed upon the window pane, were dark and undimmed. A long illness had wasted his fine features, but had detracted nothing from their strength and regularity of outline. His lips were closely set, and his expression, though painfully eager, was not otherwise displeasing. There was none of the fear of death there; nor was there anything of the passionless resignation of the man who has bidden farewell to life, and made his peace with God and man; nor, in those moments of watching, had his face any of the physical signs of approaching death.
"Ah!"
They started at the sharp, almost triumphant exclamation which had escaped from his white lips, and followed his long, quivering finger. Above that glimmering light was a faint, dim line of smoke, fading on the horizon.
"It is a steamer, indeed," the priest said, with some interest. "She is making for the island."
"When is the supply boat due?" Gomez asked.
"Not for a fortnight," the priest answered; "it is not she, it is a stranger."
There was no other word spoken. Soon the dawn, moving across the great waste of waters, pierced the dark background behind the steamer's light. The long trail of white, curdling foam in her track gleamed like a silver cleft in a dark gulf. The dim shape of her sails stole slowly into sight, and they could see that she was carrying a great weight of canvas. Then into the grey air, a rocket shot up like a brilliant meteor, and the sound of a gun came booming over the waters.
"Can she make the bay?" Gomez asked suddenly. "Look at the surf."
They all removed their eyes from the steamer, and fixed them nearer home. The darkness had rolled away, and the outlook, though a little uncertain in the misty morning light, was still visible. Right before the window, a little to the left, a great rocky hill, many hundreds of feet high, ran sheer down into the sea, and facing it on the right, was a lower range of rocks running out from the mainland. Inside the natural harbour thus formed, the sea was quiet enough; but at the entrance, a line of white breakers and huge ocean waves were leaping up against the base of the promontory, and dashing over the lower range of rocks. Beyond, the sea was wild and rough, and the steamer was often almost lost to sight in the hollow of the Waves.
"Ah!"
The faces of all three men underwent a sudden change. Three rockets, one after another, shot up into the sky from the top of the rocky hill, leaving a faint, violet glow overhead. The dying man set his teeth hard, and his eyes glistened.
"Three rockets," he muttered. "What is the meaning of that signal, Father?" he asked.
The priest looked downward, pityingly. "It is a warning that the entrance to the bay is unsafe," he answered. "Take comfort; it is the hand of God keeping from you those who would distract your dying thoughts from Heaven. Take comfort, and pray with me."
He seemed strangely deaf to the priest's words, and made no movement or sign in response. Only he kept his eyes the more steadfastly fixed upon the steamer, now plainly visible. His face showed no disappointment. It seemed almost as though he might have seen across the grey sea, and heard the stern orders thundered out from a slim, motionless figure on the captain's bridge. "Right ahead, helmsman! Never mind the signal. There's fifty pounds for every man of you if we make the bay. It's not so bad as it looks! Back me up like brave lads, and I'll remember it all your lives!"
Almost, too, he might have heard the answering cheer, for a faint smile parted his white lips as he saw the steamer ploughing her way heavily straight ahead, paying no heed to the warning signal.
On she came. The priest and the servant started as they saw her intention, and a sharp ejaculation of surprise escaped from the former. Side by side, they watched the labouring vessel with strained eyes. Her hull and shape were now visible in the dim morning twilight, as she rose and fell upon the waves. It was evident that she was a large, handsome pleasure yacht, daintily but strongly built.
Close up against the high, bare window the three watchers, unconsciously enough, formed a striking-looking group. The priest, tall, pale, and severe, stood in the shadow of the bed-curtains, an impressive and solemn figure in his dark, flowing robes, but with the impassibility of his features curiously disturbed. He, who had been preaching calm, was himself agitated. He had drawn a little on one side, so that the cold grey light should not fall upon his face and betray its twitching lips and quivering pallor; but if either of the men who shared his watch had thought to glance at him, the sickly candlelight would have shown at once what he was so anxious to conceal. It was little more than chance which had brought this man to die in his island monastery, and under his care; little more than chance which had revealed to him this wonderful secret. But the agony of those last few hours, and the gloomy words of the priest who leant over his bedside, had found their way in between the joints of the dying man's armour of secrecy. Word by word, the story had been wrested from him. In the cold and comfortless hour of death, the strong, worldly man felt his physical weakness loosen the iron bands of his will, and he became for a time almost like a child in the hands of the keen, swiftly-questioning priest. He had not found much comfort in the mumbled prayers and absolution, which were all he got in exchange for his life's secret—and such a secret! He had not, indeed, noticed the fixed, faraway gaze in the priest's dark eyes as he knelt by the bedside; but his prayers, his faint words of comfort, had fallen like drops of ice upon his quickened desire to be brought a little nearer to that mysterious, shadowy essence of goodness which was all his mind could conceive of a God. It had seemed like a dead form of words, lifeless, hopeless, monotonous; and all that faint striving to attain to some knowledge of the truth—if indeed truth there was—had been crushed into ashes by it. As he had lived, so must he die, he told himself with some return of that philosophic quietude which had led him, stout-hearted and brave, through many dangers. And, at that moment when he had been striving to detach his thoughts from their vain task of conjuring up useless regrets, there had come what even now seemed to be the granting of his last passionate prayer. The man whom he had longed to see once more before his eyes were closed forever upon the world, with such a longing that his heart had grown sick and weary with the burden of it, had been brought as though by a miracle almost to his side. He knew as though by some strange instinct the measure of his strength. He had no fear of dying before his heart's dearest wish could be gratified. If only that fiercely labouring vessel succeeded in her brave struggle, he knew that there would be strength left to him to bear the shock of meeting, to bear even the shock of the tidings which could either sweeten his last few moments, or deepen the gloom of his passage into the unknown world. And so he lay there, with fixed, glazed eyes and shortened breath, watching and waiting.
The supreme moment came; the steamer had reached the dangerous point, and the waves were breaking over her with such fury that more than once she vanished altogether from sight, only to reappear in a moment or two, quivering and trembling from stern to hull like a living creature. After all, the struggle was a brief one, though it seemed long to the watchers at the window. In less than ten minutes it was over; she had passed the line of breakers, and was in the comparatively smooth water of the bay, heading fast for the shore under leeway of the great wall of towering rocks, at the foot of which she seemed dwarfed almost into the semblance of a boy's toy vessel. Within a quarter of a mile from the shore, she anchored, and a boat was let down from her side.
A new lease of life seemed to have come to the man on the bed. The morning sun had half emerged from a bank of angry purple-coloured clouds, and its faint slanting beams lay across the white coverlet of the bed, and upon his face. His eyes were bright and eager, and the death-like pallor seemed to have passed from his features. His voice, too, was firm and distinct.
"Place my despatch-box upon the table here, Gomez," he ordered.
Gomez left his seat by the window, and, opening a portmanteau, brought a small black box to the bedside. His master passed his hand over it, and drew it underneath the coverlet.
"I am prepared," he murmured, half to himself. "Father, according to the physician's reckoning, how long have I to live?"
"Barely an hour," answered the priest, without removing his eyes from the boat, whose progress he seemed to be scanning steadfastly. "Is your eternal future of so little moment to you," he went on in a tone of harsh severity, "that you can give your last thoughts, your last few moments, to affairs of this world? 'Tis an unholy death! Take this cross in your hands, and listen not to those whose coming will surely estrange you from heaven. Let the world take its own course, but lift your eyes and heart in prayer! Everlasting salvation, or everlasting doom, awaits you before yonder sun be set!"
"I have no fear, Father," was the quiet reply. "What is, is; a few frantic prayers now could alter nothing, and, besides, my work on earth is not yet over. Speak to me no more of the end! Nothing that you or I could do now would bring me one step nearer heaven. Gomez, your eyes are good! Whom do you see in the boat?"
Gomez answered without turning round from the window, "Mr. Paul is there, sir, steering!"
"Thank God!"
"There are others with him, sir!"
"Others! Who?"
"Strangers to me, sir. There is a man, a gentleman by his dress and appearance, and a child—a girl, I think. Two sailors from the yacht are rowing."
The dying man knitted his brows, and his fingers convulsively clutched at the bed-clothes. He had lost something of that calm and effortless serenity which seemed to have fallen upon him since the safety of the steamer had been assured.
"The boat is quite close, Gomez! Can you not describe the stranger?"
"I can only see that he is thin, rather tall, and, I think, elderly, sir. He is very much wrapped up, as though he were an invalid."
"Lift me up so that I can see them. Father Adrian will help you."
The priest shook his head. "The effort would probably cost you your life," he said, "and it would be useless. Before you could see them the boat would be round the corner."
"So near! God grant me strength! Gomez, give me a tablespoonful of the brandy!"
Gomez moved silently to his side, and poured out the brandy. Afterwards his master closed his eyes, and there was an intense silence in the chamber—the deep, breathless silence of expectancy.
The monastery itself, a small and deserted one, tenanted only by a few half-starved monks of one of the lower orders of the Church, was wrapped in a profound gloom. There was no sound from the half-ruined chapel or the long, empty corridors. The storm had ceased, and the casements no longer rattled in the wind. To the man who lay there, nursing his fast-ebbing strength, it seemed indeed like the silence before the one last tragedy of death, looming so black and so grim before him.
It was broken at last. Away at the end of the corridor the faint sound of hurrying footsteps and subdued voices reached the ears of the three watchers. They came nearer and nearer, halting at last just outside the door. There was a knock, a quick, impetuous answer, and the visitors entered, ushered in by the priest, who had met them on the threshold.
Of the two men, one advanced hastily with outstretched hand and pitying face to the bedside; the other moved only a step or two further into the room, and stood looking intently, yet without any salutation or form of recognition, at the dying man. The former, when he reached the bed, sank on his knees and took the white hand which lay upon the coverlet between his.
"Father! My father! I would have given the world to have found you better. Tell me that it is not true what they say. You will pull round now that I have come!"
There was no answer. The dying man did not even look into the handsome young face so close to his. His eyes, bright and unnaturally large, were rivetted upon the figure at the foot of the bed. His breath came quickly, and he was shivering; an inarticulate sort of moan came from his lips.
"Father! you are agitated, and no wonder, to see him here. You had my letter preparing you; nothing that I could do would stop his coming."
It was Gomez who answered, advancing out of the gloom: "There has been no letter."
There was an instant's silence. Then the younger man rose up, pale as death. "God! what a fool I was to trust to mails in this out-of-the-way hole! Father! I shall never forgive myself. Blind idiot that I was, to bring him in like this."
It seemed as if no one save he possessed the power of speech. There was a dead silence. He looked from one to another of the figures in that silent drama in fast-growing despair. The face of the man whom he had brought there revealed little, although in a certain way its expression was remarkable. The lips were parted in a slow, quiet smile, not in itself sardonic or cruel, although under the circumstances it seemed so, for it was difficult to associate any idea of mirth with the scene which was passing in that grim, gloomy chamber. Something of the awe inseparable from this close approach of death was visible in the faces of all the other watchers. Not so in his! It was the contrast which seemed so strange. He stood there, with his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his long travelling coat, returning the fixed, glazed stare of the dying man with a sort of indifferent good humour. Perhaps a very close observer might have detected a shade of mockery in those soft black eyes and faintly twitching lips, but the light in the room was too obscure for any one there to penetrate beneath the apparent indifference. It was he who broke that deep, tragic silence, and his voice, light and even gay, struck a strange note in that solemn chamber of death.
"So you are dying, Martin, mon ami? How odd! If any one had told me one short month ago that I should have been here to watch your last moments, and start you on your journey to hell, bah! how mad I should have thought them. 'Tis a pleasure I never anticipated."
His words seemed to dissolve the lethargy which his presence had cast over the dying man. He turned away towards the younger figure by his side.
"How came he here?" he asked feebly.
"Listen, and I will tell you," was the low reply. "I sought him first at Monaco, but he had not been heard of there for two years. Then I found traces of him at Algiers; and followed up the clue to Cairo, Athens, Syracuse, and Belgrade. It was at Constantinople I found him at last—an officer—actually an officer in the Turkish army; 'Monsieur le Captaine,' my interpreter called him," the young man added, with a fine scorn in his raised voice. "Imagine it! Well, I gave him your letter, delivered the messages, and awaited his pleasure. He kept me waiting for two days before he vouchsafed one word of answer. On the third day he announced his intention of accompanying me here. Nothing that I could say made any difference. 'His answer should be given to you in person, or not at all.' I wrote to you three days before we started; that letter you never had. Forgive me, father, for the shock! As for you," he continued, turning abruptly towards the motionless figure at the foot of the bed, "I have kept my word, and brought you here in safety, though no one in the world will ever know how near I came to breaking it, and throwing you into the Dardanelles. Ah! I was sorely tempted, I can tell you. Speak your answer, and go! This is no place for you to linger in."
"Upon my word, you are courteous, very! But, my dear friend Martin, as this is to be our farewell, I must really see you a little more distinctly."
For the first time, the man in the long overcoat changed his position, and came a little nearer to the bed. The movement showed him the priest, kneeling with closed eyes and uplifted hands before an iron crucifix.
"Ah! we are not quite alone then, Martin, cher ami! the gentleman in the long robe appears to be listening."
"He is as dead," answered the man on the bed slowly. "He is a monk; you can speak."
He raised himself slightly on the bed. One hand remained grasping his despatch-box under the bedclothes; the other was held by the young man who knelt by his side. His face was curiously changed; all the effect of his unlooked-for visitor's arrival seemed to have passed away. His eyes were bright and eager. His white lips were closely set and firm.
"You can speak," he repeated.
His visitor was leaning over the foot of the bed now, and the smile had quite gone, leaving his face cold and white. He spoke a little quicker than before.
"Here is your answer, Martin de Vaux! You offer me a fortune, on condition that I give up to you on your deathbed the power by which I hold those whom you love, my slaves. Money is dear to me, as it is to most men, but I would die sooner than touch yours. Curse you, and your money, and your family! Not for all the gold that was ever coined would I yield up my power! My day will come, and may the evil spirit bring you tidings of it down into hell! Curse you, Martin de Vaux! Now you know my mind."
The dying man was strangely calm. From under the bed-clothes came the faint sound of the opening and shutting of the despatch-box.
"Yes, I know your mind," he repeated quietly. "You mean me to die with the torturing thought that I have left a poisonous reptile to suck the life and blood from those I love, and the honour from a grand old name. But I will not! We will take our next journey together, Victor."
A sudden change had crept into his tone before the last sentence; and before it had died away, the priest and the man by the bedside had leaped to their feet in horror. He whom they had thought too weak to stir was sitting bolt upright in bed, his eyes blazing and his hand extended. There was a line of fire, a loud report, and then a single cry of agony. The man who had leaned over the foot of the bed lay on the ground just as he had fallen, shot dead through the heart, and a child, dark-skinned and thin, who had rushed in at the sound of the report, was sobbing passionately with her arms wound around him. Across the bed, still grasping the pistol, but with his hands hanging helplessly down, lay the man who had fired the shot. The effort had killed him.
The priest was the first in the room to move. He slowly bent over both bodies, and then turned round to the other man.
"Dead?" he asked, with a dry, choking gasp.
"Both dead."
The priest and his companion, shocked and unnerved, looked at one another in silence. The child's sobs grew louder, and the morning sunlight stole across the bare floor, and fell upon the white, still faces.
The tragedy was over, and the seeds of another sown.
A tall, fair young man stood in the small alcove of Lady Swindon's drawing-room, with his eyes fixed upon the door. He was accurately dressed in the afternoon garb of a London man about town, and carried in his hand, or rather in his hands, for they were crossed behind him, that hall-mark of Western civilization—a well-brushed, immaculate silk hat. Neither in his clothes nor personal appearance was there any striking difference between him and the crowd of other young men who thronged the rooms, except perhaps that he was a trifle better made, and pleasanter to look at than most of them, and that the air of boredom, so apparent on most of their faces and in their manners, was in his case perfectly natural. As a matter of fact, he hated afternoon receptions, and was only waiting for a favourable opportunity to make his exit unnoticed.
"Paul, my boy, you don't look happy," exclaimed a voice in his ear.
Paul de Vaux turned upon the new-comer sharply. "Not likely to, Arthur. You know I hate all this sort of thing, and, as far as I can see, it's just a repetition of the usual performance—stale speeches, lionizing, gossip, and weak tea. I consider you've brought me here under false pretences. Where's the startling novelty you promised me?"
"All in good time," was the cool reply. "You'll thank your stars you're here in a minute or two."
Paul de Vaux looked at his brother incredulously. "Some sell of yours, I suppose," he remarked. "At any rate, no one here whom I have spoken to seems to be expecting anything unusual."
Arthur—no one ever called him anything else—laughed, and beat an impatient tattoo upon the floor with his foot. He was several inches shorter than his brother, and altogether unlike him. Yet he, too, was good-looking, in a certain way.
"That's just the beauty of it," he said. "Lady Swindon has prepared a little surprise for her guests. She's just that sort of woman, you know. Denison told me about it at the club, a few minutes before you came in for lunch. I shouldn't have bothered you to come if I hadn't known there was something good on."
"I dislike surprises," his brother answered wearily. "Half the pleasure of a thing lies in anticipation, and surprises rob one of that. Let us go, Arthur; there are plenty here to enjoy this novelty, whatever it is. Come and have a weed at my rooms, and we'll talk over something for to-night."
Arthur shook his head and laid his hand upon Paul's coat-sleeve. "You don't know what's coming off, old fellow; I wouldn't miss it for anything. Great Scott! there's the bishop. Wonder how he'll like it? and there's Lady May over there, Paul. You're booked, old man, if she looks this way."
Paul leant forward with a faint show of interest, and looked in the direction indicated. "I thought that the Westovers went North yesterday," he remarked. "Lady May said that they expected it."
"Likely enough. 'Gad! the performance is going to commence," Arthur exclaimed, quickly. "Paul, you are going to have a new sensation. You are going to see the most beautiful woman in the world."
There was a little hush, and every one had turned towards the upper end of the room. Some heavy curtains had been rolled aside, disclosing a space, only a few yards square, which had been covered by a tightly stretched drugget. There was a little curious anticipation amongst the uninitiated. Then the comparative silence was broken by the strains of a waltz from a violin, somewhere in the background. No one had ever heard it before. There was a wilder, dreamier air with it, than anything Waldteufel had ever written. And, while every one was wondering whose music it could be, a woman glided out from behind a screen, and stood for a second swaying herself slightly in the centre of the drugget. Even that slight rhythmical motion of her body seemed to bring her into perfect sympathy with the curious melody which was filling the hushed room. And while the people watched her, already, in varying degrees, under the spell of that curious fascination which her personality and the exercise of her art seldom failed to excite, she commenced to dance.
Long afterwards Paul de Vaux tried to describe in words, that dance, and found that he could not, for there was indeed a charm beyond expression or portrayal in the slow, almost languid movements, full of infinite and inexpressible witchery. Every limb of her body and every feature of her face followed, with a sort of effortless grace, the movements of her feet. Yet the general effect of the whole was suggestive of a sweet and dainty repose, voluptuous yet refined, glowing with life, yet dreamily restful. In a certain sense her physical movements, even her body itself, seemed merged and lost in the artistic ideal created and born of her performance. And so it was that he carried away that day no vivid thought-portrait of her features, only a confused dream of a beautiful dusky face, rising above a cloud of amber draperies, the lips slightly parted in a wonderful smile, and a pair of heavily-lidded eyes, which, more than once, had rested upon him, soft, dark, and lustrous. After all, it was but a tangled web of memories, yet, such as it was, it became woven into the pattern of his life, wonderfully soft and brilliant beside some of those dark, gloomy threads which fate had spun for him.
The performance ended, as such performance should end, suddenly, and without repetition. Her disappearance was so swift and yet so graceful, that for a moment or two people scarcely realized that she was gone. It was wonderful what a difference her absence made to the room. The little stretch of drugget looked mean and bare. To Paul de Vaux it seemed as though some warm, beautiful light, omniscient and richly coloured, had suddenly burnt out, and left a damp chilliness in the air. The silence was gloomy enough after that wonderful music, but the babble of tongues which presently arose was a hundred times worse. He found himself chafing and angry at the commonplacisms which everywhere greeted his ear. Lady Swindon's afternoon entertainment had been a great success, and every one was telling her so, more or less volubly. There were some there, a handful of artists and a few thoughtful men, who were silent, or who spoke of it only amongst themselves in subdued voices. They recognised, in what had happened that afternoon, the dawn of a new art, or rather the regeneration of an old one, and they discussed in whispers its possible significance and influence. She was an artist, that woman. No one doubted it. But the woman was there as well as the artist. Who was she? Would she realize the sanctity of her mission, and keep herself fit and pure for its accomplishment? Had she character to sustain her, and imagination to idealize her calling? She was on a pinnacle now, but it was a pinnacle as dangerous as the feet of woman could press. If only she could keep herself unspotted from the world, which would do its best to drag her down, they all felt, painter, poet, and musician, that her influence with the age might rank with their own. But was it possible? A certain Diana-like coldness had been apparent to those who had the eyes to see it, even in her most voluptuous movements. They knew that it was not assumed for the sake of adding piquancy to her performance—it was there indeed. But side by side with it there were unprobed depths of passion in her soft, deep eyes; a slumbering passion even in the sinuous, graceful movements of every limb. Some day the struggle would come, even if it had not already commenced. The woman against the artist—the woman tempted and flattered by a thousand tongues, and dazzled with visions of all those things so naturally sweet to her, her own nature even, so keenly susceptible to love and sympathy, siding with the enemy. This, all against what? Only that inward worshipping of all things sweet and pure and lofty, which is the artist's second life. The odds were heavy indeed. No wonder that the select few who spoke of her that afternoon should shake their heads and look grave.
"What do you think of it?"
Paul started. He had been standing, like a man in a dream, with folded arms, looking across the room with idle eyes, and unconsciously ignoring many salutations. His brother's tone sounded oddly in his ears, and he looked flushed and a little nervous.
"What did I think of it!" It was a difficult question to answer. He repeated it, and was glad when Arthur spared him the necessity of replying, by adding his own opinion.
"It was glorious, magnificent! I'm going to find out more about her!"
He strolled away, and joined one of the little groups of men who were discussing the performance. Paul, at first, had made a gesture as though to detain him, but on second thoughts he had changed his mind. Better let him go and find out what he could.
He himself watched carefully for his opportunity, and then left the room. He felt like a man who has received a silent shock. Something fresh had come into his life, noiselessly, insidiously, without effort. He pressed on his hat, and passed down the steps out into the street, scarcely conscious of what he was doing.
The rush of fresh air somewhat revived him, and he stood still for a moment to collect his thoughts. He felt the need of absolute solitude for a while, to help him to realize—or at any rate to understand—this thing which had happened, and with almost feverish haste he called a hansom from the other side of the road. The man whipped up the horse, but hesitated as he reached the pavement. Looking around, Paul saw the cause of his indecision. A woman, standing only a few yards behind, had called him at the same time, and was waiting also for his approach.
There was a gas-lamp between them, and as their eyes met, he recognised her. Even in that flickering light, and through her veil, there was no mistaking those wonderful eyes. As a rule, he was possessed of as much savoir faire as most men of his class, but at that moment it had deserted him. He stood there on the edge of the pavement, without moving or saying anything, simply looking at her, startled at her sudden appearance, and magnetised by her close presence. He had heard no footfall behind him, and the fact of her being alone seemed so strange to him, that he simply could not realize for a moment that it was indeed she who stood so close to him. The cabman, leaving them to decide who had the prior claim upon him, sat motionless, with his eyes discreetly fixed upon his horse's ears. It was an odd little tableau, insignificant enough to a spectator, save, perhaps, for the curious look in the woman's face and softly flashing eyes. Yet it left its mark for ever in the lives of the two principal figures.
The curious sensation which had kept Paul standing there dazed and tongue-tied, passed away. Yet it did not immediately occur to him to raise his hat and walk on, as in any ordinary case he would have done. He was conscious of the exact nature of the situation, but he felt a strong disinclination to leave the spot; nor, strangely enough, did she seem to expect it. Yet something had to be done.