book I

was lately reading, and consider this,--that most men of your type take pride and rejoice in being the prey of a bad woman!--so you should really congratulate yourself on having one for a wife!--one who is so broad-minded too, that she will always let you have your own way in everything you do, provided you let her have hers! It is the way all marriages are arranged nowadays,--at any rate in _our_ set,--otherwise the tie would be impossible of endurance. Come!"

"We cannot live together on such an understanding, Sibyl!" I said hoarsely, as I walked slowly by her side towards the villa.

"Oh yes, we can!" she averred, a little malign smile playing round her lips--"We can do as others do,--there is no necessity for us to stand out from the rest like quixotic fools, and pose as models to other married people,--we should only be detested for our pains. It is surely better to be popular than virtuous,--virtue never pays! See, there is our interesting German waiter coming to inform us that dinner is ready; please don't look so utterly miserable, for we have not quarrelled, and it would be foolish to let the servants think we have."

I made no answer. We entered the house, and dined,--Sibyl keeping up a perfect fire of conversation, to which I replied in mere monosyllables,--and after dinner we went as usual to sit in the illuminated gardens of the adjacent hotel, and hear the band. Sibyl was known, and universally admired and flattered by many of the people staying there,----and, as she moved about among her acquaintances, chatting first with one group and then with another, I sat in moody silence, watching her with increasing wonderment and horror. Her beauty seemed to me like the beauty of the poison-flower, which, brilliant in colour and perfect in shape, exhales death to those who pluck it from its stem. And that night, when I held her in my arms, and felt her heart beating against my own in the darkness, an awful dread arose in me,--a dread as to whether I might not at some time or other be tempted to strangle her as she lay on my breast----strangle her as one would strangle a vampire that sucked one's blood and strength away!

XXVII

We concluded our wedding-tour rather sooner than we had at first intended, and returned to England and Willowsmere Court, about the middle of August. I had a vague notion stirring in me that gave me a sort of dim indefinable consolation, and it was this,--I meant to bring my wife and Mavis Clare together, believing that the gentle influence of the gracious and happy creature, who, like a contented bird in its nest, dwelt serene in the little domain so near my own, might have a softening and wholesome effect upon Sibyl's pitiless love of analysis and scorn of all noble ideals. The heat in Warwickshire was at this time intense,--the roses were out in their full beauty, and the thick foliage of the branching oaks and elms in my grounds afforded grateful shade and repose to the tired body, while the tranquil loveliness of the woodland and meadow scenery, comforted and soothed the equally tired mind. After all, there is no country in the world so fair as England,--none so richly endowed with verdant forests and fragrant flowers,--none that can boast of sweeter nooks for seclusion and romance. In Italy, that land so over-praised by hysterical _poseurs_ who foolishly deem it admirable to glorify any country save their own, the fields are arid and brown, and parched by the too fervent sun,--there are no shady lanes such as England can boast of in all her shires,--and the mania among Italians for ruthlessly cutting down their finest trees, has not only actually injured the climate, but has so spoilt the landscape that it is difficult to believe at all in its once renowned, and still erroneously reported charm. Such a bower of beauty as Lily Cottage was in that sultry August, could never have been discovered in all the length and breadth of Italy. Mavis superintended the care of her gardens herself,--she had two gardeners, who under her directions, kept the grass and trees continually watered,--and nothing could be imagined more lovely than the picturesque old-fashioned house, covered with roses and tufts of jessamine that seemed to tie up the roof in festal knots and garlands, while around the building spread long reaches of deep emerald lawn, and bosky arbours of foliage where all the most musical song-birds apparently found refuge and delight, and where at evening a perfect colony of nightingales kept up a bubbling fountain of delicious melody. I remember well the afternoon, warm, languid and still, when I took Sibyl to see the woman-author she had so long admired. The heat was so great that in our own grounds all the birds were silent, but when we approached Lily Cottage the first thing we heard was the piping of a thrush up somewhere among the roses,--a mellow liquid warble expressing 'sweet content,' and mingling with the subdued coo-cooings of the dove 'reviewers' who were commenting on whatever pleased or displeased them in the distance.

"What a pretty place it is!" said my wife, as she peeped over the gate, and through the odorous tangles of honeysuckle and jessamine--"I really think it is prettier than Willowsmere. It has been wonderfully improved."

We were shown in,--and Mavis, who had expected our visit did not keep us waiting long. An she entered, clad in some gossamer white stuff that clung softly about her pretty figure and was belted in by a simple ribbon, an odd sickening pang went through my heart. The fair untroubled face,--the joyous yet dreamy student eyes,--the sensitive mouth, and above all, the radiant look of happiness that made the whole expression of her features so bright and fascinating, taught me in one flash of conviction all that a woman might be, and all that she too frequently is not. And I had hated Mavis Clare!--I had even taken up my pen to deal her a wanton blow through the medium of anonymous criticism, ... but this was before I knew her,--before I realized that there could be any difference between her and the female scarecrows who so frequently pose as 'novelists' without being able to write correct English, and who talk in public of their 'copy' with the glibness gained from Grub Street and the journalists' cheap restaurant. Yes--I had hated her,----and now----now, almost I loved her! Sibyl, tall, queenly and beautiful, gazed upon her with eyes that expressed astonishment as well as admiration.

"To think that you are the famous Mavis Clare!" she said, smiling, as she held out her hand--"I always heard and knew that you did not look at all literary, but I never quite realized that you could be exactly what I see you are!"

"To look literary does not always imply that you _are_ literary!" returned Mavis, laughing a little--"Too often I am afraid you will find that the women who take pains to _look_ literary are ignorant of literature! But how glad I am to see you, Lady Sibyl! Do you know I used to watch you playing about on the lawns at Willowsmere when I was quite a little girl?"

"And I used to watch you,"--responded Sibyl--"You used to make daisy-chains and cowslip-balls in the fields opposite on the other side of the Avon. It is a great pleasure to me to know we are neighbours. You must come and see me often at Willowsmere."

Mavis did not answer immediately,--she busied herself in pouring out tea and dispensing it to both of us. Sibyl, who was always on the alert for glimpses of character, noticed that she did not answer, and repeated her words coaxingly.

"You will come, will you not? As often as you like,--the oftener the better. We must be friends, you know!"

Mavis looked up then, a frank sweet smile in her eyes.

"Do you really mean it?" she asked.

"Mean it!" echoed Sibyl--"Why, of course I do!"

"How can you doubt it!" I exclaimed.

"Well, you must both forgive me for asking such a question"--said Mavis still smiling--"But you see you are now among what are called the 'county magnates,' and county magnates consider themselves infinitely above all authors!" She laughed outright, and her blue eyes twinkled with fun. "I think many of them estimate writers of books as some sort of strange outgrowth of humanity that is barely decent. It is deliciously funny and always amuses me,--nevertheless, among my many faults, the biggest one is, I fancy, pride, and a dreadfully obstinate spirit of independence. Now, to tell you the truth, I have been asked by many so-called 'great' people to their houses, and when I _have_ gone, I have generally been sorry for it afterwards."

"Why?" I asked--"They honour themselves by inviting you."

"Oh, I don't think they take it in that way at all!" she replied, shaking her fair head demurely--"They fancy they have performed a great act of condescension,--whereas it is really I who condescend, for it is very good of me, you know, to leave the society of the Pallas Athene in my study for that of a flounced and frizzled lady of fashion!" Her bright smile again irradiated her face and she went on--"Once I was asked to luncheon with a certain baron and baroness who invited a few guests "to meet me," so they said. I was not introduced to more than one or two of these people,--the rest sat and stared at me as if I were a new kind of fish or fowl. Then the baron showed me his house, and told me the prices of his pictures and his china,--he was even good enough to explain which was Dresden and which was Delft ware, though I believe, benighted author as I am, I could have instructed him equally on these, and other matters. However I managed to smile amicably through the whole programme, and professed myself charmed and delighted in the usual way;--but they never asked me to visit them again,--and, (unless indeed they wanted me to be impressed with their furniture-catalogue) I can never make out what I did to be asked at all, and what I have done never to be asked any more!"

"They must have been _parvenus_,"--said Sibyl indignantly--"No well-bred people would have priced their goods to you, unless they happened to be Jews."

Mavis laughed--a merry little laugh like a peal of bells,--then she continued--

"Well, I will not say who they were,--I must keep something for my 'literary reminiscences' when I get old! Then all these people will be named, and go down to posterity as Dante's enemies went down to Dante's hell! I have only told you the incident just to show you why I asked you if you meant it, when you invited me to visit you at Willowsmere. Because the baron and baroness I have spoken of 'gushed' over me and my poor books to such an extent that you would have fancied I was to be for evermore one of their dearest friends,--and they _didn't_ mean it! Other people I know embrace me effusively and invite me to their houses, and _they_ don't mean it! And when I find out these shams, I like to make it very clear on my own side that I do not seek to be embraced or invited, and that if certain great folks deem it a 'favour' to ask me to their houses, I do not so consider it, but rather think the 'favour' is entirely on my part if I accept the invitation. And I do not say this for my own self at all,--self has nothing to do with it,--but I do say it and strongly assert it for the sake of the dignity of Literature as an art and profession. If a few other authors would maintain this position, we might raise the standard of letters by degrees to what it was in the old days of Scott and Byron. I hope you do not think me too proud?"

"On the contrary, I think you are quite right"--said Sibyl earnestly--"And I admire you for your courage and independence. Some of the aristocracy are, I know, such utter snobs that often I feel ashamed to belong to them. But as far as we are concerned, I can only assure you that if you will honour us by becoming our friend as well as neighbour, you shall not regret it. Do try and like me if you can!"

She bent forward with a witching smile on her fair face. Mavis looked at her seriously and admiringly.

"How beautiful you are!" she said frankly--"Everybody tells you this of course,--still, I cannot help joining in the general chorus. To me, a lovely face is like a lovely flower,--I must admire it. Beauty is quite a divine thing, and though I am often told that the plain people are always the good people, I never can quite believe it. Nature is surely bound to give a beautiful face to a beautiful spirit."

Sibyl, who had smiled with pleasure at the first words of the open compliment paid her by one of the most gifted of her own sex, now flushed deeply.

"Not always, Miss Clare,"--she said, veiling her brilliant eyes beneath the droop of her long lashes--"One can imagine a fair fiend as easily as a fair angel."

"True!" and Mavis looked at her musingly,--then suddenly laughing in her blithe bright way, she added--"Quite true! Really I cannot picture an ugly fiend,--for the fiends are supposed to be immortal, and I am convinced that immortal ugliness has no part in the universe. Downright hideousness belongs to humanity alone,--and an ugly face is such a blot on creation that we can only console ourselves by the reflection that it is fortunately perishable, and that in course of time the soul behind it will be released from its ill-formed husk, and will be allowed to wear a fairer aspect. Yes, Lady Sibyl, I will come to Willowsmere; I cannot refuse to look upon such loveliness as yours as often as I may!"

"You are a charming flatterer!" said Sibyl, rising and putting an arm round her in that affectionate coaxing way of hers which seemed so sincere, and which so frequently meant nothing--"But I confess I prefer to be flattered by a woman rather than by a man. Men say the same things to all women,--they have a very limited répertoire of compliments,--and they will tell a fright she is beautiful, if it happens to serve their immediate purpose. But women themselves can so hardly be persuaded to admit that any good qualities exist either inwardly or outwardly in one another, that when they do say a kind or generous thing of their own sex it is a wonder worth remembering. May I your study?"

Mavis willingly assented,--and we all three went into the peaceful sanctum where the marble Pallas presided, and where the dogs Tricksy and Emperor were both ensconced,--Emperor sitting up on his haunches and surveying the prospect from the window, and Tricksy with a most absurd air of importance, imitating the larger animal's attitude precisely, at a little distance off. Both creatures were friendly to my wife and to me, and while Sibyl was stroking the St Bernard's massive head, Mavis said suddenly,

"Where is the friend who came with you here first, Prince Rimânez?"

"He is in St Petersburg just now,"--I answered--"But we expect him in two or three weeks to stay with us on a visit for some time."

"He is surely a very singular man,"--said Mavis thoughtfully--"Do you remember how strangely my dogs behaved to him? Emperor was quite restless and troublesome for two or three hours after he had gone."

And in a few words, she told Sibyl the incident of the St Bernard's attack upon Lucio.

"Some people have a natural antipathy to dogs,"--said Sibyl, as she heard--"And the dogs always find it out, and resent it. But I should not have thought Prince Rimânez had an antipathy to any creatures except--women!"

And she laughed, a trifle bitterly.

"Except women!" echoed Mavis surprisedly--"Does he hate women? He must be a very good actor then,--for to me he was wonderfully kind and gentle."

Sibyl looked at her intently, and was silent for a minute. Then she said--

"Perhaps it is because he knows you are unlike the ordinary run of women and have nothing in common with their usual trumpery aims. Of course he is always courteous to our sex,--but I think it is easy to see that his courtesy is often worn as a mere mask to cover a very different feeling."

"You have perceived that, then, Sibyl?" I said with a slight smile.

"I should be blind if I had not perceived it"--she replied; "I do not however blame him for his pet aversion,--I think it makes him all the more attractive and interesting."

"He is a great friend of yours?" inquired Mavis, looking at me as she put the question.

"The very greatest friend I have,"--I replied quickly--"I owe him more than I can ever repay,--indeed I have to thank him even for introducing me to my wife!"

I said the words unthinkingly and playfully, but as I uttered them, a sudden shock affected my nerves,--a shock of painful memory. Yes, it was true!--I owed to him, to Lucio, the misery, fear, degradation and shame of having such a woman as Sibyl was, united to me till death should us part. I felt myself turning sick and giddy,--and I sat down in one of the quaint oak chairs that helped to furnish Mavis Clare's study, allowing the two women to pass out of the open French window into the sunlit garden together, the dogs following at their heels. I watched them as they went,--my wife, tall and stately, attired in the newest and most fashionable mode,--Mavis, small and slight, with her soft white gown and floating waist-ribbon,--the one sensual, the other spiritual,--the one base and vicious in desire,--the other pure-souled and aspiring to noblest ends,--the one, a physically magnificent animal,--the other merely sweet-faced and ideally fair like a sylph of the woodlands,--and looking, I clenched my hands as I thought with bitterness of spirit what a mistaken choice I had made. In the profound egotism which had always been part of my nature I now actually allowed myself to believe that I might, had I chosen, have wedded Mavis Clare,--never for one moment imagining that all my wealth would have been useless to me in such a quest, and that I might as well have proposed to pluck a star from the sky as to win a woman who was able to read my nature thoroughly, and who would never have come down to my money-level from her intellectual throne,--no, not though I had been a monarch of many nations. I stared at the large tranquil features of the Pallas Athene,--and the blank eyeballs of the marble goddess appeared to regard me in turn with impassive scorn. I glanced round the room, and at the walls adorned with the wise sayings of poets and philosophers,--sayings that reminded me of truths which I knew, yet never accepted as practicable; and presently my eyes were attracted to a corner near the writing-desk which I had not noticed before, where there was a small dim lamp burning. Above this lamp an ivory crucifix gleamed white against draperies of dark purple velvet,--below it, on a silver bracket, was an hour-glass through which the sand was running in glistening grains, and round the entire little shrine was written in letters of gold "Now is the acceptable time!"--the word 'Now' being in larger characters than the rest. 'Now' was evidently Mavis's motto,--to lose no moment, but to work, to pray, to love, to hope, to thank God and be glad for life, all in the 'Now'--and neither to regret the past nor forebode the future, but simply do the best that could be done, and leave all else in child-like confidence to the Divine Will. I got up restlessly,--the sight of the crucifix curiously annoyed me;--and I followed the path my wife and Mavis had taken through the garden. I found them looking in at the cage of the 'Athenæum' owls,--the owl-in-chief being as usual puffed out with his own importance, and swelling visibly with indignation and excess of feather. Sibyl turned as she saw me,--her face was bright and smiling.

"Miss Clare has very strong opinions of her own, Geoffrey," she said--"She is not as much captivated by Prince Rimânez as most people are,--in fact, she has just confided to me that she does not quite like him."

Mavis blushed, but her eyes met mine with fearless candour.

"It is wrong to say what one thinks, I know,--" she murmured in somewhat troubled accents--"And it is a dreadful fault of mine. Please forgive me Mr Tempest! You tell me the prince is your greatest friend,--and I assure you I was immensely impressed by his appearance when I first saw him, ... but afterwards, ... after I had studied him a little, the conviction was borne in upon me that he was not altogether what he seemed."

"That is exactly what he says of himself,"--I answered, laughing a little--"He has a mystery I believe,--and he has promised to clear it up for me some day. But I'm sorry you don't like him, Miss Clare,--for he likes you."

"Perhaps when I meet him again my ideas may be different"--said Mavis gently--"at present, ... well,--do not let us talk of it any more,--indeed I feel I have been very rude to express any opinion at all concerning one for whom you and Lady Sibyl have so great a regard. But somehow I seemed impelled, almost against my will, to say what I did just now."

Her soft eyes looked pained and puzzled, and to relieve her and change the subject, I asked if she was writing anything new.

"Oh yes,"--she replied--"It would never do for me to be idle. The public are very kind to me,--and no sooner have they read one thing of mine than they clamour for another, so I am kept very busy."

"And what of the critics?" I asked, with a good deal of curiosity.

She laughed.

"I never pay the least attention to them," she answered, "except when they are hasty and misguided enough to write lies about me,--then I very naturally take the liberty to contradict those lies, either through my own statement or that of my lawyers. Apart from refusing to allow the public to be led into a false notion of my work and aims, I have no grudge whatever against the critics. They are generally very poor hard-working men, and have a frightful struggle to live. I have often, privately, done some of them a good turn without their knowledge. A publisher of mine sent me an MS. the other day by one of my deadliest enemies on the press, and stated that my opinion would decide its rejection or acceptance,--I read it through, and though it was not very brilliant work, it was good enough, so I praised it as warmly as I could, and urged its publication, with the stipulation that the author should never be told I had had the casting vote. It has just come out I see,--and I'm sure I hope it will succeed." Here she paused to gather a few deep damask roses, which she handed to Sibyl. "Yes,--critics are very badly, even cruelly paid,"--she went on musingly--"It is not to be expected that they should write eulogies of the successful author, while they continue unsuccessful,--such work could not be anything but gall and wormwood to them. I know the poor little wife of one of them,--and settled her dressmaker's bill for her because she was afraid to show it to her husband. The very week afterwards he slashed away at my last book in the most approved style in the paper on which he is employed, and got, I suppose, about a guinea for his trouble. Of course he didn't know about his little wife and her dunning dressmaker; and he never will know, because I have bound her over to secrecy."

"But why do you do such things?" asked Sibyl astonished; "I would have let his wife get into the County Court for her bill, if I had been you!"

"Would you?" and Mavis smiled gravely--"Well, I could not. You know Who it was that said 'Bless them that curse you, and do good to them that hate you'? Besides, the poor little woman was frightened to death at her own expenditure. It is pitiful, you know, to see the helpless agonies of people who _will_ live beyond their incomes,--they suffer much more than the beggars in the street who make frequently more than a pound a day by merely whining and snivelling. The critics are much more in evil case than the beggars--few of them make even a pound a day, and of course they regard as their natural enemies the authors who make thirty to fifty pounds a week. I assure you I am very sorry for critics all round,--they are the least-regarded and worst-rewarded of all the literary community. And I never bother myself at all about what they say of me, except as I before observed, when in their haste they tell lies,--then of course it becomes necessary for me to state the truth in simple self-defence as well as by way of duty to my public. But as a rule I hand over all my press-notices to Tricksy there,"--indicating the minute Yorkshire terrier who followed closely at the edge of her white gown,--"and he tears them to indistinguishable shreds in about three minutes!"

She laughed merrily, and Sibyl smiled, watching her with the same wonder and admiration that had been expressed in her looks more or less since the beginning of our interview with this light-hearted possessor of literary fame. We were now walking towards the gate, preparatory to taking our departure.

"May I come and talk to you sometimes?" my wife said suddenly, in her prettiest and most pleading voice--"It would be such a privilege!"

"You can come whenever you like in the afternoons,"--replied Mavis readily--"The mornings belong to a goddess more dominant even than Beauty;--Work!"

"You never work at night?" I asked.

"Indeed no! I never turn the ordinances of Nature upside down, as I am sure I should get the worst of it if I made such an attempt. The night is for sleep--and I use it thankfully for that blessed purpose."

"Some authors can only write at night though," I said.

"Then you may be sure they only produce blurred pictures and indistinct characterization," said Mavis--"Some I know there are, who invite inspiration through gin or opium, as well as through the midnight influences, but I do not believe in such methods. Morning, and a freshly rested brain are required for literary labour,--that is, if one wants to write a book that will last for more than one 'season.'"

She accompanied us to the gate and stood under the porch, her big dog beside her, and the roses waving high over her head.

"At any rate work agrees with you,"--said Sibyl fixing upon her a long, intent, almost envious gaze--"You look perfectly happy."

"I _am_ perfectly happy,"--she answered, smiling--"I have nothing in all the world to wish for, except that I may die as peacefully as I have lived."

"May that day be far distant!" I said earnestly.

She raised her soft meditative eyes to mine.

"Thank you!" she responded gently--"But I do not mind when it comes, so long as it finds me ready."

She waved her hand to us as we left her and turned the corner of the lane,--and for some minutes we walked on slowly in absolute silence. Then at last Sibyl spoke--

"I quite understand the hatred there is in some quarters for Mavis Clare,"--she said--"I am afraid I begin to hate her myself!"

I stopped and stared at her, astonished and confounded.

"You begin to hate her----you?--and why?"

"Are you so blind that you cannot perceive why?" she retorted, the little malign smile I knew so well playing round her lips--"Because she is happy! Because she has no scandals in her life, and because she dares to be content! One longs to make her miserable! But how to do it? She believes in a God,--she thinks all He ordains is right and good. With such a firm faith as that, she would be happy in a garret earning but a few pence a day. I see now perfectly how she has won her public,--it is by the absolute conviction she has herself of the theories of life she tries to instil. What can be done against her? Nothing! But I understand why the critics would like to 'quash' her,--if I were a critic, fond of whiskey-and-soda, and music-hall women, I should like to quash her myself for being so different to the rest of her sex!"

"What an incomprehensible woman you are, Sibyl!" I exclaimed with real irritation,--"You admire Miss Clare's books,--you have always admired them,--you have asked her to become your friend,--and almost in the same breath you aver you would like to 'quash' her or to make her miserable! I confess I cannot understand you!"

"Of course you cannot!" she responded tranquilly, her eyes resting upon me with a curious expression, as we paused for an instant under the deep shade of a chestnut tree before entering our own grounds--"I never supposed you could, and unlike the ordinary _femme incomprise_, I have never blamed you for your want of comprehension. It has taken me some time to understand myself, and even now I am not quite sure that I have gauged the depths or shallownesses of my own nature correctly. But on this matter of Mavis Clare, can you not imagine that badness may hate goodness? That the confirmed drunkard may hate the sober citizen? That the outcast may hate the innocent maiden? And that it is possible that I,--reading life as I do, and finding it loathsome in many of its aspects,--distrusting men and women utterly,--and being destitute of any faith in God,--may hate,--yes _hate_,"--and she clenched her hand on a tuft of drooping leaves and scattered the green fragments at her feet--"a woman who finds life beautiful, and God existent,--who takes no

## part in our social shams and slanders,--and who in place of my

self-torturing spirit of analysis, has secured an enviable fame and the honour of thousands, allied to a serene content? Why it would be something worth living for, to make such a woman wretched for once in her life!--but, as she is constituted, it is impossible to do it."

She turned from me and walked slowly onward,--I following in a pained silence.

"If you do not mean to be her friend, you should tell her so,"--I said presently--"You heard what she said about pretended protestations of regard?"

"I heard,"--she replied morosely--"She is a clever woman, Geoffrey, and you may trust her to find me out without any explanation!"

As she said this, I raised my eyes and looked full at her,--her exceeding beauty was becoming almost an agony to my sight, and in a sudden fool's paroxysm of despair I exclaimed--

"O Sibyl, Sibyl! Why were you made as you are!"

"Ah, why indeed!" she rejoined, with a faint mocking smile--"And why, being made as I am, was I born an Earl's daughter? If I had been a drab of the street, I should have been in my proper place,--and novels would have been written about me, and plays,--and I might have become such a heroine as should cause all good men to weep for joy because of my generosity in encouraging their vices! But as an Earl's daughter, respectably married to a millionaire, am a mistake of nature. Yet nature does make mistakes sometimes Geoffrey, and when she does they are generally irremediable!"

We had now reached our own grounds, and I walked, in miserable mood, beside her across the lawn towards the house.

"Sibyl,"--I said at last--"I had hoped you and Mavis Clare might be friends."

She laughed.

"So we shall be friends I daresay,--for a little while"--she replied--"But the dove does not willingly consort with the raven, and Mavis Clare's way of life and studious habits would be to me insufferably dull. Besides, as I said before, she, as a clever woman and a thinker, is too clear-sighted not to find me out in the course of time. But I will play humbug as long as I can. If I perform the part of 'county lady' or 'patron,' of course she won't stand me for a moment. I shall have to assume a much more difficult rôle,--that of an honest woman!"

Again she laughed,--a cruel little laugh that chilled my blood, and paced slowly into the house through the open windows of the drawing-room. And I, left alone in the garden among the nodding roses and waving trees, felt that the beautiful domain of Willowsmere had suddenly grown hideous and bereft of all its former charm, and was nothing but a haunted house of desolation,--haunted by an all-dominant and ever victorious Spirit of Evil.

XXVIII

One of the strangest things in all the strange course of our human life is the suddenness of certain unlooked-for events, which, in a day or even an hour, may work utter devastation where there has been more or less peace, and hopeless ruin where there has been comparative safety. Like the shock of an earthquake, the clamorous incidents thunder in on the regular routine of ordinary life, crumbling down our hopes, breaking our hearts, and scattering our pleasures into the dust and ashes of despair. And this kind of destructive trouble generally happens in the midst of apparent prosperity, without the least warning, and with all the abrupt fierceness of a desert-storm. It is constantly made manifest to us in the unexpected and almost instantaneous downfall of certain members of society who have held their heads proudly above their compeers and have presumed to pose as examples of light and leading to the whole community; we see it in the capricious fortunes of kings and statesmen, who are in favour one day and disgraced the next, and vast changes are wrought with such inexplicable quickness that it is scarcely wonderful to hear of certain religious sects who, when everything is prospering more than usually well with them, make haste to put on garments of sackcloth, and cast ashes on their heads, praying aloud "Prepare us, O Lord, for the evil days which are at hand!" The moderation of the Stoics, who considered it impious either to rejoice or grieve, and strove to maintain an equable middle course between the opposing elements of sorrow and joy, without allowing themselves to be led away by over-much delight or over-much melancholy, was surely a wise habit of temperament. I, who lived miserably as far as my inner and better consciousness was concerned, was yet outwardly satisfied with the material things of life and the luxuries surrounding me,--and I began to take comfort in these things, and with them endeavoured to quell and ignore my more subtle griefs, succeeding so far in that I became more and more of a thorough materialist every day, loving bodily ease, appetizing food, costly wine, and personal indulgence to a degree that robbed me gradually of even the desire for mental effort. I taught myself moreover, almost insensibly, to accept and tolerate what I knew of the wanton side of my wife's character,--true, I respected her less than the Turk respects the creature of his harem,--but like the Turk, I took a certain savage satisfaction in being the possessor of her beauty, and with this feeling, and the brute passion it engendered, I was fain to be content. So that for a short time at least, the drowsy satisfaction of a well-fed, well-mated animal was mine,--I imagined that nothing short of a stupendous financial catastrophe to the country itself could exhaust my stock of cash,--and that therefore there was no necessity for me to exert myself in any particular branch of usefulness, but simply to 'eat drink and be merry' as Solomon advised. Intellectual

## activity was paralysed in me,--to take up my pen and write, and make

another and higher bid for fame, was an idea that now never entered my mind; I spent my days in ordering about my servants, and practising the petty pleasures of tyranny on gardeners and grooms, and in generally giving myself airs of importance, mingled with an assumption of toleration and benevolence, for the benefit of all those in my employ. I knew the proper thing to do, well enough!--I had not studied the ways of the over-wealthy for nothing,--I was aware that the rich man never feels so thoroughly virtuous as when he has inquired after the health of his coachman's wife, and has sent her a couple of pounds for the outfit of her new-born baby. The much prated-of 'kindness of heart' and 'generosity' possessed by millionaires, generally amounts to this kind of thing,--and when, if idly strolling about my parklands, I happened to meet the small child of my lodge-keeper, and then and there bestowed sixpence upon it, I almost felt as if I deserved a throne in Heaven at the right hand of the Almighty, so great was my appreciation of my own good-nature. Sibyl, however, never affected this sort of county-magnate beneficence. She did nothing at all among our poor neighbours;--the clergyman of the district unfortunately happened to let slip one day a few words to the effect that "there was no great want of anything among his parishioners, owing to the continual kindness and attention of Miss Clare,"--and Sibyl never from that moment proffered any assistance. Now and then she took her graceful person into Lily Cottage and sat with its happy and studious occupant for an hour,--and occasionally the fair author herself came and dined with us, or had 'afternoon tea' under the branching elms on the lawn,--but even I, intense egotist as I was, could see that Mavis was scarcely herself on these occasions. She was always charming and bright of course,--indeed the only times in which I was able to partially forget myself and the absurdly increasing importance of my personality in my own esteem, were when she, with her sweet voice and animated manner, brought her wide knowledge of books, men, and things, to bear on the conversation, thus raising it to a higher level than was ever reached by my wife or me. Yet I now and then noticed a certain vague constraint about her,--and her frank eyes had frequently a pained and questioning look of trouble when they rested for any length of time on the enchanting beauty of Sibyl's face and form. I, however, paid little heed to these trifling matters, my whole care being to lose myself more and more utterly in the enjoyment of purely physical ease and comfort, without troubling myself as to what such self-absorption might lead in the future. To be completely without a conscience, without a heart and without sentiment was, I perceived, the best way to keep one's appetite, and preserve one's health;--to go about worrying over the troubles of other people, or put one's self out to do any good in the world, would involve such an expenditure of time and trouble as must inevitably spoil one's digestion,--and I saw that no millionaire or even moderately rich man cares to run the risk of injuring his digestion for the sake of performing a kindness to a poorer fellow-creature. Profiting by the examples presented to me everywhere in society, I took care of _my_ digestion, and was particular about the way in which my meals were cooked and served,--particular too, as to the fashion in which my wife dressed for those meals,--for it suited my supreme humour to see her beauty bedecked as suitably and richly as possible, that I might have the satisfaction of considering her 'points' with the same epicurean fastidiousness as I considered a dish of truffles or specially prepared game. I never thought of the stern and absolute law--"Unto whom much is given, even from him should much be required;"--I was scarcely aware of it in fact,--the New Testament was of all books in the world the most unfamiliar to me. And while I wilfully deafened myself to the voice of conscience,--that voice which ever and anon urged me in vain to a nobler existence,--the clouds were gathering, ready to burst above me with that terrific suddenness such as always seems to us who refuse to study the causes of our calamities, as astonishing and startling as death itself. For we are always more or less startled at death notwithstanding that it is the commonest occurrence known.

Towards the middle of September my 'royal and distinguished' house-party arrived and stayed at Willowsmere Court for a week. Of course it is understood that whenever the Prince of Wales honours any private residence with a visit, he selects, if not all, at any rate the greater part of those persons who are to be invited to meet him. He did so in the present instance, and I was placed in the odd position of having to entertain certain people whom I had never met before, and who, with the questionable taste frequently exhibited among the 'upper ten,' looked upon me merely as "the man with the millions," the caterer for their provisions, and no more,--directing their chief attention to Sibyl, who was by virtue of her birth and associations one of their 'set,' and pushing me, their host, more or less into the background. However the glory of entertaining Royalty more than sufficed for my poor pride at that time, and with less self-respect than an honest cur, I was content to be snubbed and harassed and worried a hundred times a day by one or the other of the 'great' personages who wandered at will all over my house and grounds, and accepted my lavish hospitality. Many people imagine that it must be an 'honour' to entertain a select party of aristocrats, but I, on the contrary, consider that it is not only a degradation to one's manlier and more independent instincts, but also a bore. These highly-bred, highly-connected individuals, are for the most part unintelligent, and devoid of resources in their own minds,--they are not gifted as conversationalists or wits,--one gains no intellectual advantage from their society,--they are simply dull folk, with an exaggerated sense of their own importance, who expect wherever they go, to be amused without trouble to themselves. Out of all the visitors at Willowsmere the only one whom it was really a pleasure to serve was the Prince of Wales himself,--and amid the many personal irritations I had to suffer from others, I found it a positive relief to render him any attention, however slight, because his manner was always marked by that tact and courtesy which are the best attributes of a true gentleman whether he be prince or peasant. In his own affable way, he went one afternoon to see Mavis Clare, and came back in high good-humour, talking for some time of nothing but the author of 'Differences,' and of the success she had achieved in literature. I had asked Mavis to join our party before the Prince came, as I felt pretty sure he would not have erased her name from the list of guests submitted to him,--but she would not accept, and begged me very earnestly not to press the point.

"I like the Prince,"--she had said--"Most people like him who know him,--but I do not always like those who surround him,--pardon me for my frankness! The Prince of Wales is a social magnet,--he draws a number of persons after him who by dint of wealth, if not intelligence, can contrive to 'push' into his set. Now I am not an advocate of 'push'--moreover I do not care to be seen with 'everybody';--this is my sinful pride you will say, or as our American cousins would put it, my 'cussedness.' But I assure you, Mr Tempest, the best possession I have, and one which I value a great deal more even than my literary success, is my absolute independence, and I would not have it thought, even erroneously, that I am anxious to mix with the crowd of sycophants and time-servers who are only too ready to take advantage of the Prince's good-nature."

And, acting upon her determination, she had remained more than ever secluded in her cottage-nest of foliage and flowers during the progress of the week's festivities,--the result being, as I have stated, that the Prince 'dropped in' upon her quite casually one day, accompanied by his equerry, and probably for all I knew, had the pleasure of seeing the dove 'reviewers' fed, and squabbling over their meal.

Much as we had desired and expected the presence of Rimânez at our gathering, he did not appear. He telegraphed his regrets from Paris, and followed the telegram by a characteristic letter, which ran thus:--

My dear Tempest.

You are very kind to wish to include me, your old friend, in the party you have invited to meet His Royal Highness, and I only hope you will not think me churlish for refusing to come. I am sick to death of Royalties,--I have known so many of them in the course of my existence that I begin to find their society monotonous. Their positions are all so exactly alike too,--and moreover have always been alike from the days of Solomon in all his glory, down to the present blessed era of Victoria, Queen and Empress. One thirsts for a change; at least I do. The only monarch that ever fascinated my imagination particularly was Richard Coeur de Lion; there was something original and striking about that man, and I presume he would have been well worth talking to. And Charlemagne was doubtless, as the slangy young man of the day would observe, 'not half bad.' But for the rest,--_un fico!_ Much talk is there made about Her Majesty Elizabeth, who was a shrew and a vixen and blood-thirsty withal,--the chief glory of her reign was Shakespeare, and he made kings and queens the dancing puppets of his thought. In this, though in nothing else, I resemble him. You will have enough to do in the entertainment of your distinguished guests, for I suppose there is no amusement they have not tried, and found more or less unsatisfactory, and I am sorry I can suggest nothing

## particularly new for you to do. Her Grace the Duchess of Rapidryder

is very fond of being tossed in a strong table-cloth between four able-bodied gentlemen of good birth and discretion, before going to bed o' nights,--she cannot very well appear on a music-hall stage you know, owing to her exalted rank,--and this is a child-like, pretty and harmless method of managing to show her legs, which she rightly considers, are too shapely to be hidden. Lady Bouncer, whose name I see in your list, always likes to cheat at cards,--I would aid and abet her in her aim if I were you, as if she can only clear her dressmaker's bill by her winnings at Willowsmere, she will bear it in mind, and be a useful social friend to you. The Honourable Miss Fitz-Gander who has a great reputation for virtue, is anxious, for pressing and particular reasons, to marry Lord Noodles,--if you can move on matters between them into a definite engagement of marriage before her lady-mother returns from her duty-visits in Scotland, you will be doing her a good turn, and saving society a scandal. To amuse the men I suggest plenty of shooting, gambling, and unlimited smoking. To entertain the Prince, do little,--for he is clever enough to entertain himself privately with the folly and humbug of those he sees around him, without actually sharing in the petty comedy. He is a keen observer,--and must derive infinite gratification from his constant study of men and manners, which is sufficiently deep and searching to fit him for the occupation of even the throne of England. I say 'even,' for at present, till Time's great hour-glass turns, it is the grandest throne in the world. The Prince reads, understands, and secretly laughs to scorn the table-cloth vagaries of the Duchess of Rapidryder, the humours of my Lady Bouncer and the nervous pruderies of the Honourable Miss Fitz-Gander. And there is nothing he will appreciate so much in his reception as a lack of toadyism, a sincere demeanour, an unostentatious hospitality, a simplicity of speech, and a total absence of affectation. Remember this, and take my advice for what it is worth. Of all the Royalties at present flourishing on this paltry planet, I have the greatest respect for the Prince of Wales, and it is by reason of this very respect that I do not intend, on this occasion at any rate, to thrust myself upon his notice. I shall arrive at Willowsmere when your 'royal' festivities are over. My homage to your fair spouse, the Lady Sibyl, and believe me,

Yours as long as you desire it Lucio Rimânez.

I laughed over this letter and showed it to my wife, who did not laugh. She read it through with a closeness of attention that somewhat surprised me, and when she laid it down there was a strange look of pain in her eyes.

"How he despises us all!" she said slowly--"What scorn underlies his words! Do you not recognise it?"

"He was always a cynic,--" I replied indifferently--"I never expect him to be anything else."

"He seems to know some of the ways of the women who are coming here--" she went on in the same musing accents; "It is as if he read their thoughts, and perceived their intentions at a distance."

Her brows knitted frowningly, and she seemed for some time absorbed in gloomy meditation. But I did not pursue the subject,--I was too intent on my own fussy preparations for the Prince's arrival to care about anything else.

And, as I have said, Royalty, in the person of one of the most genial of men, came and went through the whole programme devised for his entertainment, and then departed again with his usual courteous acknowledgments for the hospitality offered and accepted,--leaving us, as he generally leaves everybody, charmed with his good-humour and condescension, provided his temper has not been ruffled. When, with his exit from the scene, the whole party broke up, leaving my wife and me to our own two selves once more, there came a strange silence and desolation over the house that was like the stealthy sense of some approaching calamity. Sibyl seemed to feel it as much as I did,--and though we said nothing to each other concerning our mutual sensations, I could see that she was under the same cloud of depression as myself. She went oftener to Lily Cottage, and always from these visits to the fair-haired student among the roses, came back, I hopefully fancied in softer mood,--her very voice was gentler,--her eyes more thoughtful and tender. One evening she said--

"I have been thinking, Geoffrey, that perhaps there is some good in life after all, if I could only find it out and _live_ it. But you are the last person to help me in such a matter."

I was sitting in an arm-chair near the open window, smoking, and I turned my eyes upon her with some astonishment and a touch of indignation.

"What do you mean, Sibyl?" I asked--"Surely you know that I have the greatest desire to see you always in your best aspect,--many of your ideas have been most repugnant to me...."

"Stop there!" she said quickly, her eyes flashing as she spoke--"My ideas have been repugnant to you, you say? What have _you_ done, you as my husband, to change those ideas? Have you not the same base passions as I?--and do you not give way to them as basely? What have I seen in you from day to day that I should take you as an example? You are master here, and you rule with all the arrogance wealth can give,--you eat, drink and sleep,--you entertain your acquaintances simply that you may astonish them by the excess of luxury in which you indulge,--you read and smoke, shoot and ride, and there an end,--you are an ordinary, not an exceptional man. Do you trouble to ask what is wrong with _me_?--do you try, with the patience of a great love, to set before me nobler aims than those I have consciously or unconsciously imbibed?--do you try to lead me, an erring, passionate, misguided woman, into what I dream of as the light,--the light of faith and hope which alone gives peace?"

And suddenly, burying her head in the pillows of the couch on which she leaned, she broke into a fit of smothered weeping.

I drew my cigar from my mouth and stared at her helplessly. It was about an hour after dinner, and a warm soft autumnal evening,--I had eaten and drunk well, and I was drowsy and heavy-brained.

"Dear me!" I murmured--"you seem very unreasonable, Sibyl! I suppose you are hysterical...."

She sprang up from the couch,--her tears dried on her cheeks as though by sheer heat of the crimson glow that flushed them, and she laughed wildly.

"Yes, that is it!" she exclaimed--"Hysteria!--nothing else! It is accountable for everything that moves a woman's nature. A woman has no right to have any emotions that cannot be cured by smelling-salts! Heart-ache?--pooh!--cut her stay-lace! Despair and a sense of sin and misery?--nonsense!--bathe her temples with vinegar! An uneasy conscience?--ah!--for an uneasy conscience there is nothing better than sal volatile! Woman is a toy,--a breakable fool's toy;--and when she _is_ broken, throw her aside and have done with her,--don't try to piece together the fragile rubbish!"

She ceased abruptly, panting for breath,--and before I could collect my thoughts or find any words wherewith to reply, a tall shadow suddenly darkened the embrasure of the window, and a familiar voice enquired--

"May I, with the privilege of friendship, enter unannounced?"

I started up.

"Rimânez!" I cried, seizing him by the hand.

"Nay, Geoffrey, my homage is due here first,"--he replied, shaking off my grasp, and advancing to Sibyl, who stood perfectly still where she had risen up in her strange passion--"Lady Sibyl, am I welcome?"

"Can you ask it!" she said, with an enchanting smile, and in a voice from which all harshness and excitement had fled; "More than welcome!" Here she gave him both her hands which he respectfully kissed. "You cannot imagine how much I have longed to see you again!"

"I must apologise for my sudden appearance, Geoffrey,"--he then observed, turning to me--"But as I walked here from the station and came up your fine avenue of trees, I was so struck with the loveliness of this place and the exquisite peace of its surroundings, that, knowing my way through the grounds, I thought I would just look about and see if you were anywhere within sight before I presented myself at the conventional door of entrance. And I was not disappointed,--I found you, as I expected, enjoying each other's society!--the happiest and most fortunate couple existent,--people whom, out of all the world I should be disposed to envy, if I envied worldly happiness at all, which I do not!"

I glanced at him quickly;--he met my gaze with a perfectly unembarrassed air, and I concluded that he had not overheard Sibyl's sudden melodramatic outburst.

"Have you dined?" I asked, with my hand on the bell.

"Thanks, yes. The town of Leamington provided me with quite a sumptuous repast of bread and cheese and ale. I am tired of luxuries you know,--that is why I find plain fare delicious. You are looking wonderfully well, Geoffrey!--shall I offend you if I say you are growing--yes--positively stout?--with the stoutness befitting a true county gentleman, who means to be as gouty in the future as his respectable ancestors?"

I smiled, but not altogether with pleasure; it is never agreeable to be called 'stout' in the presence of a beautiful woman to whom one has only been wedded a matter of three months.

"_You_ have not put on any extra flesh;--" I said, by way of feeble retort.

"No"--he admitted, as he disposed his slim elegant figure in an arm-chair near my own--"The necessary quantity of flesh is a bore to me always,--extra flesh would be a positive infliction. I should like, as the irreverent though reverend Sidney Smith said, on a hot day, 'to sit in my bones,' or rather, to become a spirit of fine essence like Shakespeare's Ariel, if such things were possible and permissible. How admirably married life agrees with _you_, Lady Sibyl!"

His fine eyes rested upon her with apparent admiration,--she flushed under his gaze I saw, and seemed confused.

"When did you arrive in England?" she inquired.

"Yesterday,"--he answered,--"I ran over Channel from Honfleur in my yacht,--you did not know I had a yacht, did you Tempest?--oh, you must come for a trip in her some day. She is a quick vessel, and the weather was fair."

"Is Amiel with you?" I asked.

"No. I left him on board the yacht. I can, as the common people say, 'valet myself' for a day or two."

"A day or two?" echoed Sibyl--"But you surely will not leave us so soon? You promised to make a long visit here."

"Did I?" and he regarded her steadily, with the same languorous admiration in his eyes--"But, my dear Lady Sibyl, time alters our ideas, and I am not sure whether you and your excellent husband are of the same opinion as you were when you started on your wedding-tour. You may not want me now!"

He said this with a significance to which I paid no heed whatever.

"Not want you!" I exclaimed--"I shall always want you Lucio,--you are the best friend I ever had, and the only one I care to keep. Believe me!--there's my hand upon it!"

He looked at me curiously for a minute,--then turned his head towards my wife.

"And what does Lady Sibyl say?" he asked in a gentle, almost caressing tone.

"Lady Sibyl says," she answered with a smile, and the colour coming and going in her cheeks--"that she will be proud and glad if you will consider Willowsmere your home as long as you have leisure to make it so,--and that she hopes,--though you are reputed to be a hater of women,--" here she raised her beautiful eyes and fixed them full upon him--"you will relent a little in favour of your present châtelaine!"

With these words, and a playful salutation, she passed out of the room into the garden, and stood on the lawn at a little distance from us, her white robes shimmering in the mellow autumnal twilight,--and Lucio, springing up from his seat, looked after her, clapping his hand down heavily on my shoulder.

"By Heaven!" he said softly, "A perfect woman! I should be a churl to withstand her,--or you, my good Geoffrey,"--and he regarded me earnestly--"I have led a very devil of a life since I saw you last,--it's time I reformed,--upon my soul it is! The peaceful contemplation of virtuous marriage will do me good!--send for my luggage to the station, Geoffrey, and make the best of me,--_I've come to stay!_"

XXIX

A tranquil time now ensued; a time which, though I knew it not, was just that singular pause so frequently observed in nature before a storm, and in human life before a crushing calamity. I put aside all troublesome and harassing thoughts, and became oblivious of everything save my own personal satisfaction in the renewal of the comradeship between myself and Lucio. We walked together, rode together, and passed most of our days in each other's company,--nevertheless though I gave my friend much of my closest confidence I never spoke to him of the moral obliquities and perversions I had discovered in Sibyl's character,--not out of any consideration for Sibyl, but simply because I knew by instinct what his reply would be. He would have no sympathy with my feelings. His keen sense of sarcasm would over-rule his friendship, and he would retort upon me with the question--What business had I, being imperfect myself, to expect perfection in my wife? Like many others of my sex I had the notion that I, as man, could do all I pleased, when I pleased and how I pleased; I could sink to a level lower than that of the beasts if I chose,--but all the same I had the right to demand from my wife the most flawless purity to mate with my defilement. I was aware how Lucio would treat this form of arrogant egoism,--and with what mocking laughter he would receive any expression of ideas from me on the subject of morality in woman. So I was careful to let no hint of my actual position escape me,--and I comported myself on all occasions to Sibyl with special tenderness and consideration, though she, I thought, appeared rather to resent my playing the part of lover-husband too openly. She was herself, in Lucio's presence, strangely erratic of humour, by turns brilliant and mournful,--sometimes merry and anon depressed: yet never had she displayed a more captivating grace and charm of manner. How foolish and blind I was all the while!--how dead to any perception of the formation and sequence of events! Absorbed in gross material pleasures, I ignored all the hidden forces that make the history of an individual life no less than of a whole nation, and looked upon each day that dawned almost as if it had been my own creation and possession, to waste as I thought fit,--never considering that days are but so many white leaflets from God's chronicle of human life, whereon we place our mark, good or bad, for the just and exact summing-up of our thoughts and deeds here after. Had any one dared to say this truth to me then, I should have bade him go and preach nonsense to children,--but _now_,--when I recall those white leaves of days that were unrolled before me fresh and blank with every sunrise, and with which I did nothing save scrawl my own Ego in a foul smudge across each one, I tremble, and inwardly pray that I may never be forced to send back my self-written record! Yet of what use is it to pray against eternal Law? It is eternal Law that we shall ourselves count up our own misdeeds at the final reckoning,--hence it is no wonder that many are found who prefer not to believe in a future after death. Rightly do such esteem it better to die utterly, than be forced to live again and look back upon the wilful evil they have done!

October ripened slowly and almost imperceptibly towards its end, and the trees put on their gorgeous autumnal tints of burning crimson and gold. The weather remained fine and warm, and what the French Canadians poetically term the 'Summer of all Saints' gave us bright days and cloudless moonlit evenings. The air was so mild that we were always able to take our coffee after dinner on the terrace overlooking the lawn in front of the drawing-room,--and it was on one of these balmy nights that I was the interested spectator of a strange scene between Lucio and Mavis Clare,--a scene I should have thought impossible of occurrence had I not myself witnessed it. Mavis had dined at Willowsmere; she very rarely so honoured us; and there were a few other guests besides. We had lingered over the coffee longer than usual, for Mavis had given an extra charm to the conversation by her eloquent vivacity and bright humour, and all present were anxious to hear, see and know as much of the brilliant novelist as possible. But when a full golden moon rose in mellow splendour over the tree-tops, my wife suggested a stroll in the grounds, and everyone agreeing to the proposal with delight, we started,--more or less together,--some in couples, some in groups of three or four. After a little desultory rambling however, the party got separated in the rose-gardens and adjacent shrubberies, and I found myself alone. I turned back to the house to get my cigar-case which I had left on a table in the library, and passing out again in another direction I strolled slowly across the grass, smoking as I went, towards the river, the silver gleam of which could clearly be discerned through the fast-thinning foliage overhanging its banks. I had almost reached the path that followed the course of the winding water, when I was brought to a standstill by the sound of voices--one, a man's, low and persuasive,--the other a woman's, tender, grave and somewhat tremulous. Neither voice could be mistaken; I recognized Lucio's rich penetrating tones, and the sweet _vibrante_ accents of Mavis Clare. Out of sheer surprise I paused,--had Lucio fallen in love, I wondered, half-smiling?--was I about to discover that the supposed 'woman-hater' had been tamed and caught at last? By Mavis too!--little Mavis, who was not beautiful according to accepted standards, but who had something more than beauty to enravish a proud and unbelieving soul,--here, as my thoughts ran on, I was conscious of a foolish sense of jealousy,--why should he choose Mavis, I thought, out of all women in the world? Could he not leave her in peace with her dreams, her books and her flowers?--safe under the pure, wise, impassive gaze of Pallas Athene, whose cool brows were never fevered by a touch of passion? Something more than curiosity now impelled me to listen, and I cautiously advanced a step or two towards the shadow of a broad elm where I could see without being seen. Yes, there was Rimânez,--standing erect with folded arms, his dark, sad, inscrutable eyes fixed on Mavis, who stood opposite to him a few paces off, looking at him in her turn with an expression of mingled fascination and fear.

"I have asked you Mavis Clare,"--said Lucio slowly--"to let me serve you. You have genius--a rare quality in a woman,--and I would advance your fortunes. I should not be what I am if I did not try to persuade you to let me help on your career. You are not rich,--I could show you how to become so. You have a great fame--that I grant; but you have many enemies and slanderers who are for ever trying to pull you down from the throne you have won. I could bring these to your feet, and make them your slaves. With your intellectual power, your personal grace and gifts of temperament, I could, if you would let me guide you, give you such far-reaching influence as no woman has possessed in this century. I am no boaster,--I can do what I say and more; and I ask nothing from you in return except that you should follow my advice implicitly. My advice, let me tell you is not difficult to follow; most people find it easy!"

His expression of face, I thought, was very singular as he spoke,--it was so haggard, dreary and woe-begone that one might have imagined he was making some proposal that was particularly repugnant to him, instead of offering to perform the benevolent action of helping a hard-working literary woman to achieve greater wealth and distinction. I waited expectantly for Mavis to reply.

"You are very good, Prince Rimânez," she said, after a little pause--"to take any thought for me at all. I cannot imagine why you should do so; for I am really nothing to you. I have of course heard from Mr Tempest of your great wealth and influence, and I have no doubt you mean kindly. But I have never owed anything to any one,--no one has ever helped me,--I have helped myself, and still prefer to do so. And really I have nothing to wish for,--except--when the time comes--a happy death. It is true I am not rich,--but then I do not want to be rich. I would not be the possessor of wealth for all the world! To be surrounded with sycophants and flatterers,--never to be able to distinguish false friends from true,--to be loved for what you _have_ and not for what you _are_!--oh no, it would be misery to me. And I have never craved for power,--except perhaps the power to win love. And that I have,--many people love my books, and through my books love me,--I feel their love, though I may never see or know them personally. But I am so conscious of their sympathy that I love them in return without the necessity of personal acquaintance. They have hearts which respond to _my_ heart,--that is all the power I care about."

"You forget your numerous enemies!" said Lucio, still morosely regarding her.

"No, I do not forget them,"--she returned,--"But--I forgive them! They can do me no harm. As long as I do not lower myself, no one else can lower me. If my own conscience is clear, no reproaches can wound. My life is open to all,--people can see how I live, and what I do. I try to do well,--but if there are those who think I do ill, I am sorry,--and if my faults can be amended I shall be glad to amend them. One must have enemies in this world,--that is, if one makes any sort of position,--people without enemies are generally nonentities. All who succeed in winning some little place of independence must expect the grudging enmity of hundreds who cannot find even the smallest foothold, and are therefore failures in the battle of life,--I pity these sincerely, and when they say or write cruel things of me, I know it is only spleen and disappointment that moves both their tongues and pens, and freely pardon them. They cannot hurt or hinder me,--in fact, no one can hurt or hinder me but myself."

I heard the trees rustle slightly,--a branch cracked,--and peering through the leaves, I saw that Lucio had advanced a step closer to where Mavis stood. A faint smile was on his face, softening it wonderfully and giving an almost supernatural light to his beautiful dark features.

"Fair philosopher, you are almost a feminine Marcus Aurelius in your estimate of men and things!"--he said; "But--you are still a woman--and there is one thing lacking to your life of sublime and calm contentment--a thing at whose touch philosophy fails, and wisdom withers at its root. Love, Mavis Clare!--lover's love,--devoted love, blindly passionate,--this has not been yours as yet to win! No heart beats against your own,--no tender arms caress you,--you are alone. Men are for the most part afraid of you,--being brute fools themselves, they like their women to be brute fools also,--and they grudge you your keen intellect,--your serene independence. Yet which is best?--the adoration of a brute fool, or the loneliness pertaining to a spirit aloft on some snowy mountain-peak, with no companions but the stars? Think of it!--the years will pass, and you must needs grow old,--and with the years will come that solitary neglect which makes age bitter. Now, you will doubtless wonder at my words--yet believe me I speak the truth when I say that I can give you love,--not _my_ love, for I love none,--but I can bring to your feet the proudest men in any country of the world as suitors for your hand. You shall have your choice of them, and your own time for choosing,--and whomsoever you love, him you shall wed, ... why--what is wrong with you that you shrink from me thus?"

For she had retreated, and was gazing at him in a kind of horror.

"You terrify me!" she faltered,--and as the moonlight fell upon her I could see that she was very pale--"Such promises are incredible--impossible! You speak as if you were more than human! I do not understand you, Prince Rimânez,--you are different to anyone I ever met, and ... and ... something in me stronger than myself warns me against you. What are you?--why do you talk to me so strangely? Pardon me if I seem ungrateful ..., oh, let us go in--it is getting quite late I am sure, and I am cold ..."

She trembled violently, and caught at the branch of a tree to steady herself,--Rimânez stood immovably still, regarding her with a fixed and almost mournful gaze.

"You say my life is lonely,"--she went on reluctantly and with a note of pathos in her sweet voice--"and you suggest love and marriage as the only joys that can make a woman happy. You may be right. I do not presume to assert that you are wrong. I have many married women-friends--but I would not change my lot with any one of them. I have dreamed of love,--but because I have not realized my dream I am not the less content. If it is God's will that I should be alone all my days, I shall not murmur, for _my_ solitude is not actual loneliness. Work is a good comrade,--then I have books, and flowers and birds--I am never really lonely. And that I shall fully realize my dream of love one day I am sure,--if not here, then hereafter. I can wait!"

As she spoke, she looked up to the placid heavens where one or two stars twinkled through the arching boughs,--her face expressed angelic confidence and perfect peace,--and Rimânez advancing a step or two, fully confronted her with a strange light of exultation in his eyes.

"True,--you can wait, Mavis Clare!" he said in deep clear tones from which all sadness had fled--"You can afford to wait! Tell me,--think for a moment!--can you remember me? Is there a time on which you can look back, and looking, see my face, not here but elsewhere? Think! Did you ever see me long ago--in a far sphere of beauty and light, when you were an Angel, Mavis,--and I was--not what I am now! How you tremble! You need not fear me,--I would not harm you for a thousand worlds! I talk wildly at times I know;--I think of things that are past,--long long past,--and I am filled with regrets that burn my soul with fiercer heat than fire! And so neither world's wealth, world's power, nor world's love will tempt you, Mavis!--and you,--a woman! You are a living miracle then,--as miraculous as the drop of undefiled dew which reflects in its tiny circumference all the colours of the sky, and sinks into the earth sweetly, carrying moisture and refreshment where it falls. I can do nothing for you--you will not have my aid--you reject my service? Then as I may not help you, you must help _me_!"--and dropping before her, he reverently took her hand and kissed it--"I ask a very little thing of you,--pray for me! I know you are accustomed to pray, so it will be no trouble to you,--_you_ believe God hears you,--and when I look at you, _I_ believe it too. Only a pure woman can make faith possible to man. Pray for me then, as one who has fallen from his higher and better self,--who strives, but who may not attain,--who labours under heavy punishment,--who would fain reach Heaven, but who by the cursëd will of man, and man alone, is kept in Hell! Pray for me, Mavis Clare! promise it!--and so shall you lift me a step nearer the glory I have lost!"

I listened, petrified with amazement. Could this be Lucio?--the mocking, careless, cynical scoffer I knew, as I thought, so well?--was it really he who knelt thus like a repentant sinner, abasing his proud head before a woman? I saw Mavis release her hand from his, the while she stood looking down upon him in alarm and bewilderment. Presently she spoke in sweet yet tremulous accents--

"Since you desire it so earnestly, I promise,"--she said--"I will pray that the strange and bitter sorrow which seems to consume you may be removed from your life----"

"Sorrow!" he echoed, interrupting her and springing to his feet with an impassioned gesture--"Woman,--genius,--angel, whatever you are, do not speak of _one_ sorrow for me! I have a thousand thousand sorrows!--aye a million million, that are as little flames about my heart, and as deeply seated as the centres of the universe! The foul and filthy crimes of men,--the base deceits and cruelties of women,--the ruthless, murderous ingratitude of children,--the scorn of good, the martyrdom of intellect, the selfishness, the avarice, the sensuality of human life, the hideous blasphemy and sin of the creature to the Creator--these are _my_ endless sorrows!--these keep me wretched and in chains, when I would fain be free. These create hell around me, and endless torture,--these bind and crush me and pervert my being till I become what I dare not name to myself, or to others. And yet, ... as the eternal God is my witness, ... I do not think I am as bad as the worst man living! I may tempt--but I do not pursue,--I take the lead in many lives, yet I make the way I go so plain that those who follow me do so by their own choice and free will more than by my persuasion!" He paused,--then continued in a softer tone--"You look afraid of me,--but be assured you never had less cause for terror. You have truth and purity--I honour both. You will have none of my advice or assistance in the making of your life's history,--to-night therefore we part, to meet no more on earth. Never again, Mavis Clare!--no, not through all your quiet days of sweet and contented existence will I cross your path,--before Heaven I swear it!"

"But why?" asked Mavis gently, approaching him now as she spoke, with a soft grace of movement, and laying her hand on his arm--"Why do you speak with such a passion of self-reproach? What dark cloud is on your mind? Surely you have a noble nature,--and I feel that I have wronged you in my thoughts, ... you must forgive me--I have mistrusted you--"

"You do well to mistrust me!" he answered, and with these words he caught both her hands and held them in his own, looking at her full in the face with eyes that flashed like jewels, "Your instinct teaches you rightly. Would there were many more like you to doubt me and repel me! One word,--if, when I am gone, you ever think of me, think that I am more to be pitied than the veriest paralysed and starving wretch that ever crawled on earth,--for he, perchance, has hope--and I have none. And when you pray for me--for I hold you to this promise,--pray for one who dares not pray for himself! You know the words, 'Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil'? To-night you have been led into temptation, though you knew it not, but you have delivered yourself from evil as only a true soul can. And now farewell! In life I shall see you no more:--in death,--well! I have attended many death-beds in response to the invitations of the moribund,--but I shall not be present at yours! Perhaps, when your parting spirit is on the verge between darkness and light, you may know who I was, and am!--and you may thank God with your last breath that we parted to-night--as we do now--forever!"

He loosened his grasp of her,--she fell back from him pale and terrified,--for there was something now in the dark beauty of his face that was unnatural and appalling. A sombre shadow clouded his brows,--his eyes had gleams in them as of fire,--and a smile was on his lips, half tender, half cruel. His strange expression moved even me to a sense of fear, and I shivered with sudden cold, though the air was warm and balmy. Slowly retreating, Mavis moved away, looking round at him now and then as she went, in wistful wonder and alarm,--till in a minute or two her slight figure in its shimmering silken white robe, had vanished among the trees. I lingered, hesitating and uncertain what to do,--then finally determining to get back to the house if possible without being noticed, I made one step, when Lucio's voice, scarcely raised, addressed me--

"Well, eavesdropper! Why did you not come out of the shadow of that elm-tree and see the play to a better advantage?"

Surprised and confused, I advanced, mumbling some unintelligible excuse.

"You saw a pretty bit of acting here," he went on, striking a match and lighting a cigar the while he regarded me coolly, his eyes twinkling with their usual mockery--"you know my theory, that all men and all women are purchaseable for gold? Well, I wanted to try Mavis Clare. She rejected all my advantageous offers, as you must have heard, and I could only make matters smooth by asking her to pray for me. That I did this very melodramatically I hope you will admit? A woman of that dreamy idealistic temperament always likes to imagine that there is a man who is grateful for her prayers!"

"You seemed very much in earnest about it!" I said, vexed with myself that he had caught me spying.

"Why, of course!" he responded, thrusting his arm familiarly through mine--"I had an audience! Two fastidious critics of dramatic art heard me rant my rantings,--I had to do my best!"

"Two critics?" I repeated perplexedly.

"Yes. You on one side,--Lady Sibyl on the other. Lady Sibyl rose, after the custom of fashionable beauties at the opera, before the last scene, in order to get home in good time for supper!"

He laughed wildly and discordantly, and I felt desperately uncomfortable.

"You must be mistaken Lucio--" I said--"That _I_ listened I admit,--and it was wrong of me to do so,--but my wife would never condescend ..."

"Ah, then it must have been a sylph of the woods that glided out of the shadow with a silken train behind her and diamonds in her hair!" he retorted gaily--"Tut Geoffrey!--don't look so crestfallen. I have done with Mavis Clare, and she with me. I have not been making love to her,--I have simply, just to amuse myself, tested her character,--and I find it stronger than I thought. The combat is over. She will never go my way,--nor, I fear, shall I ever go hers!"

"Upon my word, Lucio," I said with some irritation--"Your disposition seems to grow more and more erratic and singular every day!"

"Does it not!" he answered with a droll affectation of interested surprise in himself--"I am a curious creature altogether! Wealth is mine and I care not a jot for it,--power is mine and I loathe its responsibility;--in fact I would rather be anything but what I am! Look at the lights of your 'home, sweet home' Geoffrey!" this he said as we emerged from among the trees on to the moonlit lawn, from whence could be seen the shining of the electric lamps in the drawing-room--"Lady Sibyl is there,--an enchanting and perfect woman, who lives but to welcome you to her embracing arms! Fortunate man!--who would not envy you! Love!--who would, who could exist without it--save me! Who, in Europe at least, would forego the delights of kissing,--(which the Japanese by-the-by consider a disgusting habit),--without embraces,--and all those other endearments which are supposed to dignify the progress of true love! One never tires of these things,--there is no satiety! I wish I could love somebody!"

"So you can, if you like,"--I said, with a little uneasy laugh.

"I cannot. It is not in me. You heard me tell Mavis Clare as much. I have it in my power to make other people fall in love, somewhat after the dexterous fashion practised by match-making mothers,--but for myself, love on this planet is too low a thing--too brief in duration. Last night, in a dream,--I have strange dreams at times,--I saw one whom possibly I could love,--but she was a Spirit, with eyes more lustrous than the morning, and a form as transparent as flame;--she could sing sweetly, and I watched her soaring upward, and listened to her song. It was a wild song, and to many mortal ears meaningless,--it was something like this ..." and his rich baritone pealed lusciously forth in melodious tune--

Into the Light, Into the heart of the fire! To the innermost core of the deathless flame I ascend,--I aspire! Under me rolls the whirling Earth With the noise of a myriad wheels that run Ever round and about the sun,-- Over me circles the splendid heaven Strewn with the stars of morn and even, And I a queen Of the air serene, Float with my flag-like wings unfurled, Alone--alone--'twixt God and the world!

Here he broke off with a laugh. "She was a strange Spirit,"--he said--"because she could see nothing but herself ''twixt God and the world.' She was evidently quite unaware of the numerous existing barriers put up by mankind between themselves and their Maker. I wonder what unenlightened sphere she came from!"

I looked at him in mingled wonder and impatience.

"You talk wildly,"--I said--"And you sing wildly. Of things that mean nothing, and _are_ nothing."

He smiled, lifting his eyes to the moon, now shining her fullest and brightest.

"True!" he replied--"Things which have meaning and are valuable, have all to do with money or appetite, Geoffrey! There is no wider outlook evidently! But we were speaking of love, and I hold that love should be eternal as hate. Here you have the substance of my religious creed if I have any,--that there are two spiritual forces ruling the universe--love and hate,--and that their incessant quarrel creates the general confusion of life. Both contend one against the other,--and only at Judgment-Day will it be proved which is the strongest. I am on the side of Hate myself,--for at present Hate has scored all the victories worth winning, while Love has been so often martyred that there is only the poor ghost of it left on earth."

At that moment my wife's figure appeared at the drawing-room window, and Lucio threw away his half-smoked cigar.

"Your guardian-angel beckons!" he said, looking at me an odd expression of something like pity mingled with disdain,--"Let us go in."

XXX

The very next night but one after Lucio's strange interview with Mavis Clare, the thunderbolt destined to wreck my life and humiliate me to the dust, fell with appalling suddenness. No warning given!--it came at a moment when I had dared to deem myself happy. All that day,--the last day I was ever to know of pride or self-gratulation,--I had enjoyed life to the full; it was a day too in which Sibyl had seemed transformed to a sweeter, gentler woman than I had hitherto known her,--when all her attractions of beauty and manner were apparently put forth to captivate and enthrall me as though she were yet to be wooed and won. Or,--did she mean to bewitch and subjugate Lucio? Of this I never thought,--never dreamed:--I only saw in my wife an enchantress of the most voluptuous and delicate loveliness,--a woman whose very garments seemed to cling to her tenderly as though proud of clothing so exquisite a form,--a creature whose every glance was brilliant, whose every smile was a ravishment,--and whose voice, attuned to the softest and most caressing tones appeared in its every utterance to assure me of a deeper and more lasting love than I had yet enjoyed. The hours flew by on golden wings,--we all three,--Sibyl, myself and Lucio,--had attained, as I imagined, to a perfect unity of friendship and mutual understanding,--we had passed that last day together in the outlying woods of Willowsmere, under a gorgeous canopy of autumn leaves, through which the sun shed mellow beams of rose and gold,--we had had an _al fresco_ luncheon in the open air,--Lucio had sung for us wild old ballads and love-madrigals till the very foliage had seemed to tremble with joy at the sound of such entrancing melody,--and not a cloud had marred the perfect peace and pleasure of the time. Mavis Clare was not with us,--and I was glad. Somehow I felt that of late she had been more or less a discordant element whenever she had joined our party. I admired her,--in a sort of fraternal half-patronizing way I even loved her,--nevertheless I was conscious that her ways were not as our ways,--her thoughts not as our thoughts. I placed the fault on her of course; I concluded that it was because she had what I elected to call 'literary egoism,' instead of by its rightful name, the spirit of honourable independence. I never considered the inflated quality of my own egoism,--the poor pride of a 'cash and county' position, which is the pettiest sort of vain-glory anyone can indulge in,--and after turning the matter over in my mind, I decided that Mavis was a very charming young woman with great literary gifts, and an amazing pride, which made it totally impossible for her to associate with many 'great' people, so-called,--as she would never descend to the necessary level of flunkeyish servility which they expected, and which _I_ certainly demanded. I should almost have been inclined to relegate her to 'Grub Street,' had not a faint sense of justice as well as shame held me back from doing her that indignity even in my thoughts. However I was too much impressed with my own vast resources of unlimited wealth, to realize the fact that anyone who, like Mavis, earns independence by intellectual work and worth alone, is entitled to feel a far greater pride than those who by mere chance of birth or heritage become the possessors of millions. Then again, Mavis Clare's literary position was, though I liked her personally, always a kind of reproach to me when I thought of my own abortive efforts to win the laurels of fame. So that on the whole I was glad she did not spend that day with us in the woods;--of course, if I had paid any attention to the "trifles which make up the sum of life" I should have remembered that Lucio had told her he would "meet her no more on earth,"--but I judged this to be a mere trifle of hasty and melodramatic speech, without any intentional meaning.

So my last twenty-four hours of happiness passed away in halcyon serenity,--I felt a sense of deepening pleasure in existence, and I began to believe that the future had brighter things in store for me than I had lately ventured to expect. Sibyl's new phase of gentleness and tenderness towards me, combined with her rare beauty, seemed to augur that the misunderstandings between us would be of short duration, and that her nature, too early rendered harsh and cynical by a 'society' education would soften in time to that beautiful womanliness which is, after all, woman's best charm. Thus I thought, in blissful and contented reverie, reclining under the branching autumnal foliage, with my fair wife beside me, and listening to the rich tones of my friend Lucio's magnificent voice pealing forth sonorous, wild melodies, as the sunset deepened in the sky and the twilight shadows fell. Then came the night--the night which dropped only for a few hours over the quiet landscape, but for ever over me!

We had dined late, and, pleasantly fatigued with our day in the open air, had retired early. I had latterly grown a heavy sleeper, and I suppose I must have slumbered some hours, when I was awakened suddenly as though by an imperative touch from some unseen hand. I started up in my bed,--the night-lamp was burning dimly, and by its glimmer I saw that Sibyl was no longer at my side. My heart gave one bound against my ribs and then almost stood still--a sense of something unexpected and calamitous chilled my blood. I pushed aside the embroidered silken hangings of the bed and peered into the room,--it was empty. Then I rose hastily, put on my clothes and went to the door,--it was carefully shut, but not locked as it had been when we retired for the night. I opened it without the least noise, and looked out into the long passage,--no one there! Immediately opposite the bedroom door there was a winding oak staircase leading down to a broad corridor, which in former times had been used as a music-room or picture-gallery,--an ancient organ, still sweet of tone, occupied one end of it with dull golden pipes towering up to the carved and embossed ceiling,--the other end was lit by a large oriel window like that of a church, filled with rare old stained glass, representing in various niches the lives of the saints, the centre subject being the martyrdom of St Stephen. Advancing with soft caution to the balustrade overlooking this gallery, I gazed down into it, and for a moment could see nothing on the polished floor but the criss-cross patterns made by the moonlight falling through the great window,--but presently, as I watched breathlessly, wondering where Sibyl could have gone to at this time of night, I saw a dark tall Shadow waver across the moonlit network of lines, and I heard the smothered sound of voices. With my pulses beating furiously, and a sensation of suffocation in my throat,--full of strange thoughts and suspicions which I dared not define, I crept slowly and stealthily down the stair, till as my foot touched the last step I saw--what nearly struck me to the ground with a shock of agony--and I had to draw back and bite my lips hard to repress the cry that nearly escaped them. There,--there before me in the full moonlight, with the colours of the red and blue robes of the painted saints on the window glowing blood-like and azure about her, knelt my wife,--arrayed in a diaphanous garment of filmy white which betrayed rather than concealed the outline of her form,--her wealth of hair falling about her in wild disorder,--her hands clasped in supplication,--her pale face upturned; and above her towered the dark imposing figure of Lucio! I stared at the twain with dry burning eyes,--what did this portend? Was she--my wife--false? Was he--my friend--a traitor?

"Patience----patience!----" I muttered to myself--"This is a piece of

## acting doubtless----such as chanced the other night with Mavis

Clare!----patience!----let us hear this----this comedy!" And, drawing myself close up against the wall, I leaned there, scarcely drawing breath, waiting for _her_ voice,--for _his_;--when they spoke I should know,----yes, I should know all! And I fastened my looks on them as they stood there,--vaguely wondering even in my tense anguish, at the fearful light on Lucio's face,--a light which could scarcely be the reflection of the moon, as he backed the window,--and at the scorn of his frowning brows. What terrific humour swayed him?--why did he, even to my stupefied thought appear more than human?--why did his very beauty seem hideous at that moment, and his aspect fiendish? Hush--hush! _She_ spoke,--my wife,--I heard her every word--heard all and endured all, without falling dead at her feet in the extremity of my dishonour and despair!

"I love you!" she wailed--"Lucio, I love you, and my love is killing me! Be merciful!--have pity on my passion!--love me for one hour, one little hour!--it is not much to ask, and afterwards,--do with me what you will,--torture me, brand me an outcast in the public sight, curse me before Heaven--I care nothing--I am yours body and soul--I love you!"

Her accents vibrated with mad idolatrous pleading,--I listened infuriated, but dumb. "Hush,--hush!" I told myself "This is a comedy--not yet played out!" And I waited, with every nerve strained, for Lucio's reply. It came, accompanied by a laugh, low and sarcastic.

"You flatter me!" he said--"I regret I am unable to return the compliment!"

My heart gave a throb of relief and fierce joy,--almost I could have joined in his ironical laughter. She--Sibyl--dragged herself nearer to him.

"Lucio--Lucio!" she murmured--"Have you a heart? Can you reject me when I pray to you thus?--when I offer you all myself,--all that I am, or ever hope to be? Am I so repugnant to you? Many men would give their lives if I would say to them what I say to you,--but they are nothing to me--you alone are my world,--the breath of my existence!--ah, Lucio, can you not believe, will you not realize how deeply I love you!"

He turned towards her with a sudden fierce movement that startled me,--and the cloud of scorn upon his brows grew darker.

"I know you love me!" he said, and from where I stood I saw the cold derisive smile flash from his lips to his eyes in lightning-like mockery--"I have always known it! Your vampire soul leaped to mine at the first glance I ever gave you,--you were a false foul thing from the first, and you recognized your master! Yes--your Master!" for she had uttered a faint cry as if in fear,--and he, stooping, snatched her two hands and grasped them hard in his own--"Listen to the truth of yourself for once from one who is not afraid to speak it!--you love me,--and truly your body and soul are mine to claim, if I so choose! You married with a lie upon your lips; you swore fidelity to your husband before God, with infidelity already in your thoughts, and by your own act made the mystical blessing a blasphemy and a curse! Wonder not then that the curse has fallen! I knew it all!--the kiss I gave you on your wedding-day put fire in your blood and sealed you mine!--why, you would have fled to me that very night, had I demanded it,--had I loved you as you love me,--that is, if you choose to call the disease of vanity and desire that riots in your veins, by such a name as love! But now hear _me_!" and as he held her two wrists he looked down upon her with such black wrath depicted in his face as seemed to create a darkness round him where he stood,--"I hate you! Yes--I hate you, and all such women as you! For you corrupt the world,--you turn good to evil,--you deepen folly into crime,--with the seduction of your nude limbs and lying eyes, you make fools, cowards and beasts of men! When you die, your bodies generate foulness,--things of the mould and slime are formed out of the flesh that was once fair for man's delight,--you are no use in life--you become poison in death,--I hate you all! I read your soul--it is an open book to me--and it is branded with a name given to those who are publicly vile, but which should, of strict right and justice, be equally bestowed on women of your position and type, who occupy pride and place in this world's standing, and who have not the excuse of poverty for selling themselves to the devil!"

He ceased abruptly and with passion, making a movement as though to fling her from him,--but she clung to his arm,--clung with all the pertinacity of the loathly insect he had taken from the bosom of the dead Egyptian woman and made a toy of to amuse his leisure! And I, looking on and listening, honoured him for his plain speaking, for his courage in telling this shameless creature what she was in the opinion of an honest man, without glozing over her outrageous conduct for the sake of civility or social observance. My friend,--my more than friend! He was true,--he was loyal--he had neither desire nor intent to betray or dishonour me. My heart swelled with gratitude to him, and also with a curious sense of feeble self-pity,--compassionating myself intensely, I could have sobbed aloud in nervous fury and pain, had not my desire to hear more, repressed my personal excitement and emotion. I watched my wife wonderingly--what had become of her pride that she still knelt before the man who had taunted her with such words as should have been beyond all endurance?

"Lucio! ... Lucio!" she whispered, and her whisper sounded through the long gallery like the hiss of a snake--"Say what you will--say all you will of me,--you can say nothing that is not true. I am vile--I own it. But is it of much avail to be virtuous? What pleasure comes from goodness?--what gratification from self-denial? There is no God to care! A few years, and we all die, and are forgotten even by those who loved us,--why should we lose such joys as we may have for the mere asking? Surely it is not difficult to love even me for an hour?--am I not fair to look upon?--and is all this beauty of my face and form worthless in your sight, and you no more than man? Murder me as you may with all the cruelty of cruel words, I care nothing!--I love you--love you!"--and in a perfect passion of self-abandonment she sprang to her feet, tossing back her rich hair over her shoulders, and stood erect, a very bacchante of wild loveliness--"Look at me! You shall not,--you dare not spurn such a love as mine!"

Dead silence followed her outburst,--and I stared in fascinated awe at Lucio as he turned more fully round and confronted her. The expression of his countenance struck me then as quite unearthly,--his beautiful broad brows were knitted in a darkling line of menace,--his eyes literally blazed with scorn, and yet he laughed,--a low laugh, resonant with satire.

"Shall not!--dare not!" he echoed disdainfully--"Woman's words,--woman's ranting!--the shriek of the outraged feminine animal who fails to attract, as she thinks, her chosen mate. Such a love as yours!--what is it? Degradation to whosoever shall accept it,--shame to whosoever shall rely upon it! You make a boast of your beauty; your mirror shows you a pleasing image,--but your mirror lies!--as admirably as you do! You see within it not the reflection of yourself, for that would cause you to recoil in horror, ... you merely look upon your fleshly covering, a garment of tissues, shrinkable, perishable, and only fit to mingle with the dust from which it sprang. Your beauty! I see none of it,--I see You! and to me you are hideous, and will remain hideous for ever. I hate you!--I hate you with the bitterness of an immeasurable and unforgiving hatred,--for you have done me a wrong,--you have wrought an injury upon me,--you have added another burden to the load of punishment I carry!"

She made a forward movement with outstretched arms,--he repulsed her by a fierce gesture.

"Stand back!" he said--"Be afraid of me, as of an unknown Terror! O pitiless Heaven!--to think of it!--but a night ago I was lifted a step nearer to my lost delight!--and now this woman drags me back, and down!--and yet again I hear the barring of the gates of Paradise! O infinite torture! O wicked souls of men and women!--is there no touch of grace or thought of God left in you!--and will ye make my sorrows eternal!"

He stood, lifting his face to the light where it streamed through the oriel window, and the moonbeams colouring themselves faintly roseate as they filtered through the painted garments of St Stephen, showed a great and terrible anguish in his eyes. I heard him with amazement and awe,--I could not imagine what he meant by his strange words,--and it was evident by her expression, that my reckless and abandoned wife was equally mystified.

"Lucio,"--she murmured--"Lucio, ... what is it ... what have I done?--I who would not wound you for the world?--I who but seek your love, Lucio, to repay it in full with such fond passion and tenderness as you have never known! For this and this only, I married Geoffrey,--I chose your friend as husband because he was your friend!" (O perfidious woman!) "and because I saw his foolish egotism--his pride in himself and his riches,--his blind confidence in me and in you;--I knew that I could, after a time, follow the fashion of many another woman in my set and choose my lover,--ah, my lover!--I had chosen him already,--I have chosen you, Lucio!--yes, though you hate me you cannot hinder me from loving you,--I shall love you till I die!"

He turned his gaze upon her steadily,--the gloom deepening on his brows.

"And after you die?" he said--"Will you love me then?"

There was a stern derision in his tone which appeared to vaguely terrify her.

"After death! ..." she stammered.

"Yes,--after death!" he repeated sombrely--"There _is_ an after;--as your mother knows!" A faint exclamation escaped her,--she fixed her eyes upon him affrightedly. "Fair lady," he went on--"your mother was, like yourself, a voluptuary. She, like you, made up her mind to 'follow the fashion' as you put it, as soon as her husband's 'blind' or willing confidence was gained. She chose, not one lover but many. You know her end. In the written but miscomprehended laws of Nature, a diseased body is the natural expression of a diseased mind,--her face in her last days was the reflex of her soul. You shudder?--the thought of her hideousness is repellent to your self-conscious beauty? Yet the evil that was in her is also in you,--it festers in your blood slowly but surely, and as you have no faith in God to cure the disease, it will have its way--even at the final moment when death clutches at your throat and stops your breathing. The smile upon your frozen lips then will not be the smile of a saint, believe me, but of a sinner! Death is never deceived, though life may be. And afterwards ... I ask again, will you love me, do you think? ... when you know WHO I am?"

I was myself startled at his manner of putting this strange question;--I saw her lift her hands beseechingly towards him, and she seemed to tremble.

"When I know who you are!" she repeated wonderingly--"Do I not know? You are Lucio,--Lucio Rimânez--my love,--my love!--whose voice is my music,--whose beauty I adore,--whose looks are my heaven" ...

"And Hell!" he interposed, with a low laugh--"Come here!"

She went towards him eagerly, yet falteringly. He pointed to the ground,--I saw the rare blue diamond he always wore on his right hand, flash like a flame in the moonrays.

"Since you love me so well,"--he said--"Kneel down and worship me!"

She dropped on her knees--and clasped her hands,--I strove to move,--to speak,--but some resistless force held me dumb and motionless;--the light from the stained glass window fell upon her face, and showed its fairness illumined by a smile of perfect rapture.

"With every pulse of my being I worship you!" she murmured passionately--"My king!--my god! The cruel things you say but deepen my love for you,--you can kill, but you can never change me! For one kiss of your lips I would die,--for one embrace from you I would give my soul! ..."

"Have you one to give?" he asked derisively--"Is it not already disposed of? You should make sure of that first! Stay where you are and let me look at you! So!--a woman, wearing a husband's name, holding a husband's honour, clothed in the very garments purchased with a husband's money, and newly risen from a husband's side, steals forth thus in the night, seeking to disgrace him and pollute herself by the vulgarest unchastity! And this is all that the culture and training of nineteenth-century civilization can do for you? Myself, I prefer the barbaric fashion of old times, when rough savages fought for their women as they fought for their cattle, treated them as cattle, and kept them in their place, never dreaming of endowing them with such strong virtues as truth and honour! If women were pure and true, then the lost happiness of the world might return to it,--but the majority of them are like you, liars, ever pretending to be what they are not. I may do what I choose with you, you say? torture you, kill you, brand you with the name of outcast in the public sight, and curse you before Heaven--if I will only love you!--all this is melodramatic speech, and I never cared for melodrama at any time. I shall neither kill you, brand you, curse you, nor love you;--I shall simply--call your husband!"

I stirred from my hiding-place,--then stopped. She sprang to her feet in an insensate passion of anger and shame.

"You dare not!" she panted--"You dare not so ... disgrace me!"

"Disgrace you!" he echoed scornfully--"That remark comes rather late, seeing you have disgraced yourself!"

But she was now fairly roused. All the savagery and obstinacy of her nature was awakened, and she stood like some beautiful wild animal at bay, trembling from head to foot with the violence of her emotions.

"You repulse me,--you scorn me!" she muttered in hurried fierce accents that scarcely rose above an angry whisper--"You make a mockery of my heart's anguish and despair, but you shall suffer for it! I am your match,--nay your equal! You shall not spurn me a second time! You ask, will I love you when I know who you are,--it is your pleasure to deal in mysteries, but I have no mysteries--I am a woman who loves you with all the passion of a life,--and I will murder myself and you, rather than live to know that I have prayed you for your love in vain. Do you think I came unprepared?--no!" and she suddenly drew from her bosom a short steel dagger with a jewelled hilt, a _curio_ I recognized as one of the gifts to her on her marriage; "Love me, I say!--or I will stab myself dead here at your feet, and cry out to Geoffrey that you have murdered me!"

She raised the weapon aloft,--I almost sprang forward--but I drew back again quickly as I saw Lucio seize the hand that held the dagger and drag it firmly down,--while, wresting the weapon from her clutch he snapped it asunder and flung the pieces on the floor.

"Your place was the stage, Madam!" he said--"You should have been the chief female mime at some 'high-class' theatre! You would have adorned the boards, drawn the mob, had as many lovers, stagey and private as you pleased, been invited to act at Windsor, obtained a payment-jewel from the Queen, and written your name in her autograph album. That should undoubtedly have been your 'great' career--you were born for it--made for it! You would have been as brute-souled as you are now,--but that would not have mattered,--mimes are exempt from chastity!"

In the action of breaking the dagger, and in the intense bitterness of his speech he had thrust her back a few paces from him, and she stood breathless and white with rage, eyeing him in mingled passion and terror. For a moment she was silent,--then advancing slowly with the feline suppleness of movement which had given her a reputation for grace exceeding that of any woman in England, she said in deliberately measured accents--

"Lucio Rimânez, I have borne your insults as I would bear my death at your hands, because I love you. You loathe me, you say--you repulse me,--I love you still! You cannot cast me off--I am yours! You shall love me, or I will die,--one of the two. Take time for thought,--I leave you to-night,--I give you all to-morrow to consider,--love me,--give me yourself,--be my lover,--and I will play the comedy of social life as well as any other woman,--so well that my husband shall never know. But refuse me again as you have refused me now, and I will make away with myself. I am not 'acting,'--I am speaking calmly and with conviction; I mean what I say!"

"Do you?" queried Lucio coldly--"Let me congratulate you! Few women attain to such coherence!"

"I will put an end to this life of mine;" she went on, paying no sort of heed to his words--"I cannot endure existence without your love, Lucio!" and a dreary pathos vibrated in her voice--"I hunger for the kisses of your lips,--the clasp of your arms! Do you know--do you ever think of your own power?--the cruel, terrible power of your eyes, your speech, your smile,--the beauty which makes you more like an angel than a man,--and have you no pity? Do you think that ever a man was born like you?" he looked at her as she said this, and a faint smile rested on his lips--"When you speak, I hear music--when you sing, it seems to me that I understand what the melodies of a poet's heaven must be;--surely, surely you know that your very looks are a snare to the warm weak soul of a woman! Lucio!--" and emboldened by his silence, she stole nearer to him--"Meet me to-morrow in the lane near the cottage of Mavis Clare...."

He started as if he had been stung--but not a word escaped him.

"I heard all you said to her the other night;" she continued, advancing yet a step closer to his side--"I followed you,--and I listened. I was well-nigh mad with jealousy--I thought--I feared--you loved her,--but I was wrong. I never do thank God for anything,--but I thanked God that night that I was wrong! She was not made for you--I am! Meet me outside her house, where the great white rose-tree is in bloom--gather one,--one of those little autumnal roses and give it to me--I shall understand it as a signal--a signal that I may come to you to-morrow night and not be cursed or repulsed, but loved,--loved!--ah Lucio! promise me!--one little rose!--the symbol of an hour's love!--then let me die; I shall have had all I ask of life!"

With a sudden swift movement, she flung herself upon his breast, and circling her arms about his neck, lifted her face to his. The moonbeams showed me her eyes alit with rapture, her lips trembling with passion, her bosom heaving, ... the blood surged up to my brain, and a red mist swam before my sight, ... would Lucio yield? Not he!--he loosened her desperate hands from about his throat, and forced her back, holding her at arm's length.

"Woman, false and accurséd!" he said in tones that were sonorous and terrific--"You know not what you seek! All that you ask of life shall be yours in death!--this is the law,--therefore beware what demands you make lest they be too fully granted! A rose from the cottage of Mavis Clare?--a rose from the garden of Eden!--they are one and the same to me! Not for my gathering or yours! Love and joy? For the unfaithful there is no love,--for the impure there is no joy. Add no more to the measure of my hatred and vengeance!--Go while there is yet time,--go and front the destiny you have made for yourself--for nothing can alter it! And as for me, whom you love,--before whom you have knelt in idolatrous worship--" and a low fierce laugh escaped him--"why,--restrain your feverish desires, fair fiend!--have patience!--we shall meet ere long!"

I could not bear the scene another moment, and springing from my hiding-place, I dragged my wife away from him and flung myself between them.

"Let me defend you, Lucio, from the pertinacities of this wanton!" I cried with a wild burst of laughter--"An hour ago I thought she was my wife,--I find her nothing but a purchased chattel, who seeks a change of masters!"

XXXI

For one instant we all three stood facing each other,--I breathless and mad with fury,--Lucio calm and disdainful,--my wife staggering back from me, half-swooning with fear. In an access of black rage, I rushed upon her and seized her in my arms.

"I have heard you!" I said--"I have seen you! I have watched you kneel before my true friend, my loyal comrade there, and try your best to make him as vile as yourself! I am that poor fool, your husband,--that blind egoist whose confidence you sought to win--and to betray! I am the unhappy wretch whose surplus of world's cash has bought for him in marriage a shameless courtezan! You dare to talk of love? You profane its very name! Good God!--what are such women as you made of? You throw yourselves into our arms,--you demand our care--you exact our respect--you tempt our senses--you win our hearts,--and then you make fools of us all! Fools, and worse than fools,--you make us men without feeling, conscience, faith, or pity! If we become criminals, what wonder! If we do things that shame our sex, is it not because you set us the example? God--God! I, who loved you,--yes, loved you in spite of all that my marriage with you taught me,--I, who would have died to save you from a shadow of suspicion,--I am the one out of all the world you choose to murder by your treachery!"

I loosened my grasp of her,--she recovered her self-possession by an effort, and looked at me straightly with cold unfeeling eyes.

"What did you marry me for?" she demanded--"For my sake or your own?"

I was silent,--too choked with wrath and pain to speak. All I could do was to hold out my hand to Lucio, who grasped it with a cordial and sympathetic pressure. Yet ... I fancied he smiled!

"Was it because you desired to make me happy out of pure love for me?" pursued Sibyl--"Or because you wished to add dignity to your own position by wedding the daughter of an Earl? Your motives were not unselfish,--you chose me simply because I was the 'beauty' of the day whom London men stared at and talked of,--and because it gave you a certain 'prestige' to have me for your wife, in the same way as it gave you a footing with Royalty to be the owner of the Derby-winner. I told you honestly what I was before our marriage,--it made no effect upon your vanity and egoism. I never loved you,--I could not love you, and I told you so. You have heard, so you say, all that has passed between me and Lucio,--therefore you know why I married you. I state it boldly to your face,--it was that I might have your intimate friend for my lover. That you should pretend to be scandalized at this is absurd; it is a common position of things in France, and is becoming equally common in England. Morality has always been declared unnecessary for men,--it is becoming equally unnecessary for women!"

I stared at her, amazed at the glibness of her speech, and the cool convincing manner in which she spoke, after her recent access of passion and excitement.

"You have only to read the 'new' fiction,"--she went on, a mocking smile lighting up her pale face, "and indeed all 'new' literature generally, to be assured that your ideas of domestic virtue are quite out of date. Both men and women are, according to certain accepted writers of the day, at equal liberty to love when they will, and where they may. Polygamous purity is the 'new' creed! Such love, in fact, so we are taught, constitutes the only 'sacred' union. If you want to alter this 'movement,' and return to the old-fashioned types of the modest maiden and the immaculate matron, you must sentence all the 'new' writers of profitable pruriency to penal servitude for life, and institute a Government censorship of the modern press. As matters stand, your attitude of the outraged husband is not only ridiculous,--it is unfashionable. I assure you I do not feel the slightest prick of conscience in saying I love Lucio,--any woman might be proud of loving him;--he, however, will not, or cannot love me,--we have had a 'scene,' and you have completed the dramatic effect by witnessing it,--there is no more to be said or done in the affair. I do not suppose you can divorce me,--but if you can, you may--I shall make no defence."

She turned, as if to go;--I still stared dumbly at her, finding no words to cope with her effrontery,--when Lucio's voice, attuned to a grave and soothing suavity, interposed,--

"This is a very painful and distressing state of things,"--he said, and the strange half-cynical, half contemptuous smile still rested on his lips--"but I must positively protest against the idea of divorce, not only for her ladyship's sake, but my own. I am entirely innocent in the matter!"

"Innocent!" I exclaimed, grasping him again by the hand; "You are nobility itself, Lucio!--as loyal a friend as ever man had! I thank you for your courage,--for the plain and honest manner in which you have spoken. I heard all you said! Nothing was too strong,--nothing could be too strong to awaken this misguided woman to a sense of her outrageous conduct,--her unfaithfulness----"

"Pardon me!" he interrupted delicately--"The Lady Sibyl can scarcely be called unfaithful, Geoffrey. She suffers,----from----let us call it, a little exaltation of nerves! In thought she may be guilty of infidelity, but society does not know that,--and in act she is pure,--pure as the newly-driven snow,--and as the newly-driven snow, will society, itself immaculate, regard her!"

His eyes glittered,--I met his chill derisive glance.

"You think as I do, Lucio!" I said hoarsely--"You feel with me, that a wife's unchaste thought is as vile as her unchaste act. There is no excuse,--no palliative for such cruel and abominable ingratitude. Why,"--and my voice rose unconsciously as I turned fiercely again towards Sibyl--"Did I not free you and your family from the heavy pressure of poverty and debt? Have I grudged you anything? Are you not loaded with jewels?--have you not greater luxuries and liberties than a queen? And do you not owe me at least some duty?"

"I owe you nothing!" she responded boldly--"I gave you what you paid for,--my beauty and my social position. It was a fair bargain!"

"A dear and bitter one!" I cried.

"Maybe so. But such as it was, you struck it,--not I. You can end it when you please,--the law ..."

"The law will give you no freedom in such a case,"--interposed Lucio with a kind of satirical urbanity--"A judicial separation on the ground of incompatibility of temper might be possible certainly--but would not that be a pity? Her ladyship is unfortunate in her tastes,--that is all!--she selected me as her _cavaliere servente_, and I refused the situation,--hence there is nothing for it but to forget this unpleasant incident, and try to live on a better understanding for the future----"

"Do you think"--said my wife, advancing with her proud head uplifted in scorn, the while she pointed at me--"Do you think I will live with him after what he has seen and heard to-night? What do you take me for?"

"For a very charming woman of hasty impulses and unwise reasoning,"--replied Lucio, with an air of sarcastic gallantry--"Lady Sibyl, you are illogical,--most of your sex are. You can do no good by prolonging this scene,--a most unpleasant and trying one to us poor men. You know how we hate 'scenes'! Let me beg of you to retire! Your duty is to your husband; pray heaven he may forget this midnight delirium of yours, and set it down to some strange illness rather than to any evil intention."

For all answer she came towards him, stretching out her arms in wild appeal.

"Lucio!" she cried--"Lucio, my love! Good-night!--Good-bye!"

I sprang between him and her advancing form.

"Before my very face!" I exclaimed--"O infamous woman! Have you no shame?"

"None!" she said, with a wild smile--"I glory in my love for such a king of worth and beauty! Look at him!--and then look at yourself in the nearest mirror that reflects so poor and mean a picture of a man! How, even in your egoism, could you deem it possible for a woman to love _you_ when _he_ was near! Stand out of the light!--you interpose a shadow between my god and me!"

As she uttered these mad words, her aspect was so strange and unearthly, that out of sheer stupefied wonder, I mechanically did as she bade me, and stood aside. She regarded me fixedly.

"I may as well say good-bye to you also,"--she observed--"For I shall never live with you again."

"Nor I with you!" I said fiercely.

"Nor I with you--nor I with you!" she repeated like a child saying a lesson--"Of course not!--if I do not live with you, you cannot live with me!" She laughed discordantly; then turned her beseeching gaze once more upon Lucio--"Good-bye!" she said.

He looked at her with a curious fixity, but returned no word in answer. His eyes flashed coldly in the moonlight like sharp steel, and he smiled. She regarded him with such passionate intentness that it seemed as though she sought to draw his very soul into herself by the magnetism of her glance,--but he stood unmoved, a very statue of fine disdain and intellectual self-repression. My scarcely controlled fury broke out again at the sight of her dumb yearning, and I gave vent to a shout of scornful laughter.

"By heaven, a veritable new Venus and reluctant Adonis!" I cried deliriously--"A poet should be here to immortalize so touching a scene! Go--go!"--and I motioned her away with a furious gesture--"Go, if you do not want me to murder you! Go, with the proud consciousness that you have worked all the mischief and ruin that is most dear to the heart of a woman,--you have spoilt a life and dishonoured a name,--you can do no more,--your feminine triumph is complete! Go!--would to God I might never see your face again!--would to God I had been spared the misery of having married you!"

She paid no attention whatever to my words, but kept her eyes fixed on Lucio. Retreating slowly, she seemed to feel rather than see her way to the winding stair, and there, turning, she began to ascend. Half way up she paused--looked back and fully confronted us once more,--with a wild wicked rapture on her face she kissed her hands to Lucio, smiling like a spectral woman in a dream,--then she went onward and upward step by step, till the last white fold of her robe had vanished,--and we two,--my friend and I,--were alone. Facing one another we stood, silently,--I met his sombre eyes and thought I read an infinite compassion in them!--then,--while I yet looked upon him, something seemed to clutch my throat and stop my breathing,--his dark and beautiful countenance appeared to me to grow suddenly lurid as with fire,--a coronal of flame seemed to tremble above his brows,--the moonlight glistened blood-red!--a noise was in my ears of mingled thunder and music as though the silent organ at the end of the gallery were played by hands invisible;--struggling against these delusive sensations, I involuntarily stretched out my hands ...

"Lucio! ..." I gasped--"Lucio ... my friend! I think, ... I am, ... dying! My heart is broken!"

As I spoke, a great blackness closed over me,--and I fell senseless.

XXXII

Oh, the blessedness of absolute unconsciousness! It is enough to make one wish that death were indeed annihilation! Utter oblivion,--complete destruction,--surely this would be a greater mercy to the erring soul of man than the terrible God's-gift of Immortality,--the dazzling impress of that divine 'Image' of the Creator in which we are all made, and which we can never obliterate from our beings. I, who have realized to the full the unalterable truth of eternal life,--eternal regeneration for each individual spirit in each individual human creature,--look upon the endless futures through which I am compelled to take my part with something more like horror than gratitude. For I have wasted my time and thrown away priceless opportunities,--and though repentance may retrieve these, the work of retrieval is long and bitter. It is easier to lose a glory than to win it; and if I could have died the death that positivists hope for at the very moment when I learned the full measure of my heart's desolation, surely it would have been well! But my temporary swoon was only too brief,--and when I recovered I found myself in Lucio's own apartment, one of the largest and most sumptuously furnished of all the guest-chambers at Willowsmere,--the windows were wide open, and the floor was flooded with moonlight. As I shuddered coldly back to life and consciousness, I heard a tinkling sound of tune, and opening my eyes wearily I saw Lucio himself seated in the full radiance of the moon with a mandoline on his knee from which he was softly striking delicate impromptu melodies. I was amazed at this,--astounded that while I personally was overwhelmed with a weight of woe, _he_ should still be capable of amusing himself. It is a common idea with us all that when we ourselves are put out, no one else should dare to be merry,--in fact we expect Nature itself to wear a miserable face if our own beloved Ego is disturbed by any trouble,--such is the extent of our ridiculous self-consciousness. I moved in my chair and half rose from it,--when Lucio, still thrumming the strings of his instrument _piano pianissimo_, said--

"Keep still, Geoffrey! You'll be all right in a few minutes. Don't worry yourself."

"Worry myself!" I echoed bitterly--"Why not say don't kill yourself!"

"Because I see no necessity to offer you that advice at present--" he responded coolly--"and if there were necessity, I doubt if I should give it,--because I consider it better to kill one's self than worry one's self. However opinions differ. I want you to take this matter lightly."

"Lightly!--take my own dishonour and disgrace lightly!" I exclaimed, almost leaping from my chair--"You ask too much!"

"My good fellow, I ask no more than is asked and expected of a hundred 'society' husbands to-day. Consider!--your wife has been led away from her soberer judgment and reasoning by an exalted and hysterical passion for me on account of my looks,--not for myself at all--because she really does not know _Me_,--she only sees me as I appear to be. The love of handsome exterior personalities is a common delusion of the fair sex--and passes in time like other women's diseases. No actual dishonour or disgrace attaches to her or to you,--nothing has been seen, heard, or done, _in public_. This being so, I can't understand what you are making a fuss about. The great object of social life, you know, is to hide all savage passions and domestic differences from the gaze of the vulgar crowd. You can be as bad as you like in private--only God sees--and that does not matter!"

His eyes had a mocking lustre in them,--twanging his mandoline, he sang under his breath,

"If she be not fair for me What care I how fair she be!"

"That is the true spirit, Geoffrey,"--he went on--"It sounds flippant to you no doubt in your present tragic frame of mind,--but it is the only way to treat women, in marriage or out of it. Before the world and society, your wife is like Cæsar's, above suspicion. Only you and I (we will leave God out) have been the witnesses of her attack of hysteria ..."

"Hysteria, you call it! She loves you!" I said hotly--"And she has always loved you. She confessed it,--and you admitted that you always knew it!"

"I always knew she was hysterical--yes--if that is what you mean;"--he answered--"The majority of women have no real feelings, no serious emotions--except one--vanity. They do not know what a great love means,--their chief desire is for conquest,--and failing in this, they run up the gamut of baffled passion to the pitch of frenetic hysteria, which with some becomes chronic. Lady Sibyl suffers in this way. Now listen to me. I will go off to Paris or Moscow or Berlin at once,--after what has happened, of course I cannot stay here,--and I give you my word I will not intrude myself into your domestic circle again. In a few days you will tide over this rupture, and learn the wisdom of supporting the differences that occur in matrimony, with composure----"

"Impossible! I will not part with you!" I said vehemently--"Nor will I live with her! Better the companionship of a true friend than that of a false wife!"

He raised his eyebrows with a puzzled half humorous expression--then shrugged his shoulders, as one who gives up a difficult argument. Rising, he put aside his mandoline and came over to me, his tall imposing figure casting a gigantic shadow in the brilliant moonbeams.

"Upon my word, you put me in a very awkward position Geoffrey,--what is to be done? You can get a judicial separation if you like, but I think it would be an unwise course of procedure after barely four months of marriage. The world would be set talking at once. Really it is better to do anything than give the gossips a chance for floating scandal. Look here--don't decide anything hastily,--come up to town with me for a day, and leave your wife alone to meditate upon her foolishness and its possible consequences,--then you will be better able to judge as to your future movements. Go to your room, and sleep till morning."

"Sleep!" I repeated with a shudder--"In that room where she----" I broke off with a cry and looked at him imploringly--"Am I going mad, I wonder! My brain seems on fire! If I could forget! ... if I could forget! Lucio--if you, my loyal friend, had been false to me I should have died,--your truth, your honour have saved me!"

He smiled--an odd, cynical little smile.

"Tut----I make no boast of virtue"--he rejoined--"If the lady's beauty had been any temptation to me I might have yielded to her charms,--in so doing I should have been no more than man, as she herself suggested. But perhaps I _am_ more than man!--at anyrate bodily beauty in woman makes no sort of effect on me, unless it is accompanied by beauty of soul,--then it does make an effect, and a very extraordinary one. It provokes me to try how deep the beauty goes--whether it is impervious or vulnerable. As I find it, so I leave it!"

I stared wearily at the moonlight patterns on the floor.

"What am I to do?" I asked--"What would you advise?"

"Come up to town with me,"--he replied--"You can leave a note for your wife, explaining your absence,--and at one of the clubs we will talk over the matter quietly, and decide how best to avoid a social scandal. Meanwhile, go to bed. If you won't go back to your own room, sleep in the spare one next to mine."

I rose mechanically and prepared to obey him. He watched me furtively.

"Will you take a composing draught if I mix it for you?" he said--"It is harmless, and will give you a few hours' sleep."

"I would take poison from your hand!" I answered recklessly--"Why don't you mix _that_ for me?--and then, ... then I should sleep indeed,--and forget this horrible night!"

"No,--unfortunately you would not forget!" he said, going to his dressing-case and taking out a small white powder which he dissolved gradually in a glass of water--"That is the worst of what people call dying. I must instruct you in a little science by-and-by, to distract your thoughts. The scientific part of death,--the business that goes on behind the scenes you know--will interest you very much--it is highly instructive, particularly that section of it which I am entitled to call the regeneration of atoms. The brain-cells are atoms, and within these, are other atoms called memories, curiously vital and marvellously prolific! Drink this,"--and he handed me the mixture he had prepared--"For temporary purposes it is much better than death--because it does numb and paralyse the conscious atoms for a little while, whereas death only liberates them to a larger and more obstinate vitality."

I was too self-absorbed to heed or understand his words, but I drank what he gave me submissively and returned the glass,--he still watched me closely for about a minute. Then he opened the door of the apartment which adjoined his own.

"Throw yourself on that bed and close your eyes,"--he continued in somewhat peremptory accents--"Till morning breaks I give you a respite,--" and he smiled strangely--"both from dreams and memories! Plunge into Oblivion, my friend!--brief as it is and as it must ever be, it is sweet!--even to a millionaire!"

The ironical tone of his voice vexed me,--I looked at him half reproachfully, and saw his proud beautiful face, pale as marble, clear-cut as a cameo, soften as I met his eyes,--I felt he was sorry for me despite his love of satire,--and grasping his hand I pressed it fervently without offering any other reply. Then, going into the next room as he bade me, I lay down, and falling asleep almost instantly, I remembered no more.

XXXIII

With the morning came full consciousness; I realized bitterly all that had happened, but I was no longer inclined to bemoan my fate. My senses were stricken, as it seemed, too numb and rigid for any further outbreak of passion. A hard callousness took the place of outraged feeling; and though despair was in my heart, my mind was made up to one stern resolve,--I would look upon Sibyl no more. Never again should that fair face, the deceitful mask of a false nature, tempt my sight and move me to pity or forgiveness,--that I determined. Leaving the room in which I had passed the night, I went to my study and wrote the following letter;--

Sibyl.

After the degrading and disgraceful scene of last night you must be aware that any further intercourse between us is impossible. Prince Rimânez and I are leaving for London; we shall not return. You can continue to reside at Willowsmere,--the house is yours,--and the half of my fortune unconditionally settled upon you on our marriage-day will enable you to keep up the fashions of your 'set,' and live with that luxury and extravagance you deem necessary to an 'aristocratic' position. I have decided to travel,--and I intend to make such arrangements as may prevent, if possible, our ever meeting again,--though I shall of course do my best for my own sake, to avoid any scandal. To reproach you for your conduct would be useless; you are lost to all sense of shame. You have abased yourself in the humiliation of a guilty passion before a man who despises you,--who, in his own loyal and noble nature, hates you for your infidelity and hypocrisy,--and I can find no pardon for the wrong you have thus done to me, and the injury you have brought upon my name. I leave you to the judgment of your own conscience,--if you have one,--which is doubtful. Such women as you, are seldom troubled with remorse. It is not likely you will ever see me or the man to whom you have offered your undesired love again,--make of your life what you can or will, I am indifferent to your movements, and for my own part, shall endeavour as much as may be, to forget that you exist.

Your husband, Geoffrey Tempest.

This letter, folded and sealed, I sent to my wife in her own apartments by her maid,--the girl came back and said she had delivered it, but that there was no answer. Her ladyship had a severe headache and meant to keep her room that morning. I expressed just as much civil regret as a confidential maid would naturally expect from the newly-wedded husband of her mistress,--and then, giving instructions to my man Morris to pack my portmanteau, I partook of a hurried breakfast with Lucio in more or less silence and constraint, for the servants were in attendance, and I did not wish them to suspect that anything was wrong. For their benefit, I gave out that my friend and I were called suddenly to town on urgent business,--that we might be absent a couple of days, perhaps longer,--and that any special message or telegram could be sent on to me at Arthur's Club. I was thankful when we at last got away,--when the tall, picturesque red gables of Willowsmere vanished from my sight,--and when finally, seated in a railway smoking-carriage reserved for our two selves, we were able to watch the miles of distance gradually extending between us and the beautiful autumnal woods of poet-haunted Warwickshire. For a long time we kept silence, turning over and pretending to read the morning's papers,--till presently flinging down the dull and wearisome 'Times' sheet, I sighed heavily, and leaning back, closed my eyes.

"I am truly very much distressed about all this;" said Lucio then, with extreme gentleness and suavity--"It seems to me that _I_ am the adverse element in the affair. If Lady Sibyl had never seen _me_,----"

"Why, then I should never have seen _her_!" I responded bitterly--"It was through you I met her first."

"True!" and he eyed me thoughtfully--"I am very unfortunately placed!--it is almost as if I were to blame, though no-one could be more innocent or well-intentioned than myself!" He smiled,--then went on very gravely--"I really should avoid scandalous gossip if I were you,--I do not speak of my own involuntary share in the disaster,--what people say of me is quite immaterial; but for the lady's sake----"

"For my own sake I shall try to avoid it;" I said brusquely, whereat his eyes glittered strangely--"It is myself I have to consider most of all. I shall, as I hinted to you this morning, travel for a few years."

"Yes,--go on a tiger-hunting expedition in India,"--he suggested--"Or kill elephants in Africa. It is what a great many men do when their wives forget themselves. Several well-known husbands are abroad just now!"

Again the brilliant enigmatical smile flashed over his face,--but I could not smile in answer. I stared moodily out of the window at the bare autumnal fields, past which the train flew,--bare of harvest,--stripped of foliage--like my own miserable life.

"Come and winter with me in Egypt,"--he continued--"Come in my yacht 'The Flame,'--we will take her to Alexandria,--and then do the Nile in a dahabeah, and forget that such frivolous dolls as women exist except to be played with by us 'superior' creatures and thrown aside."

"Egypt----the Nile!" I murmured,--somehow the idea pleased me--"Yes,----why not?"

"Why not indeed!" he echoed--"The proposal is agreeable to you I am sure. Come and see the land of the old gods,--the land where my princess used to live and torture the souls of men!--perhaps we may discover the remains of her last victim,----who knows!"

I avoided his gaze;--the recollection of the horrible winged thing he persisted in imagining to be the transmigrated soul of an evil woman, was repugnant to me. Almost I felt as if there were some subtle connection between that hateful creature and my wife Sibyl. I was glad when the train reached London, and we, taking a hansom, were plunged into the very vortex of human life. The perpetual noise of traffic, the motley crowds of people, the shouting of news-boys and omnibus-conductors,--all this hubbub was grateful to my ears, and for a time at least, distracted my thoughts. We lunched at the Savoy, and amused ourselves with noting the town noodles of fashion,--the inane young man in the stocks of the stiff high collar, and wearing the manacles of equally stiff and exaggerated cuffs, a veritable prisoner in the dock of silly custom,--the frivolous fool of a woman, painted and powdered, with false hair and dyed eyebrows, trying to look as much like a paid courtezan as possible,--the elderly matron, skipping forward on high heels, and attempting by the assumption of juvenile airs and graces to cover up and conceal the obtrusive facts of a too obvious paunch and overlapping bosom,--the would-be dandy and 'beau' of seventy, strangely possessed by youthful desires, and manifesting the same by goat-like caperings at the heels of young married women;--these and such-like contemptible units of a contemptible social swarm, passed before us like puppets at a country fair, and aroused us in turn to laughter or disdain. While we yet lingered over our wine, a man came in alone, and sat down at the table next to ours;--he had with him a book, which, after giving his orders for luncheon, he at once opened at a marked place and began to read with absorbed attention,--I recognised the cover of the volume and knew it to be Mavis Clare's "Differences." A haze floated before my sight,--a sensation of rising tears was in my throat,--I saw the fair face, earnest eyes, and sweet smile of Mavis,--that woman-wearer of the laurel-crown,--that keeper of the lilies of purity and peace. Alas, those lilies!--they were for me

"des fleurs étranges,[3] Avec leurs airs de sceptres d'anges; De thyrses lumineux pour doigts de séraphins,-- Leurs parfums sont trop forts, tout ensemble, et trop fins!"

I shaded my eyes with one hand,--yet under that shade I felt that Lucio watched me closely. Presently he spoke softly, just as if he had read my thoughts.

"Considering the effect a perfectly innocent woman has on the mind of even an evil man, it's strange, isn't it that there are so few of them!"

I did not answer.

"In the present day," he went on--"there are a number of females clamouring like unnatural hens in a barn-yard about their 'rights' and 'wrongs.' Their greatest right, their highest privilege, is to guide and guard the souls of men. This, they for the most part, throw away as worthless. Aristocratic women, royal women even, hand over the care of their children to hired attendants and inferiors, and then are surprised and injured if those children turn out to be either fools or blackguards. If I were controller of the State, I would make it a law that every mother should be bound to nurse and guard her children herself as nature intended, unless prevented by ill-health, in which case she would have to get a couple of doctor's certificates to certify the fact. Otherwise, any woman refusing to comply with the law should be sentenced to imprisonment with hard labour. This would bring them to their senses. The idleness, wickedness, extravagance and selfishness of women, make men the boors and egotists they are."

I looked up.

"The devil is in the whole business;"--I said bitterly--"If women were good, men would have nothing to do with them. Look round you at what is called 'society'! How many men there are who deliberately choose tainted women for their wives, and leave the innocent uncared for! Take Mavis Clare----"

"Oh, you were thinking of Mavis Clare, were you?" he rejoined, with a quick glance at me--"But she would be a difficult prize for any man to win. She does not seek to be married,--and she is not uncared for, since the whole world cares for her."

"That is a sort of impersonal love;"--I answered--"It does not give her the protection such a woman needs, and ought to obtain."

"Do you want to become her lover?" he asked with a slight smile--"I'm afraid you've no chance!"

"I! Her lover! Good God!" I exclaimed, the blood rushing hotly to my face at the mere suggestion--"What a profane idea!"

"You are right,--it _is_ profane;"--he agreed, still smiling--"It is as though I should propose your stealing the sacramental cup from a church, with just this difference,--you might succeed in running off with the cup because it is only the church's property, but you would never succeed in winning Mavis Clare, inasmuch as she belongs to God. You know what Milton says:

'So dear to Heaven is saintly chastity That when a soul is found sincerely so, A thousand liveried angels lacquey her, Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt, And in clear dream and solemn vision Tell her of things which no gross ear can hear, Till oft converse with heavenly habitants Begin to cast a beam on th'outward shape The unpolluted temple of the mind, And turns it by degrees to the soul's essence Till all be made immortal!'

He quoted the lines softly and with an exquisite gravity.

"That is what you see in Mavis Clare,"--he continued--"that 'beam on the outward shape' which 'turns it by degrees to the soul's essence,'--and which makes her beautiful, without what is called beauty by lustful men."

I moved impatiently, and looked out from the window near which we were seated, at the yellow width of the flowing Thames below.

"Beauty, according to man's ordinary standard," pursued Lucio, "means simply good flesh,--nothing more. Flesh, arranged prettily and roundly on the always ugly skeleton beneath,--flesh, daintily coloured and soft to the touch, without scar or blemish. Plenty of it too, disposed in the proper places. It is the most perishable sort of commodity,--an illness spoils it,--a trying climate ruins it,--age wrinkles it,--death destroys it,--but it is all the majority of men look for in their bargains with the fair sex. The most utter _roué_ of sixty that ever trotted jauntily down Piccadilly pretending to be thirty, expects like Shylock his 'pound' or several pounds of youthful flesh. The desire is neither refined nor intellectual, but there it is,--and it is solely on this account that the 'ladies' of the music-hall become the tainted members and future mothers of the aristocracy."

"It does not need the ladies of the music-hall to taint the already tainted!" I said.

"True!" and he looked at me with kindly commiseration--"Let us put the whole mischief down to the 'new' fiction!"

We rose then, having finished luncheon, and leaving the Savoy we went on to Arthur's. Here we sat down in a quiet corner and began to talk of our future plans. It took me very little time to make up my mind,--all quarters of the world were the same to me, and I was really indifferent as to where I went. Yet there is always something suggestive and fascinating about the idea of a first visit to Egypt, and I willingly agreed to accompany Lucio thither, and remain the winter.

"We will avoid society"--he said--"The well-bred, well-educated 'swagger' people who throw champagne-bottles at the Sphinx, and think a donkey-race 'ripping fun' shall not have the honour of our company. Cairo is full of such dancing dolls, so we will not stay there. Old Nile has many attractions; and lazy luxury on a dahabeah will soothe your overwrought nerves. I suggest our leaving England within a week."

I consented,--and while he went over to a table and wrote some letters in preparation for our journey, I looked through the day's papers. There was nothing to read in them,--for though all the world's news palpitates into Great Britain on obediently throbbing electric wires, each editor of each little pennyworth, being jealous of every other editor of every other pennyworth, only admits into his columns exactly what suits his politics or personally pleases his taste, and the interests of the public at large are scarcely considered. Poor, bamboozled, patient public!--no wonder it is beginning to think that a halfpenny spent on a newspaper which is only purchased to be thrown away, enough and more than enough. I was still glancing up and down the tedious columns of the Americanized Pall Mall Gazette, and Lucio was still writing, when a page-boy entered with a telegram.

"Mr Tempest?"

"Yes." And I snatched the yellow-covered missive and tore it open,--and read the few words it contained almost uncomprehendingly. They ran thus--

"Return at once. Something alarming has happened. Afraid to act without you. Mavis Clare."

A curious chill came over me,--the telegram fell from my hands on the table. Lucio took it up and glanced at it. Then, regarding me stedfastly, he said--

"Of course you must go. You can catch the four-forty train if you take a hansom."

"And you?" I muttered. My throat was dry and I could scarcely speak.

"I'll stay at the Grand, and wait for news. Don't delay a moment,--Miss Clare would not have taken it upon herself to send this message, unless there had been serious cause."

"What do you think--what do you suppose----" I began.

He stopped me by a slight imperative gesture.

"I think nothing--I suppose nothing. I only urge you to start immediately. Come!"

And almost before I realized it, he had taken me with him out into the hall of the club, where he helped me on with my coat, gave me my hat, and sent for a cab to take me to the railway station. We scarcely exchanged farewells,--stupefied with the suddenness of the unexpected summons back to the home I had left in the morning, as I thought, for ever, I hardly knew what I was doing or where I was going, till I found myself alone in the train, returning to Warwickshire as fast as steam would bear me, with the gloom of the deepening dusk around me, and such a fear and horror at my heart as I dared not think of or define. What was the 'something alarming' that had happened? How was it that Mavis Clare had telegraphed to me? These, and endless other questions tormented my brain,--and I was afraid to suggest answers to any of them. When I arrived at the familiar station, there was no one waiting to receive me, so I hired a fly, and was driven up to my own house just as the short evening deepened into night. A low autumnal wind was sighing restlessly among the trees like a wandering soul in torment; not a star shone in the black depths of the sky. Directly the carriage stopped, a slim figure in white came out under the porch to meet me,--it was Mavis, her angel's face grave and pale with emotion.

"It is you at last!" she said in a trembling voice----"Thank God you have come!"

[3] _Edmond Rostand._ '_La Princesse Lointaine._'

XXXIV

I grasped her hands hard.

"What is it?"--I began;--then, looking round I saw that the hall was full of panic-stricken servants, some of whom came forward, confusedly murmuring together about being 'afraid,' and 'not knowing what to do.' I motioned them back by a gesture and turned again to Mavis Clare.

"Tell me,--quick--what is wrong?"

"We fear something has happened to Lady Sibyl,"--she replied at once--"Her rooms are locked, and we cannot make her hear. Her maid got alarmed, and ran over to my house to ask me what was best to be done,--I came at once, and knocked and called, but could get no response. You know the windows are too high to reach from the ground,--there is no ladder on the premises long enough for the purpose,--and no one can climb up that side of the building. I begged some of the servants to break open the door by force,--but they would not,--they were all afraid; and I did not like to act on my own responsibility, so I telegraphed for you----"

I sprang away from her before she had finished speaking and hurried upstairs at once,--outside the door of the ante-room which led into my wife's luxurious 'suite' of apartments, I paused breathless.

"Sibyl!" I cried.

There was not a sound. Mavis had followed me, and stood by my side, trembling a little. Two or three of the servants had also crept up the stairs, and were clinging to the banisters, listening nervously.

"Sibyl!" I called again. Still absolute silence. I turned round upon the waiting and anxious domestics with an assumption of calmness.

"Lady Sibyl is probably not in her rooms at all;"--I said; "She may have gone out unobserved. This door of the ante-chamber has a spring-lock,--it can easily get fast shut by the merest accident. Bring a strong hammer,--or a crowbar,--anything that will break it open,--if you had had sense you would have obeyed Miss Clare, and done this a couple of hours ago."

And I waited with enforced composure, while my instructions were carried out as rapidly as possible. Two of the men-servants appeared with the necessary tools, and very soon the house resounded with clamour,--blow after blow was dealt upon the solid oaken door for some time without success,--the spring lock would not yield,--neither would the strong hinges give way. Presently however, after ten minutes' hard labour, one of the finely carved panels was smashed in,--then another,--and, springing over the débris I rushed through the ante-room into the boudoir,--then paused, listening, and calling again, "Sibyl!" No one followed me,--some indefinable instinct, some nameless dread, held the servants back, and Mavis Clare as well. I was alone, ... and in complete darkness. Groping about, with my heart beating furiously, I sought for the ivory button in the wall which would, at pressure, flood the rooms with electric light, but somehow I could not find it. My hand came in contact with various familiar things which I recognised by touch,--rare bits of china, bronzes, vases, pictures,--costly trifles that were heaped up as I knew, in this particular apartment with a lavish luxury and disregard of cost befitting a wanton eastern empress of old time,--cautiously feeling my way along, I started with terror to see, as I thought, a tall figure outline itself suddenly against the darkness,--white, spectral and luminous,--a figure that, as I stared at it aghast, raised a pallid hand and pointed me forward with a menacing air of scorn! In my dazed horror at this apparition, or delusion, I stumbled over the heavy trailing folds of a velvet _portiére_, and knew by this that I had passed from the boudoir into the adjoining bedroom. Again I stopped,--calling "Sibyl!" but my voice had scarcely strength enough to raise itself above a whisper. Giddy and confused as I was, I remembered that the electric light in this room was fixed at the side of the toilet-table, and I stepped hurriedly in that direction, when all at once in the thick gloom I touched something clammy and cold like dead flesh, and brushed against a garment that exhaled faint perfume, and rustled at my touch with a silken sound. This alarmed me more thoroughly than the spectre I fancied I had just seen,--I drew back shudderingly against the wall,--and in so doing, my fingers involuntarily closed on the polished ivory stud which, like a fairy talisman in modern civilization, emits radiance at the owner's will. I pressed it nervously,--the light blazed forth through the rose-tinted shells which shaded its dazzling clearness, and showed me where I stood, ... within an arm's length of a strange, stiff white creature that sat staring at itself in the silver-framed mirror with wide-open, fixed and glassy eyes!

"Sibyl!" I gasped--"My wife ... ! ..." but the words died chokingly in my throat. Was it indeed my wife?--this frozen statue of a woman, watching her own impassive image thus intently? I looked upon her wonderingly,--doubtingly,--as if she were some stranger;--it took me time to recognize her features, and the bronze-gold darkness of her long hair which fell loosely about her in a lavish wealth of rippling waves, ... her left hand hung limply over the arm of the chair in which, like some carven ivory goddess, she sat enthroned,--and tremblingly, slowly, reluctantly, I advanced and took that hand. Cold as ice it lay in my palm much as though it were a waxen model of itself;--it glittered with jewels,--and I studied every ring upon it with a curious, dull pertinacity, like one who seeks a clue to identity. That large turquoise in a diamond setting was a marriage-gift from a duchess,--that opal her father gave her,--the lustrous circle of sapphires and brilliants surmounting her wedding-ring was my gift,--that ruby I seemed to know,----well, well! what a mass of sparkling value wasted on such fragile clay! I peered into her face,--then at the reflection of that face in the mirror,--and again I grew perplexed,--was it, could it be Sibyl after all? Sibyl was beautiful,--_this_ dead thing had a devilish smile on its blue, parted lips, and frenzied horror in its eyes! Suddenly something tense in my brain seemed to snap and give way,--dropping the chill fingers I held, I cried aloud--

"Mavis! Mavis Clare!"

In a moment she was with me,--in a glance she comprehended all. Falling on her knees by the dead woman she broke into a passion of weeping.

"Oh, poor girl!" she cried--"Oh, poor, unhappy, misguided girl!"

I stared at her gloomily. It seemed to me very strange that she should weep for sorrows not her own. There was a fire in my brain,--a confused trouble in my thoughts,--I looked at my dead wife with her fixed gaze and evil smile, sitting rigidly upright, and robed in the mocking sheen of her rose-silk peignoir, showered with old lace, after the costliest of Paris fashions,--then at the living, tender-souled, earnest creature, famed for her genius throughout the world, who knelt on the ground, sobbing over the stiffening hand on which so many rare gems glistened derisively,--and an impulse rose in me stronger than myself, moving me to wild and clamorous speech.

"Get up, Mavis!" I cried--"Do not kneel there! Go,--go out of this room,--out of my sight! You do not know what she was--this woman whom I married,--I deemed her an angel, but she was a fiend,--yes, Mavis, a fiend! Look at her, staring at her own image in the glass,--you cannot call her beautiful--_now_! She smiles, you see,--just as she smiled last night when, ... ah, you know nothing of last night! I tell you, go!" and I stamped my foot almost furiously,--"This air is contaminated,--it will poison you! The perfume of Paris and the effluvia of death intermingled are sufficient to breed a pestilence! Go quickly,--inform the household their mistress is dead,--have the blinds drawn down,--show all the exterior signs of decent and fashionable woe!"--and I began laughing deliriously--"Tell the servants they may count upon expensive mourning,--for all that money can do shall be done in homage to King Death! Let everyone in the place eat and drink as much as they can or will,--and sleep, or chatter as such menials love to do, of hearses, graves and sudden disasters;--but let _me_ be left alone,--alone with _her_;--we have much to say to one another!"

White and trembling, Mavis rose up and stood gazing at me in fear and pity.

"Alone? ..." she faltered--"You are not fit to be alone!"

"No, I am not fit to be, but I must be,"--I rejoined quickly and harshly--"This woman and I loved--after the manner of brutes, and were wedded or rather mated in a similar manner, though an archbishop blessed the pairing, and called upon Heaven to witness its sanctity! Yet we parted ill friends,--and dead though she is, I choose to pass the night with her,--I shall learn much knowledge from her silence! To-morrow the grave and the servants of the grave may claim her, but to-night she is mine!"

The girl's sweet eyes brimmed over with tears.

"Oh you are too distracted to know what you are saying," she murmured--"You do not even try to discover how she died!"

"That is easy enough to guess,"--I answered quickly, and I took up a small dark-coloured bottle labelled 'Poison' which I had already perceived on the toilet-table--"This is uncorked and empty. What it contained I do not know,--but there must be an inquest of course,--people must be allowed to make money for themselves out of her ladyship's rash act! And see there,--" here I pointed to some loose sheets of note-paper covered with writing, and partially concealed by a filmy lace handkerchief which had evidently been hastily thrown across them, and a pen and inkstand close by--"There is some admirable reading prepared for me doubtless!--the last message from the beloved dead is sacred, Mavis Clare; surely you, a writer of tender romances, can realize this!--and realizing it, you will do as I ask you,--leave me!"

She looked at me in deep compassion, and slowly turned to go.

"God help you!" she said sobbingly--"God console you!"

At this, some demon in me broke loose, and springing to her side I caught her hands in mine.

"Do not dare to talk of God!" I said in passionate accents; "Not in this room,--not in _that_ presence! Why should you call curses down upon me? The help of God means punishment,--the consolations of God are terrible! For strength must acknowledge itself weak before He will help it,--and a heart must be broken before He will console it! But what do I say!--I believe in _no_ God--! I believe in an unknown Force that encompasses me and hunts me down to the grave, but nothing more. _She_ thought as I do,--and with reason,--for what has God done for her? She was made evil from the first,--a born snare of Satan...."

Something caught my breath here,--I stopped, unable to utter another word. Mavis stared at me affrighted, and I stared back again.

"What is it?" she whispered alarmedly. I struggled to speak,--finally, with difficulty I answered her--

"Nothing!"

And I motioned her away with a gesture of entreaty. The expression of my face must have startled or intimidated her I fancy, for she retreated hastily and I watched her disappearing as if she were the phantom of a dream,--then, as she passed out through the boudoir, I drew close the velvet portiére behind her and locked the intermediate door. This done I went slowly back to the side of my dead wife.

"Now Sibyl,"--I said aloud--"we are alone, you and I--alone with our own reflected images,--you dead, and I living! You have no terrors for me in your present condition,--your beauty has gone. Your smile, your eyes, your touch cannot stir me to a throb of the passion you craved, yet wearied of! What have you to say to me?--I have heard that the dead can speak at times,--and you owe me reparation,--reparation for the wrong you did me,--the lie on which you based our marriage,--the guilt you cherished in your heart! Shall I read your petition for forgiveness here?"

And I gathered up the written sheets of note-paper in one hand, feeling them rather than seeing them, for my eyes were fixed on the pallid corpse in its rose-silk 'negligée' and jewels, that gazed at itself so pertinaciously in the shining mirror. I drew a chair close to it, and sat down, observing likewise the reflection of my own haggard face in the glass beside that of the self-murdered woman. Turning presently, I began to scrutinize my immovable companion more closely--and perceived that she was very lightly clothed,--under the silk peignoir there was only a flowing white garment of soft fine material lavishly embroidered, through which the statuesque contour of her rigid limbs could be distinctly seen. Stooping, I felt her heart,--I knew it was pulseless; yet I half imagined I should feel its beat. As I withdrew my hand, something scaly and glistening caught my eye, and looking I perceived Lucio's marriage-gift circling her waist,--the flexible emerald snake with its diamond crest and ruby eyes. It fascinated me,----coiled round that dead body it seemed alive and sentient,--if it had lifted its glittering head and hissed at me I should scarcely have been surprised. I sat back for a moment in my chair, almost as rigid as the corpse beside me,--I stared again, as the corpse stared always, into the mirror which pictured us both, we 'twain in one,' as the sentimentalists aver of wedded folk, though in truth it often happens that there are no two creatures in the world more widely separated than husband and wife. I heard stealthy movements and suppressed whisperings in the passage outside, and guessed that some of the servants were there watching and waiting,--but I cared nothing for that. I was absorbed in the ghastly night interview I had planned for myself, and I so entered into the spirit of the thing, that I turned on all the electric lamps in the room, besides lighting two tall clusters of shaded candles on either side of the toilet-table. When all the surroundings were thus rendered as brilliant as possible, so that the corpse looked more livid and ghastly by comparison, I seated myself once more, and prepared to read the last message of the dead.

"Now Sibyl,"--I muttered, leaning forward a little, and noting with a morbid interest that the jaws of the corpse had relaxed a little within the last few minutes, and that the smile on the face was therefore more hideous--"Confess your sins!--for I am here to listen. Such dumb, impressive eloquence as yours deserves attention!"

A gust of wind fled round the house with a wailing cry,--the windows shook, and the candles flickered. I waited till every sound had died away, and then--with a glance at my dead wife, under the sudden impression that she had heard what I said, and knew what I was doing, I began to read.

XXXV

Thus ran the 'last document,' commencing abruptly and without prefix;--

"I have made up my mind to die. Not out of passion or petulance,--but from deliberate choice, and as I think, necessity. My brain is tired of problems,--my body is tired of life; it is best to make an end. The idea of death,--which means annihilation,--is very sweet to me. I am glad to feel that by my own will and act I can silence this uneasy throbbing of my heart, this turmoil and heat of my blood,--this tortured aching of my nerves. Young as I am, I have no delight now in existence,--I see nothing but my love's luminous eyes, his god-like features, his enthralling smile,--and these are lost to me. For a brief while he has been my world, life and time,--he has gone,--and without him there is no universe. How could I endure the slow, wretched passing of hours, days, weeks, months and years alone?--though it is better to be alone than in the dull companionship of the self-satisfied, complacent and arrogant fool who is my husband. He has left me for ever, so he says in a letter the maid brought to me an hour ago. It is quite what I expected of him,--what man of his type could find pardon for a blow to his own _amour propre_! If he had studied my nature, entered into my emotions, or striven in the least to guide and sustain me,--if he had shown me any sign of a great, true love such as one sometimes dreams of and seldom finds,--I think I should be sorry for him now,--I should even ask his forgiveness for having married him. But he has treated me precisely as he might treat a paid mistress,--that is, he has fed me, clothed me, and provided me with money and jewels in return for making me the toy of his passions,--but he has not given me one touch of sympathy,--one proof of self-denial or humane forbearance. Therefore, I owe him nothing. And now he, and my love who will not be my lover, have gone away together; I am free to do as I will with this small pulse within me called life, which is after all, only a thread, easily broken. There is no one to say me nay, or to hold my hand back from giving myself the final _quietus_. It is well I have no friends; it is good for me that I have probed the hypocrisy and social sham of the world, and that I have mastered the following hard truths of life,--that there is no love without lust,--no friendship without self-interest,--no religion without avarice,--and no so-called virtue without its accompanying stronger vice. Who, knowing these things, would care to take part in them! On the verge of the grave I look back along the short vista of my years, and I see myself a child in this very place, this wooded Willowsmere; I can note how that life began to which I am about to put an end. Pampered, petted and spoilt, told that I must 'look pretty' and take pleasure in my clothes, I was even at the age of ten, capable of a certain amount of coquetry. Old _roués_, smelling of wine and tobacco, were eager to take me on their knees and pinch my soft flesh;--they would press my innocent lips with their withered ones,--withered and contaminated by the kisses of _cocottes_ and 'soiled doves' of the town!--I have often wondered how it is these men can dare to touch a young child's mouth, knowing in themselves what beasts they are! I see my nurse,--a trained liar and time-server, giving herself more airs than a queen, and forbidding me to speak to this child or that child, because they were 'beneath' me;--then came my governess, full of a prurient prudery, as bad a woman in morals as ever lived, yet 'highly recommended' and with excellent references, and wearing an assumption of the strictest virtue, like many equally hypocritical clergymen's wives I have known. I soon found her out,--for even as a child I was painfully observant,--and the stories she and my mother's French maid used to tell, in lowered voices now and then broken by coarse laughter, were sufficient to enlighten me as to her true character. Yet, beyond having a supreme contempt for the woman who practised religious austerity outwardly, and was at heart a rake, I gave small consideration to the difficult problem such a nature suggested. I lived,--how strange it seems that I should be writing now of myself, as past and done with!--yes, I lived in a dreamy, more or less idyllic state of mind, thinking without being conscious of thought, full of fancies concerning the flowers, trees and birds,--wishing for things of which I knew nothing,--imagining myself a queen at times, and again, a peasant. I was an omnivorous reader,--and I was specially fond of poetry. I used to pore over the mystic verse of Shelley, and judged him then as a sort of demi-god;--and never, even when I knew all about his life, could I realize him as a man with a thin, shrieking falsetto voice and 'loose' notions concerning women. But I am quite sure it was good for his fame that he was drowned in early youth with so many melancholy and dramatic surroundings,--it saved him, I consider, from a possibly vicious and repulsive old age. I adored Keats till I knew he had wasted his passion on a Fanny Brawn,--and then the glamour of him vanished. I can offer no reason for this,--I merely set down the fact. I made a hero of Lord Byron,--in fact he has always formed for me the only heroical type of poet. Strong in himself and pitiless in his love for women, he treated them for the most part as they merited, considering the singular and unworthy specimens of the sex it was his misfortune to encounter. I used to wonder, when reading these men's amorous lines, whether love would ever come my way, and what beatific state of emotion I should then enjoy. Then came the rough awakening from all my dreams,--childhood melted into womanhood,--and at sixteen I was taken up to town with my parents to "know something of the ways and manners of society," before finally 'coming out.' Oh, those ways and manners! I learnt them to perfection! Astonished at first, then bewildered, and allowed no time to form any judgment on what I saw, I was hurried through a general vague 'impression' of things such as I had never imagined or dreamed of. While I was yet lost in wonderment, and kept constantly in companionship with young girls of my own rank and age, who nevertheless seemed much more advanced in knowledge of the world than I, my father suddenly informed me that Willowsmere was lost to us,--that he could not afford to keep it up,--and that we should return there no more. Ah, what tears I shed!--what a fury of grief consumed me!--I did not then comprehend the difficult entanglements of either wealth or poverty;--all I could realize was that the doors of my dear old home were closed upon me for ever. After that, I think I grew cold and hard in disposition; I had never loved my mother very dearly,--in fact I had seen very little of her, as she was always away visiting, if not entertaining visitors, and she seldom had me with her,--so that when she was suddenly struck down by a first shock of paralysis, it affected me but little. She had her doctors and nurses,--I had my governess still with me; and my mother's sister, Aunt Charlotte, came to keep house for us,--so I began to analyse society for myself, without giving any expression of my opinions on what I observed. I was not yet 'out,' but I went everywhere where girls of my age were invited, and perceived things without showing that I had any faculty of perception. I cultivated a passionless and cold exterior,--a listless, uninterested and frigid demeanor,--for I discovered that this was accepted by many people as dullness or stupidity, and that by assuming such a character, certain otherwise crafty persons would talk more readily before me, and betray themselves and their vices unawares. Thus my 'social education' began in grim earnest;--women of title and renown would ask me to their 'quiet teas,' because I was what they were pleased to call a 'harmless girl--' 'rather pretty, but dull,'--and allow me to assist them in entertaining the lovers who called upon them while their husbands were out. I remember that on one occasion, a great lady famous for two things, her diamonds and her intimacy with the Queen, kissed her 'cavaliere servente,' a noted sporting earl, with considerable _abandon_ in my presence. He muttered something about me,--I heard it;--but his amorous mistress merely answered in a whisper--"Oh, it's only Sibyl Elton,--she understands nothing." Afterwards however, when he had gone, she turned to me with a grin and remarked--"You saw me kiss Bertie, didn't you? I often do; he's quite like my brother!" I made no reply,--I only smiled vaguely; and the next day she sent me a valuable diamond ring, which I at once returned to her with a prim little note, stating that I was much obliged, but that my father considered me too young as yet to wear diamonds. Why do I think of these trifles now I wonder!--now when I am about to take my leave of life and all its lies! ... There is a little bird singing outside my bedroom window,--such a pretty creature! I suppose it is happy?--it should be, as it is not human... The tears are in my eyes as I listen to its sweet warbling, and think that it will be living and singing still to-day at sunset when I am dead!

* * * * *

That last sentence was mere sentiment, for I am not sorry to die. If I felt the least regret about it I should not carry out my intention. I must resume my narrative,--for it is an analysis I am trying to make of myself, to find out if I can whether there are no excuses to be found for my particular disposition,--whether it is not after all, the education and training I have had that have made me what I am, or whether indeed I was born evil from the first. The circumstances that surrounded me, did not, at any rate, tend to soften or improve my character. I had just passed my seventeenth birthday, when one morning my father called me into his library and told me the true position of his affairs. I learned that he was crippled on all sides with debt,--that he lived on advances made to him by Jew usurers,--and that these advances were trusted to him solely on the speculation that I, his only daughter, would make a sufficiently rich marriage to enable him to repay all loans with heavy interest. He went on to say that he hoped I would act sensibly,--and that when any men showed indications of becoming suitors for my hand, I would, before encouraging them, inform him, in order that he might make strict enquiries as to their actual extent of fortune. I then understood, for the first time, that I was for sale. I listened in silence till he had finished,--then I asked him--'Love, I suppose, is not to be considered in the matter?' He laughed, and assured me it was much easier to love a rich man than a poor one, as I would find out after a little experience. He added, with some hesitation, that to help make both ends meet, as the expenses of town life were considerable, he had arranged to take a young American lady under his charge, a Miss Diana Chesney, who wished to be introduced into English society, and who would pay two thousand guineas a year to him for that privilege, and for Aunt Charlotte's services as chaperône. I do not remember now what I said to him when I heard this,--I know that my long suppressed feelings broke out in a storm of fury, and that for the moment he was completely taken aback by the force of my indignation. An American boarder in _our_ house!--it seemed to me as outrageous and undignified as the conduct of a person I once heard of, who, favoured by the Queen's patronage with 'free' apartments in Kensington Palace, took from time to time on the sly, an American or Colonial 'paying-guest,' who adopted forthwith the address of Her Majesty's birthplace as her own, thus lowering the whole prestige of that historic habitation. My wrath however was useless;--the bargain was arranged,--my father, regardless of his proud lineage and the social dignity of his position, had degraded himself, in my opinion, to the level of a sort of superior lodging-house keeper,--and from that time I lost all my former respect for him. Of course it can be argued that I was wrong,--that I ought to have honoured him for turning his name to monetary account by loaning it out as a protective shield and panoply for an American woman without anything but the dollars of a vulgar 'railway-king' to back her up in society,--but I could not see it in that light. I retreated into myself more than ever,--and became more than pleasantly known for my coldness, reserve and hauteur. Miss Chesney came, and strove hard to be my friend,--but she soon found that impossible. She is a good-hearted creature I believe,--but she is badly bred and badly trained as all her compatriots are, more or less, despite their smattering of an European education; I disliked her from the first, and have spared no pains to show it. Yet I know she will be Countess of Elton as soon as it is decently possible,--say, after the year's ceremonious mourning for my mother has expired, and perhaps three months' hypocritical wearing of black for me,--my father believes himself to be still young and passably good-looking, and he is quite incapable of resisting the fortune she will bring him. When she took up her fixed abode in our house and Aunt Charlotte became her paid chaperône, I seldom went out to any social gatherings, for I could not endure the idea of being seen in her companionship. I kept to my own room a great deal, and thus secluded, read many books. All the fashionable fiction of the day passed through my hands, much to my gradual enlightenment, if not to my edification. One day,--a day that is stamped on my memory as a kind of turning-point in my life,--I read a novel by a woman which I did not at first entirely understand,--but on going over some of its passages a second time, all at once its horrible lasciviousness flashed upon me, and filled me with such genuine disgust that I flung it on the ground in a fit of loathing and contempt. Yet I had seen it praised in all the leading journals of the day; its obscenities were hinted at as 'daring,'--its vulgarities were quoted as 'brilliant wit,'--in fact so many laudatory columns were written about it in the press that I resolved to read it again. Encouraged by the 'literary censors' of the time, I did so, and little by little the insidious abomination of it filtered into my mind and _stayed there_. I began to think about it,--and by-and-by found pleasure in thinking about it. I sent for other books by the same tainted hand, and my appetite for that kind of prurient romance grew keener. At this particular juncture as chance or fate would have it, an acquaintance of mine, the daughter of a Marchioness, a girl with large black eyes, and those full protruding lips which remind one unconsciously of a swine's snout, brought me two or three odd volumes of the poems of Swinburne. Always devoted to poetry, and considering it to be the highest of the arts, and up to that period having been ignorant of this writer's work, I turned over the books with eagerness, expecting to enjoy the usual sublime emotions which it is the privilege and glory of the poet to inspire in mortals less divinely endowed than himself, and who turn to him

"for help to climb Beyond the highest peaks of time."

Now I should like, if I could do so, to explain clearly the effect of this satyr-songster upon my mind,--for I believe there are many women to whom his works have been deadlier than the deadliest poison, and far more soul-corrupting than any book of Zola's or the most pernicious of modern French writers. At first I read the poems quickly, with a certain pleasure in the musical swing and jangle of rhythm, and without paying much attention to the subject-matter of the verse,--but presently, as though a lurid blaze of lightning had stripped a fair tree of its adorning leaves, my senses suddenly perceived the cruelty and sensuality concealed under the ornate language and persuasive rhymes,--and for a moment I paused in my reading, and closed my eyes, shuddering and sick at heart. Was human nature as base and abandoned as this man declared it to be? Was there no God but Lust? Were men and women lower and more depraved in their passions and appetites than the very beasts? I mused and dreamed,--I pored over the 'Laus Veneris'--'Faustine' and 'Anactoria,' till I felt myself being dragged down to the level of the mind that conceived such outrages to decency,--I drank in the poet's own fiendish contempt of God, and I read over and over again his verses 'Before a Crucifix' till I knew them by heart;--till they rang in my brain as persistently as any nursery jingle, and drove my thoughts into as haughty a scorn of Christ and His teachings, as any unbelieving Jew. It is nothing to me now,--now, when without hope, or faith or love, I am about to take the final plunge into eternal darkness and silence,--but for the sake of those who _have_ the comfort of a religion I ask, why, in a so-called Christian country, is such a hideous blasphemy as 'Before a Crucifix' allowed to circulate among the people without so much as one reproof from those who elect themselves judges of literature? I have seen many noble writers condemned unheard,--many have been accused of blasphemy, whose works tend quite the other way,--but these lines are permitted to work their cruel mischief unchecked, and the writer of them is glorified as though he were a benefactor to mankind. I quote them here, from bitter memory, that I may not be deemed as exaggerating their nature--

"So when our souls look back to thee, They sicken, seeing against thy side, _Too foul to speak of or to see_, The leprous likeness of a bride, Whose kissing lips through his lips grown _Leave their God rotten to the bone_.

When we would see thee man, and know What heart thou had'st towards man indeed, Lo, thy blood-blackened altars; lo, The lips of priests that pray and feed, _While their own hell's worm curls and licks The poison of the crucifix_.

Thou bad'st the children come to thee,-- _What children now but curses come_, What manhood in that God can be Who sees their worship and is dumb?-- No soul that lived, loved, wrought, and died _Is this, their Carrion Crucified!_

Nay, if their God and thou be one If thou and _this thing_ be the same, Thou should'st not look upon the sun, _The sun grows haggard at thy name!_ Come down, be done with, cease, give o'er, Hide thyself, strive not, _be no more!_"

From the time of reading this, I used to think of Christ as 'carrion crucified';--if I ever thought at all. I found out that no one had ever reproached Swinburne for this term,--that it did not interfere with his chances for the Laureateship,--and that not even a priest of the church had been bold-spoken or zealous enough in his Master's cause to publicly resent the shameless outrage. So I concluded that Swinburne must, after all, be right in his opinions, and I followed the lazy and unthinking course of social movement, spending my days with such literature as stored my brain with a complete knowledge of things evil and pernicious. Whatever soul I had in me was killed; the freshness of my mind was gone,--Swinburne, among others, had helped me to live mentally, if not physically, through such a phase of vice as had poisoned my thoughts for ever. I understand there is some vague law in existence about placing an interdiction on certain books considered injurious to public morals,--if there is such a rule, it has been curiously lax concerning the author of 'Anactoria'--who, by virtue of being a poet, passes unquestioned into many a home, carrying impure suggestion into minds that were once cleanly and simple. As for me, after I had studied his verse to my heart's content, nothing remained sacred,--I judged men as beasts and women as little better,--I had no belief in honour, virtue or truth,--and I was absolutely indifferent to all things save one, and that was my resolve to have my own way as far as love was concerned. I might be forced to marry without love for purely money-considerations,--but all the same, love I would have, or what I called love;--not an 'ideal' passion by any means, but precisely what Mr Swinburne and a few of the most-praised novelists of the day had taught me to consider as love. I began to wonder when and how I should meet my lover,--such thoughts as I had at this time indeed would have made moralists stare and uplift their hands in horror,--but to the exterior world I was the very pink and pattern of maidenly decorum, reserve and pride. Men desired, but feared me; for I never gave them any encouragement, seeing as yet none among them whom I deemed worthy of such love as I could give. The majority resembled carefully trained baboons,--respectably clothed and artistically shaven,--but nevertheless all with the spasmodic grin, the leering eye and the uncouth gestures of the hairy woodland monster. When I was just eighteen I 'came out' in earnest--that is, I was presented at Court with all the foolish and farcical pomp practised on such occasions. I was told before going that it was a great and necessary thing to be 'presented,'--that it was a guarantee of position, and above all of reputation,--the Queen received none whose conduct was not rigidly correct and virtuous. What humbug it all was!--I laughed then, and I can smile now to think of it,--why, the very woman who presented me had two illegitimate sons, unknown to her lawful husband, and she was not the only playful sinner in the Court comedy! Some women were there that day whom since even _I_ would not receive--so openly infamous are their lives and characters, yet they make their demure curtseys before the Throne at stated times, and assume to be the very patterns of virtue and austerity. Now and then, it chances in the case of an exceedingly beautiful woman, of whom all the others are jealous, that for her little slips she is selected as an 'example' and excluded from Court, while her plainer sisters, though sinning seventy times seven against all the laws of decency and morality, are still received,--but otherwise, there is very little real care exercised as to the character and prestige of the women whom the Queen receives. If any one of them _is_ refused, it is certain she adds to her social enormities, the greater crime of being beautiful, otherwise there would be no one to whisper away her reputation! I was what is called a 'success' on my presentation day. That is, I was stared at, and openly flattered by certain members of my sex who were too old and ugly to be jealous, and treated with insolent contempt by those who were young enough to be my rivals. There was a great crush to get into the Throne-Room; and some of the ladies used rather strong language. One duchess, just in front of me, said to her companion--'Do as I do,--_kick out_! Bruise their shins for them--as hard as you can,--we shall get on faster then!' This choice remark was accompanied by the grin of a fishwife and the stare of a drab. Yet it was a 'great' lady who spoke,--not a Transatlantic importation, but a woman of distinguished lineage and connection. Her observation however was only one out of many similar speeches which I heard on all sides of me during the 'distinguished' mélée,--a thoroughly ill-mannered 'crush,' which struck me as supremely vulgar and totally unfitting the dignity of our Sovereign's court. When I curtsied before the Throne at last, and saw the majesty of the Empire represented by a kindly faced old lady, looking very tired and bored, whose hand was as cold as ice when I kissed it, I was conscious of an intense feeling of pity for her in her high estate. Who would be a Monarch, to be doomed to the perpetual receiving of a company of fools! I got through my duties quickly, and returned home more or less wearied out and disgusted with the whole ceremony,--and next day I found that my 'debût' had given me the position of a 'leading beauty'; or in other words that I was now formally put up for sale. That is really what is meant by being 'presented' and 'coming out,'--these are the fancy terms of one's parental auctioneer. My life was now passed in dressing, having my photograph taken, giving 'sittings' to aspiring fashionable painters, and being 'inspected' by men with a view to matrimony. It was distinctly understood in society that I was not to be sold under a certain figure per annum,--and the price was too high for most would-be purchasers. How sick I grew of my constant exhibition in the marriage-market! What contempt and hatred was fostered in me for the mean and pitiable hypocrisies of my set! I was not long in discovering that money was the chief-motive power of all social success,--that the proudest and highest personages in the world could be easily gathered together under the roof of any vulgar plebeian who happened to have enough cash to feed and entertain them. As an example of this, I remember a woman, ugly, passée and squint-eyed, who during her father's life was only allowed about half-a-crown a week as pocket-money up to her fortieth year,--and who, when that father died, leaving her in possession of half his fortune, (the other half going to illegitimate children of whom she had never heard, he having always posed as a pattern of immaculate virtue) suddenly blossomed out as a 'leader' of fashion, and succeeded, through cautious scheming and ungrudging toadyism, in assembling some of the highest people in the land under her roof. Ugly and passée though she was, and verging towards fifty, with neither grace, wit, nor intelligence, through the power of her cash alone she invited Royal dukes and 'titles' generally to her dinners and dances,--and it is to their shame that they actually accepted her invitations. Such voluntary degradations on the part of really well-connected people I have never been able to understand,--it is not as if they were actually in want of food or amusement, for they have a surfeit of both every season,--and it seems to me that they ought to show a better example than to flock in crowds to the entertainments of a mere uninteresting and ugly nobody just because she happens to have money. I never entered her house myself though she had the audacity to invite me,--I learned moreover, that she had promised a friend of mine a hundred guineas if she could persuade me to make one appearance in her rooms. For my renown as a 'beauty' combined with my pride and exclusiveness, would have given her

## parties a _prestige_ greater than even Royalty could bestow,--_she_

knew that and _I_ knew that,--and knowing it, never condescended to so much as notice her by a bow. But though I took a certain satisfaction in thus revenging myself on the atrocious vulgarity of _parvenus_ and social interlopers, I grew intensely weary of the monotony and emptiness of what fashionable folks call 'amusement,' and presently falling ill of a nervous fever, I was sent down to the seaside for a few weeks' change of air with a young cousin of mine, a girl I rather liked because she was so different to myself. Her name was Eva Maitland--she was but sixteen and extremely delicate--poor little soul! she died two months before my marriage. She and I, and a maid to attend us, went down to Cromer,--and one day, sitting on the cliffs together, she asked me timidly if I knew an author named Mavis Clare? I told her no,--whereupon she handed me a book called 'The Wings of Psyche.'

"Do read it!" she said earnestly--"It will make you feel so happy!"

I laughed. The idea of a modern author writing anything to make one feel happy, seemed to me quite ludicrous, the aim of most of them being to awaken a disgust of life, and a hatred of one's fellow-creatures. However, to please Eva, I read the 'Wings of Psyche,'--and if it did not make me actually happy, it moved me to a great wonder and deep reverence for the woman-writer of such a book. I found out all about her,--that she was young, good-looking, of a noble character and unblemished reputation, and that her only enemies were the press-critics. This last point was so much in her favour with me that I at once bought everything she had ever written, and her works became, as it were, my haven of rest. Her theories of life are strange, poetic, ideal and beautiful;--though I have not been able to accept them or work them out in my own case, I have always felt soothed and comforted for a while in the very act of wishing they were true. And the woman is like her books,--strange, poetic, ideal and beautiful,--how odd it is to think that she is within ten minutes walk of me now!--I could send for her if I liked, and tell her all,--but she would prevent me carrying out my resolve. She would cling to me woman-like and kiss me, and hold my hands and say 'No, Sibyl, no! You are not yourself,--you must come to me and rest!' An odd fancy has seized me, ... I will open my window and call her very gently,--she might be in the garden coming here to see me,--and if she hears and answers, who knows!--why, perhaps my ideas may change, and fate itself may take a different course!

* * * * *

Well, I have called her. I have sent her name 'Mavis!' softly out on the sunshine and still air three times, and only a little brown namesake of hers, a thrush, swinging on a branch of fir, answered me with his low autumnal piping. Mavis! She will not come,--to-day God will not make her His messenger. She cannot guess--she does not know this tragedy of my heart, greater and more poignant than all the tragedies of fiction. If she did know me as I am, I wonder what she would think of me!

* * * * *

Let me go back to the time when love came to me,--love, ardent, passionate, and eternal! Ah, what wild joy thrilled through me! what mad ecstasy fired my blood!--what delirious dreams possessed my brain!--I saw Lucio,--and it seemed as if the splendid eyes of some great angel had flashed a glory in my soul! With him came his friend, the foil to his beauty,--the arrogant, self-satisfied fool of a millionaire, Geoffrey Tempest,--he who bought me, and who by virtue of his purchase, is entitled by law to call himself my husband ..."

Here I paused in my reading and looked up. The dead woman's eyes appeared now to regard me as steadily as herself in the opposite mirror,--the head was a little more dropped forward on the breast, and the whole face very nearly resembled that of the late Countess of Elton when the last shock of paralysis had rendered her hideous disfigurement complete.

"To think I loved _that_!" I said aloud, pointing at the corpse's ghastly reflection--"Fool that I was indeed!--as great a fool as all men are who barter their lives for the possession of a woman's mere body! Why if there were any life after death,--if such a creature had a soul that at all resembled this poisoned clay, the very devils might turn away aghast from such a loathly comrade!"

The candles flickered and the dead face seemed to smile,--a clock chimed in the adjoining room, but I did not count the hour,--I merely arranged the manuscript pages I held more methodically, and read on with renewed attention.

XXXVI

"From the moment I saw Lucio Rimânez"--went on Sibyl's 'dying speech'--"I abandoned myself to love and the desire of love. I had heard of him before from my father who had (as I learned to my shame) been indebted to him for monetary assistance. On the very night we met, my father told me quite plainly that now was my chance to get 'settled' in life. 'Marry Rimânez or Tempest, whichever you can most easily catch,' he said--'The prince is fabulously wealthy--but he keeps up a mystery about himself and no one knows where he actually comes from,--besides which he dislikes women;--now Tempest has five millions and seems an easy-going fool,--I should say you had better go for Tempest.' I made no answer and gave no promise either way. I soon found out however that Lucio did not intend to marry,--and I concluded that he preferred to be the lover of many women, instead of the husband of one. I did not love him any the less for this,--I only resolved that I would at least be one of those who were happy enough to share his passion. I married the man Tempest, feeling that like many women I knew, I should when safely wedded, have greater liberty of action,--I was aware that most modern men prefer an amour with a married woman to any other kind of _liaison_,--and I thought Lucio would have readily yielded to the plan I had pre-conceived. But I was mistaken,--and out of this mistake comes all my perplexity, pain and bewilderment I cannot understand why my love,--beloved beyond all word or thought,--should scorn me and repulse me with such bitter loathing! It is such a common thing now-a-days for a married woman to have her own lover, apart from her husband _de convenance_! The writers of books advise it,--I have seen the custom not only excused but advocated over and over again in long and scientific articles that are openly published in leading magazines. Why then should I be blamed or my desires considered criminal? As long as no public scandal is made, what harm is done? I cannot see it,--it is not as if there were a God to care,--the scientists say there is no God!

* * * * *

I was very startled just now. I thought I heard Lucio's voice calling me. I have walked through the rooms looking everywhere, and I opened my door to listen, but there is no one. I am alone. I have told the servant not to disturb me till I ring; ... I shall never ring! Now I come to think of it, it is singular that I have never known who Lucio really is. A prince, he says--and that I can well believe,--though truly princes now-a-days are so plebeian and common in look and bearing that he seems too great to belong to so shabby a fraternity. From what kingdom does he come?--to what nation does he belong? These are questions which he never answers save equivocally.

* * * * *

I pause here, and look at myself in the mirror. How beautiful I am! I note with admiration the deep and dewy lustre of my eyes and their dark silky fringes,--I see the delicate colouring of my cheeks and lips,--the dear rounded chin with its pretty dimple,--the pure lines of my slim throat and snowy neck,--the glistening wealth of my long hair. All this was given to me for the attraction and luring of men, but my love, whom I love with all this living, breathing, exquisite being of mine, can see no beauty in me, and rejects me with such scorn as pierces my very soul. I have knelt to him,--I have prayed to him,--I have worshipped him,--in vain! Hence it comes that I must die. Only one thing he said that had the sound of hope, though the utterance was fierce, and his looks were cruel,--'Patience!' he whispered--'we shall meet ere long!' What did he mean?--what possible meeting can there be now, when death must close the gate of life, and even love would come too late!

* * * * *

I have unlocked my jewel-case and taken from it the deadly thing secreted there,--a poison that was entrusted to me by one of the physicians who lately attended my mother. 'Keep this under lock and key,' he said, 'and be sure that it is used only for external purposes. There is sufficient in this flask to kill ten men, if swallowed by mistake.' I look at it wonderingly. It is colourless,--and there is not enough to fill a teaspoon, ... yet ... it will bring down upon me an eternal darkness, and close up for ever the marvellous scenes of the universe! So little!--to do so much! I have fastened Lucio's wedding-gift round my waist,--the beautiful snake of jewels that clings to me as though it were charged with an embrace from him,--ah! would I could cheat myself into so pleasing a fancy! ... I am trembling, but not with cold or fear,--it is simply an excitation of the nerves,----an instinctive recoil of flesh and blood at the near prospect of death.... How brilliantly the sun shines through my window!--its callous golden stare has watched so many tortured creatures die without so much as a cloud to dim its radiance by way of the suggestion of pity! If there were a God I fancy He would be like the sun,--glorious, changeless, unapproachable, beautiful, but pitiless!

* * * * *

Out of all the various types of human beings I think I hate the class called poets most. I used to love them and believe in them; but I know them now to be mere weavers of lies,--builders of cloud castles in which no throbbing life can breathe, no weary heart find rest. Love is their chief motive,--they either idealize or degrade it,--and of the love we women long for most, they have no conception. They can only sing of brute passion or ethical impossibilities,--of the mutual great sympathy, the ungrudging patient tenderness that should make love lovely, they have no sweet things to say. Between their strained æstheticism and unbridled sensualism, my spirit has been stretched on the rack and broken on the wheel, ... I should think many a wretched woman wrecked among love's disillusions must curse them as I do!

* * * * *

I am ready now, I think. There is nothing more to say. I offer no excuses for myself. I am as I was made,--a proud and rebellious woman, self-willed and sensual, seeing no fault in free love, and no crime in conjugal infidelity,--and if I am vicious, I can honestly declare that my vices have been encouraged and fostered in me by most of the literary teachers of my time. I married, as most women of my set marry, merely for money,--I loved, as most women of my set love, for mere bodily attraction,--I die, as most women of my set will die, either naturally or self-slain, in utter atheism, rejoicing that there is no God and no Hereafter!

* * * * *

I had the poison in my hand a moment ago, ready to take, when I suddenly felt someone approaching me stealthily from behind, and glancing up quickly at the mirror I saw ... my mother! Her face, hideous and ghastly as it had been in her last illness, was reflected in the glass, peering over my shoulder! I sprang up and confronted her,----she was gone! And now I am shivering with cold, and I feel a chill dampness on my forehead,--mechanically I have soaked a handkerchief with perfume from one of the silver bottles on the dressing table, and have passed it across my temples to help me recover from this sick swooning sensation. To _recover_!--how foolish of me, seeing I am about to die. I do not believe in ghosts,--yet I could have sworn my mother was actually present just now,--of course it was an optical delusion of my own feverish brain. The strong scent on my handkerchief reminds me of Paris--I can see the shop where I bought this particular perfume, and the well-dressed doll of a man who served me, with his little waxed moustache, and his indefinable French manner of conveying a speechless personal compliment while making out a bill.... Laughing at this recollection, I see my face radiate in the glass,--my eyes flash into vivid lustre, and the dimples near my lips come and go, giving my expression an enchanting sweetness. Yet in a few hours this loveliness will be destroyed,--and in a few days, the worms will twine where the smile is now!

* * * * *

An idea has come upon me that perhaps I ought to say a prayer. It would be hypocritical,--but conventional. To die fashionably, one ought to concede a few words to the church. And yet ... to kneel down with clasped hands and tell an inactive, unsympathetic, selfish, paid community called the church, that I am going to kill myself for the sake of love and love's despair, and that therefore I humbly implore its forgiveness for the act seems absurd,--as absurd as to tell the same thing to a non-existent Deity. I suppose the scientists do not think what a strange predicament their advanced theories put the human mind in at the hour of death. They forget that on the brink of the grave, thoughts come that will not be gainsaid, and that cannot be appeased by a learned thesis.... However I will not pray,--it would seem to myself cowardly that I who have never said my prayers since I was a child, should run over them now in a foolish babbling attempt to satisfy the powers invisible,--I could not, out of sheer association, appeal to Mr Swinburne's 'crucified carrion'! Besides I do not believe in the powers invisible at all,--I feel that once outside this life, 'the rest' as Hamlet said 'is silence.'

* * * * *

I have been staring dreamily and in a sort of stupefaction at the little poison-flask in my hand. _It is quite empty now._ I have swallowed every drop of the liquid it contained,--I took it quickly and determinately as one takes nauseous medicine, without allowing myself another moment of time for thought or hesitation. It tasted acrid and burning on my tongue,--but at present I am not conscious of any strange or painful result. I shall watch my face in the mirror and trace the oncoming of death,--this will be at any rate a new sensation not without interest!

* * * * *

My mother is here,--here with me in this room! She is moving about restlessly, making wild gestures with her hands and trying to speak. She looks as she did when she was dying,--only more alive, more sentient. I have followed her up and down, but am unable to touch her,--she eludes my grasp. I have called her 'Mother! Mother!' but no sound issues from her white lips. Her face is so appalling that I was seized with a convulsion of terror a moment ago and fell on my knees before her imploring her to leave me,--and then she paused in her gliding to and fro and--smiled! What a hideous smile it was! I think I lost consciousness, ... for I found myself lying on the ground. A sharp and terrible pain running through me made me spring to my feet, ... and I bit my lips till they bled, lest I should scream aloud with the agony I suffered and so alarm the house. When the paroxysm passed I saw my mother standing quite near to me, dumbly watching me with a strange expression of wonder and remorse. I tottered past her and back to this chair where I now sit,----I am calmer now, and I am able to realize that she is only the phantom of my own brain--that I _fancy_ she is here while _knowing_ she is dead.

* * * * *

Torture indescribable has made of me a writhing, moaning, helpless creature for the past few minutes. Truly that drug was deadly;--the pain is horrible ... horrible! ... it has left me quivering in every limb and palpitating in every nerve. Looking at my face in the glass I see that it has already altered. It is drawn and livid,--all the fresh rose-tint of my lips has gone,--my eyes protrude unnaturally, ... there are dull blue marks at the corners of my mouth and in the hollows of my temples, and I observe a curious quick pulsation in the veins of my throat. Be my torment what it will, now there is no remedy,--and I am resolved to sit here and study my own features to the end. 'The reaper whose name is Death' must surely be near, ready to gather my long hair in his skeleton hand like a sheaf of ripe corn, ... my poor beautiful hair!--how I have loved its glistening ripples, and brushed it, and twined it round my fingers, ... and how soon it will lie like a dank weed in the mould!

* * * * *

A devouring fire is in my brain and body,--I am burning with heat and parched with thirst,--I have drunk deep draughts of cold water, but this has not relieved me. The sun glares in upon me like an open furnace,--I have tried to rise and close the blind against it, but find I have no force to stand upright. The strong radiance blinds me:--the silver toilet boxes on my table glitter like so many points of swords. It is by a powerful effort of will that I am able to continue writing,--my head is swimming round,--and there is a choking sensation in my throat.

* * * * *

A moment since I thought I was dying. Torn asunder as it were by the most torturing pangs, I could have screamed for help,--and would have done so, had voice been left me. But I cannot speak above a whisper,--I mutter my own name to myself 'Sibyl! Sibyl!' and can scarcely hear it. My mother stands beside me,--apparently waiting;--a little while ago I thought I heard her say 'Come, Sibyl! Come to your chosen lover!' Now I am conscious of a great silence everywhere,--a numbness has fallen upon me, and a delicious respite from pain,--but I see my face in the glass and know it is the face of the dead. It will soon be all over,--a few more uneasy breathings,--and I shall be at rest. I am glad,--for the world and I were never good friends;--I am sure that if we could know, before we were born, what life really is, we should never take the trouble to live!

* * * * *

A horrible fear has suddenly beset me. What if death were not what the scientists deem it,--suppose it were another form of life? Can it be that I am losing reason and courage together? ... or what is this terrible misgiving that is taking possession of me? ... I begin to falter ... a strange sense of horror is creeping over me ... I have no more physical pain, but something worse than pain oppresses me ... a feeling that I cannot define. I am dying ... dying!--I repeat this to myself for comfort, ... in a little while I shall be deaf and blind and unconscious, ... why then is the silence around me now broken through by sound? I listen,--and I hear distinctly the clamour of wild voices mingled with a sullen jar and roll as of distant thunder! ... My mother stands closer to me, ... she is stretching out her hand to touch mine!

* * * * *

Oh God! ... Let me write--write--while I can! Let me yet hold fast the thread which fastens me to earth,--give me time--time before I drift out, lost in yonder blackness and flame! Let me write for others the awful Truth, as I see it,--there is No death! None--none!--_I cannot die._ I am passing out of my body,--I am being wrenched away from it inch by inch in inexplicable mystic torture,--but I am not dying,--I am being carried forward into a new life, vague and vast! ... I see a new world full of dark forms, half shaped yet shapeless!--they float towards me, beckoning me on. I am

## actively conscious--I hear, I think, I know! Death is a mere human

dream,--a comforting fancy; it has no real existence,--there is nothing in the Universe but life! O hideous misery!--_I cannot die!_ In my mortal body I can scarcely breathe,--the pen I try to hold writes of itself rather than through my shaking hand,--but these pangs are the throes of birth--not death! ... I hold back,--with all the force of my soul I strive not to plunge into that black abyss I see before me--but--_my mother drags me with her_,--I cannot shake her off! I hear her voice now;--she speaks distinctly, and laughs as though she wept; 'Come Sibyl! Soul of the child I bore, come and meet your lover! Come and see upon WHOM you fixed your faith! Soul of the woman I trained, return to that from whence you came!' Still I hold back,--nude and trembling I stare into a dark void--and now there are wings about me,--wings of fiery scarlet!--they fill the space,--they enfold me,--they propel me,--they rush past and whirl around me, stinging me as with flying arrows and showers of hail!

* * * * *

Let me write on,--write on, with this dead fleshly hand, ... one moment more time, dread God! ... one moment more to write the truth,--the terrible truth of Death whose darkest secret, Life, is unknown to men! I live!--a new, strong, impetuous vitality possesses me, though my mortal body is nearly dead. Faint gasps and weak shudderings affect it still,--and I, outside it and no longer of it, propel its perishing hand to write these final words--_I live!_ To my despair and horror,--to my remorse and agony, I live!--oh the unspeakable misery of this new life! And worst of all,--God whom I doubted, God whom I was taught to deny, this wronged, blasphemed, and outraged God EXISTS! And I could have found Him had I chosen,--this knowledge is forced upon me as I am torn from hence,--it is shouted at me by a thousand wailing voices! ... too late!--too late!--the scarlet wings beat me downward,--these strange half-shapeless forms close round and drive me onward ... to a further darkness, ... amid wind and fire!

* * * * *

Serve me, dead hand, once more ere I depart, ... my tortured spirit must seize and compel you to write down this thing unnameable, that earthly eyes may read, and earthly souls take timely warning! ... I know at last WHOM I have loved!--whom I have chosen, whom I have worshipped! ... Oh God, have mercy! ... I know WHO claims my worship now, and drags me into yonder rolling world of flame! ... his name is ........"

Here the manuscript ended,--incomplete and broken off abruptly,--and there was a blot on the last sentence as though the pen had been violently wrenched from the dying fingers and hastily flung down.

The clock in the west room again chimed the hour. I rose stiffly from my chair, trembling,--my self-possession was giving way, and I began to feel at last unnerved. I looked askance at my dead wife,--she, who with a superhuman dying effort had declared herself to be yet alive,--who, in some imaginable strange way had seemingly written _after_ death, in a frantic desire to make some appalling declaration which nevertheless remained undeclared. The rigid figure of the corpse had now real terrors for me,--I dared not touch it,--I scarcely dared look at it, ... in some dim inscrutable fashion I felt as if "scarlet wings" environed it, beating me down, yet pressing me on,--me too, in my turn! With the manuscript gathered close in my hand, I bent nervously forward to blow out the wax lights on the toilet table, ... I saw on the floor the handkerchief odorous with the French perfume the dead woman had written of,--I picked it up and placed it near her where she sat, grinning hideously at her own mirrored ghastliness. The flash of the jewelled serpent round her waist caught my eyes anew as I did this, and I stared for a moment at its green glitter, dumbly fascinated,--then, moving stealthily, with the cold sweat pouring down my back and every pulse in me rendered feeble by sheer horror, I turned to leave the room. As I reached the portiére and lifted it, some instinct made me look back at the dread picture of the leading "society" beauty sitting stark and livid pale before her own stark and livid-pale image in the glass,--what a "fashion-plate" she would make now, I thought, for a frivolous and hypocritical "ladies' paper!"

"You say you are not dead, Sibyl!" I muttered aloud--"Not dead, but living! Then, if you are alive, where are you, Sibyl?----where are you?"

The heavy silence seemed fraught with fearful meaning,--the light of the electric lamps on the corpse and on the shimmering silk garment wrapped round it appeared unearthly,--and the perfume in the room had a grave-like earthy smell. A panic seized me, and dragging frantically at the portiére till all its velvet folds were drawn thickly together, I made haste to shut out from my sight the horrible figure of the woman whose bodily fairness I had loved in the customary way of sensual men,--and left her without so much as a pardoning or pitying kiss of farewell on the cold brow. For, ... after all I had Myself to think of, ... and She was dead!

XXXVII

I pass over all the details of polite "shock," affected sorrow, and feigned sympathy of society at my wife's sudden death. No one was really grieved about it,--men raised their eyebrows, shrugged their shoulders, lit extra cigarettes and dismissed the subject as too unpleasant and depressing to dwell upon,--women were glad of the removal of a too beautiful and too much admired rival, and the majority of fashionable folk delighted in having something "thrilling" to talk about in the tragic circumstances of her end. As a rule, people are seldom or never unselfish enough to be honestly sorry for the evanishment of some leading or brilliant figure from their midst,--the vacancy leaves room for the pushing in of smaller fry. Be sure that if you are unhappily celebrated for either beauty, wit, intellect, or all three together, half society wishes you dead already, and the other half tries to make you as wretched as possible while you are alive. To be missed at all when you die, some one must love you very deeply and unselfishly; and deep unselfish love is rarer to find among mortals than a pearl in a dust-bin.

Thanks to my abundance of cash, everything concerning Sibyl's suicide was admirably managed. In consideration of her social position as an Earl's daughter, two doctors certified (on my paying them very handsome fees) that hers was a 'death by misadventure,'--namely, through taking an accidental overdose of a powerful sleeping draught. It was the best report to make,--and the most respectable. It gave the penny press an opportunity of moralizing on the dangers that lurked in sleeping draughts generally,--and Tom, Dick, and Harry all wrote letters to their favorite periodicals (signing their names in full) giving _their_ opinions as to the nature of sleeping draughts, so that for a week at least the ordinary dullness of the newspapers was quite enlivened by ungrammatical _gratis_ 'copy.' The conventionalities of law, decency and order were throughout scrupulously observed and complied with,--everybody was paid (which was the chief thing), and everybody was, I believe, satisfied with what they managed to make out of the death-payment. The funeral gave joy to the souls of all undertakers,--it was so expensive and impressive. The florist's trade gained something of an impetus by the innumerable orders received for wreaths and crosses made of the costliest flowers. When the coffin was carried to the grave, it could not be seen for the load of blossoms that covered it. And amid all the cards and 'loving tokens' and 'farewell dearests' and 'not-lost-but-gone-befores'--that ticketed the white masses of lilies, gardenias and roses which were supposed to symbolize the innocence and sweetness of the poisoned corpse they were sent to adorn, there was not one honest regret,--not one unfeigned expression of true sorrow. Lord Elton made a sufficiently striking figure of dignified parental woe, but on the whole I think he was not sorry for his daughter's death, since the only opposing obstacle to his marriage with Diana Chesney was now removed. I fancy Diana herself was sorry, so far as such a frivolous little American could be sorry for anything,--perhaps, however it would be more correct to say that she was frightened. Sibyl's sudden end startled and troubled her,--but I am not sure that it grieved her. There is such a difference between unselfish grief, and the mere sense of nervous personal shock! Miss Charlotte Fitzroy took the news of her niece's death with that admirable fortitude which frequently characterizes religious spinsters of a certain age. She put by her knitting,--said 'God's will be done!' and sent for her favorite clergyman. He came, stayed with her some hours drinking strong tea,--and the next morning at church administered to her communion. This done, Miss Fitzroy went on the blameless and even tenor of her way, wearing the same virtuously distressed expression as usual, and showed no further sign of feeling. I, as the afflicted millionaire-husband, was no doubt the most interesting figure on the scene; I was, I know very well got up, thanks to my tailor, and to the affectionate care of the chief undertaker who handed me my black gloves on the day of the funeral with servile solicitude, but in my heart I felt myself to be a far better actor than Henry Irving, and if only for my admirable mimicry of heart-break, more fully worthy of the accolade. Lucio did not attend the obsequies,--he wrote me a brief note of sympathy from town, and hinted that he was sure I could understand his reasons for not being present. I did understand, of course,--and appreciated his respect, as I thought, for me and my feelings,--yet strange and incongruous as it may seem, I never longed so much for his company as I did then! However,--we had a glorious burial of my fair and false lady,--prancing horses drew coroneted carriages in a long defile down the pretty Warwickshire lanes to the grey old church, picturesque and peaceful, where the clergyman and his assistants in newly-washed surplices, met the flower-laden coffin, and with the usual conventional mumblings, consigned it to the dust. There were even press-reporters present, who not only described the scene as it did _not_ happen, but who also sent fancy sketches, to their respective journals, of the church as it did _not_ exist. I mention this simply to show how thoroughly all "proper forms" were carried out and conceded to. After the ceremony all we "mourners" went back to Willowsmere to luncheon, and I well remember that Lord Elton told me a new and _risqué_ joke over a glass of port before the meal was finished. The undertakers had a sort of festive banquet in the servants' hall,--and taking everything into due consideration, my wife's death gave a great deal of pleasure to many people, and put useful money into several ready pockets. She had left no blank in society that could not be easily filled up,--she was merely one butterfly out of thousands, more daintily coloured perhaps and more restless in flight,--but never judged as more than up to the butterfly standard. I said no one gave her an honest regret, but I was wrong. Mavis Clare was genuinely, almost passionately grieved. She sent no flowers for the coffin, but she came to the funeral by herself, and stood a little apart waiting silently till the grave was covered in,--and then, just as the "fashionable" train of mourners were leaving the churchyard, she advanced and placed a white cross of her own garden-lilies upon the newly-turned brown mould. I noticed her action, and determined that before I left Willowsmere for the East with Lucio (for my journey had only been postponed a week or two on account of Sibyl's death) she should know all.

The day came when I carried out this resolve. It was a rainy and chill afternoon, and I found Mavis in her study, sitting beside a bright log fire with her small terrier in her lap and her faithful St Bernard stretched at her feet. She was absorbed in a book,--and over her watched the marble Pallas inflexible and austere. As I entered she rose, and putting down the volume and her pet dog together, she advanced to meet me with an intense sympathy in her clear eyes, and a wordless pity in the tremulous lines of her sweet mouth. It was charming to see how sorry she felt for me,--and it was odd that I could not feel sorry for myself. After a few words of embarrassed greeting I sat down and watched her silently, while she arranged the logs in the fire to make them burn brighter, and for the moment avoided my gaze.

"I suppose you know,"--I began with harsh abruptness--"that the sleeping-draught story is a polite fiction? You know that my wife poisoned herself intentionally?"

Mavis looked at me with a troubled and compassionate expression.

"I feared it was so--" ... she began nervously.

"Oh there is nothing either to fear or to hope"--I said with some violence--"_She did it._ And can you guess why she did it? Because she was mad with her own wickedness and sensuality,--because she loved with a guilty love, my friend Lucio Rimânez."

Mavis gave a little cry as of pain, and sat down white and trembling.

"You can read quickly, I am sure,"--I went on. "Part of the profession of literature is the ability to skim books and manuscripts rapidly, and grasp the whole gist of them in a few minutes;--read _this_--" and I handed her the rolled-up pages of Sibyl's dying declaration--"Let me stay here, while you learn from that what sort of a woman she was, and judge whether, despite her beauty, she is worth a regret!"

"Pardon me,--" said Mavis gently--"I would rather not read what was not meant for my eyes."

"But it _is_ meant for your eyes,"--I retorted impatiently--"It is meant for everybody's eyes apparently,--it is addressed to nobody in

## particular. There is a mention of you in it. I beg--nay I command you to

read it!--I want your opinion on it,--your advice; you may possibly suggest, after perusal, the proper sort of epitaph I ought to inscribe on the monument I am going to build to her sacred and dear memory!"

I covered my face with one hand to hide the bitter smile which I knew betrayed my thoughts, and pushed the manuscript towards her. Very reluctantly she took it,--and slowly unrolling it, began to read. For several minutes there was a silence, broken only by the crackling of the logs on the fire, and the regular breathing of the dogs who now both lay stretched comfortably in front of the wood blaze. I looked covertly at the woman whose fame I had envied,--at the slight figure, the coronal of soft hair,--the delicate, drooping sensitive face,--the small white classic hand that held the written sheets of paper so firmly, yet so tenderly,--the very hand of the Greek marble Psyche;--and I thought what short-sighted asses some literary men are who suppose they can succeed in shutting out women like Mavis Clare from winning everything that fame or fortune can offer. Such a head as hers, albeit covered with locks fair and caressable, was not meant, in its fine shape and compactness, for submission to inferior intelligences whether masculine or feminine,--that determined little chin which the firelight delicately outlined, was a visible declaration of the strength of will and the indomitably high ambition of its owner,--and yet, ... the soft eyes,--the tender mouth,--did not these suggest the sweetest love, the purest passion that ever found place in a woman's heart? I lost myself in dreamy musing,--I thought of many things that had little to do with either my own past or present. I realized that now and then at rare intervals God makes a woman of genius with a thinker's brain and an angel's soul,--and that such an one is bound to be a destiny to all mortals less divinely endowed, and a glory to the world in which she dwells. So considering, I studied Mavis Clare's face and form,--I saw her eyes fill with tears as she read on;--why should she weep, I wondered, over that 'last document' which had left me unmoved and callous? I was startled almost as if from sleep when her voice, thrilling with pain, disturbed the stillness,--she sprang up, gazing at me as if she saw some horrible vision.

"Oh, are you so blind," she cried, "as not to see what this means? Can you not understand? Do you not know your worst enemy?"

"My worst enemy?" I echoed amazed--"You surprise me, Mavis,--what have I, or my enemies or friends to do with my wife's last confession? She raved,--between poison and passion, she could not tell, as you see by her final words, whether she was dead or alive,--and her writing at all under such stress of circumstances was a phenomenal effort,--but it has nothing to do with me personally."

"For God's sake do not be so hard-hearted!"--said Mavis passionately--"To me these last words of Sibyl's,--poor, tortured, miserable girl!--are beyond all expression horrible and appalling. Do you mean to tell me you have no belief in a future life?"

"None." I answered with conviction.

"Then this is nothing to you?--this solemn assurance of hers that she is not dead, but living again,--living too, in indescribable misery!--you do not believe it?"

"Does anyone believe the ravings of the dying!" I answered--"She was, as I have said, suffering the torments of poison and passion,--and in those torments wrote as one tormented...."

"Is it impossible to convince you of the truth?" asked Mavis solemnly,--"Are you so diseased in your spiritual perceptions as not to _know_, beyond a doubt, that this world is but the shadow of the Other Worlds awaiting us? I assure you, as I live, you will have that terrible knowledge forced upon you some day! I am aware of your theories,--your wife had the same beliefs or rather non-beliefs as yourself,--yet _she_ has been convinced at last! I shall not attempt to argue with you. If this last letter of the unhappy girl you wedded cannot open your eyes to the eternal facts you choose to ignore, nothing will ever help you. You are in the power of your enemy!"

"Of whom are you speaking, Mavis?" I asked astonished, observing that she stood like one suddenly appalled in a dream, her eyes fixed musingly on vacancy, and her lips trembling apart.

"Your Enemy--your Enemy!" she repeated with energy--"It seems to me as if his Shadow stood near you now! Listen to this voice from the dead--Sibyl's voice!----what does she say?----'_Oh God, have mercy!----I know who claims my worship now and drags me into yonder rolling world of flame ... his name is--_'" ...

"Well!" I interrupted eagerly----"She breaks off there; his name is----"

"Lucio Rimânez!" said Mavis in a thrilling tone--"I do not know from whence he came,--but I take God to witness my belief that he is a worker of evil,--a fiend in beautiful human shape,--a destroyer and a corrupter! The curse of him fell on Sibyl the moment she met him,--the same curse rests on you! Leave him if you are wise,--take your chance of escape while it remains to you,--and never let him see your face again!"

She spoke with a kind of breathless haste as though impelled by a force not her own,--I stared at her amazed, and in a manner irritated.

"Such a course of action would be impossible to me, Mavis,"--I said somewhat coldly--"The Prince Rimânez is my best friend--no man ever had a better;--and his loyalty to me has been put to a severe test under which most men would have failed. I have not told you all."

And I related in a few words the scene I had witnessed between my wife and Lucio in the music-gallery at Willowsmere. She listened,--but with an evident effort,--and pushing back her clustering hair from her brows she sighed heavily.

"I am sorry,--but it does not alter my conviction!"--she said--"I look upon your best friend as your worst foe. And I feel you do not realize the awful calamity of your wife's death in its true aspect. Will you forgive me if I ask you to leave me now?----Lady Sibyl's letter has affected me terribly--I feel I cannot speak about it any more.... I wish I had not read it...."

She broke off with a little half-suppressed sob,--I saw she was unnerved, and taking the manuscript from her hand, I said half-banteringly--

"You cannot then suggest an epitaph for my wife's monument?"

She turned upon me with a grand gesture of reproach.

"Yes I can!"--she replied in a low indignant voice--"Inscribe it as--'From a pitiless hand to a broken heart!' That will suit the dead girl,--and you, the living man!"

Her rustling gown swept across my feet,--she passed me and was gone. Stupefied by her sudden anger, and equally sudden departure, I stood inert,--the St Bernard rose from the hearth-rug and glowered at me suspiciously, evidently wishing me to take my leave,--Pallas Athene stared, as usual, through me and beyond me in a boundless scorn,--all the various objects in this quiet study seemed silently to eject me as an undesired occupant. I looked round it once longingly as a tired outcast may look on a peaceful garden and wish in vain to enter.

"How like her sex she is after all!" I said half aloud--"She blames _me_ for being pitiless,--and forgets that Sibyl was the sinner,--not I! No matter how guilty a woman may be, she generally manages to secure a certain amount of sympathy,--a man is always left out in the cold."

A shuddering sense of loneliness oppressed me as my eyes wandered round the restful room. The odour of lilies was in the air, exhaled, so I fancied, from the delicate and dainty personality of Mavis herself.

"If I had only known her first,--and loved her!" I murmured, as I turned away at last and left the house.

But then I remembered I had hated her before I ever met her,--and not only had I hated her, but I had vilified and misrepresented her work with a scurrilous pen under the shield of anonymity, and out of sheer malice,--thus giving her in the public sight, the greatest proof of her own genius a gifted woman can ever win,--man's envy!

XXXVIII

Two weeks later I stood on the deck of Lucio's yacht 'The Flame,'--a vessel whose complete magnificence filled me, as well as all other beholders, with bewildered wonderment and admiration. She was a miracle of speed, her motive power being electricity; and the electric engines with which she was fitted were so complex and remarkable as to baffle all would-be inquirers into the secret of their mechanism and potency. A large crowd of spectators gathered to see her as she lay off Southampton, attracted by the beauty of her shape and appearance,--some bolder spirits even came out in tugs and row-boats, hoping to be allowed to make a visit of inspection on board, but the sailors, powerfully-built men of a foreign and somewhat unpleasing type, soon intimated that the company of such inquisitive persons was undesirable and unwelcome. With white sails spread, and a crimson flag flying from her mast, she weighed anchor at sunset on the afternoon of the day her owner and I joined her, and moving through the waters with delicious noiselessness and incredible rapidity, soon left far behind her the English shore, looking like a white line in the mist, or the pale vision of a land that might once have been. I had done a few quixotic things before departing from my native country,--for example, I had made a free gift of his former home Willowsmere, to Lord Elton, taking a sort of sullen pleasure in thinking that he, the spendthrift nobleman, owed the restoration of his property to _me_,--to me who had never been either a successful linen-draper or furniture-man, but simply an author, one of 'those sort of people' whom my lord and my lady imagine they can 'patronize' and neglect again at pleasure without danger to themselves. The arrogant fools invariably forget what lasting vengeance can be taken for an unmerited slight by the owner of a brilliant pen! I was glad too, in a way, to realize that the daughter of the American railway-king would be brought to the grand old house to air her 'countess-ship,' and look at her prettily pert little physiognomy in the very mirror where Sibyl had watched herself die. I do not know why this idea pleased me, for I bore no grudge against Diana Chesney,--she was vulgar but harmless, and would probably make a much more popular châtelaine at Willowsmere Court than my wife had ever been. Among other things, I dismissed my man Morris, and made him miserable,--with the gift of a thousand pounds, to marry and start a business on. He was miserable because he could not make up his mind what business to adopt, his anxiety being to choose the calling that would 'pay' best,--and also, because though he 'had his eye' upon several young women, he could not tell which among them would be likely to be least extravagant, and the most serviceable as a cook and housekeeper. The love of money and the pains of taking care of it, embittered his days as it embitters the days of most men, and my unexpected munificence towards him burdened him with such a weight of trouble as robbed him of natural sleep and appetite. I cared nothing for his perplexities however, and gave him no advice, good or bad. My other servants I dismissed, each with a considerable gift of money, not that I particularly wished to benefit _them_, but simply because I desired them to speak well of _me_. And in this world it is very evident that the only way to get a good opinion is to pay for it! I gave orders to a famous Italian sculptor for Sibyl's monument, English sculptors having no conception of sculpture,--it was to be of exquisite design, wrought in purest white marble, the chief adornment being the centre-figure of an angel ready for flight, with the face of Sibyl faithfully copied from her picture. Because, however devilish a woman may be in her life-time, one is bound by all the laws of social hypocrisy to make an angel of her as soon as she is dead! Just before I left London I heard that my old college-friend 'Boffles,' John Carrington, had met with a sudden end. Busy at the 'retorting' of his gold, he had been choked by the mercurial fumes and had died in hideous torment. At one time this news would have deeply affected me, but now, I was scarcely sorry. I had heard nothing of him since I had come into my fortune,--he had never even written to congratulate me. Always full of my own self-importance, I judged this as great neglect on his part, and now that he was dead I felt no more than any of us feel now-a-days at the loss of friends. And that is very little,--we have really no time to be sorry,--so many people are always dying!--and we are in such a desperate hurry to rush on to death ourselves! Nothing seemed to touch me that did not closely concern my own personal interest,--and I had no affections left, unless I may call the vague tenderness I had for Mavis Clare an affection. Yet, to be honest, this very emotion was after all nothing but a desire to be consoled, pitied and loved by her,--to be able to turn upon the world and say "This woman whom you have lifted on your shield of honour and crowned with laurels,--she loves _me_--she is not yours, but _mine_!" Purely interested and purely selfish was the longing,--and it deserved no other name than selfishness.

My feelings for Rimânez too began at this time to undergo a curious change. The fascination I had for him, the power he exercised over me remained as great as ever, but I found myself often absorbed in a close study of him, strangely against my own will. Sometimes his every look seemed fraught with meaning,--his every gesture suggestive of an almost terrific authority. He was always to me the most attractive of beings,--nevertheless there was an uneasy sensation of doubt and fear growing up in my mind regarding him,--a painful anxiety to know more about him than he had ever told me,--and on rare occasions I experienced a sudden shock of inexplicable repulsion against him which like a tremendous wave threw me back with violence upon myself and left me half-stunned with a dread of I knew not what. Alone with him, as it were, on the wide sea, cut off for a time from all other intercourse than that which we shared together, these sensations were very strong upon me. I began to note many things which I had been too blind or too absorbed in my own pursuits to observe before; the offensive presence of Amiel, who acted as chief steward on board the yacht, filled me now not only with dislike, but nervous apprehension,--the dark and more or less repulsive visages of the crew haunted me in my dreams;--and one day, leaning over the vessel's edge and gazing blankly down into the fathomless water below, I fell to thinking of strange sorceries of the East, and stories of magicians who by the exercise of unlawful science did so make victims of men and delude them that their wills were entirely perverted and no longer their own. I do not know why this passing thought should have suddenly overwhelmed me with deep depression,--but when I looked up, to me the sky had grown dark, and the face of one of the sailors who was near me polishing the brass hand-rail, seemed singularly threatening and sinister. I moved to go to the other side of the deck, when a hand was gently laid on my shoulder from behind, and turning, I met the sad and splendid eyes of Lucio.

"Are you growing weary of the voyage Geoffrey?" he asked--"Weary of those two suggestions of eternity--the interminable sky, the interminable sea? I am afraid you are!--man easily gets fatigued with his own littleness and powerlessness when he is set afloat on a plank between air and ocean. Yet we are travelling as swiftly as electricity will bear us,--and, as worked in this vessel, it is carrying us at a far greater speed than you perhaps realize or imagine."

I made no immediate answer, but taking his arm strolled slowly up and down. I felt he was looking at me, but I avoided meeting his gaze.

"You have been thinking of your wife?" he queried softly and, as I thought, sympathetically--"I have shunned,--for reasons you know of,--all allusion to the tragic end of so beautiful a creature. Beauty is, alas!--so often subject to hysteria! Yet--if you had any faith, you would believe she is an angel now!"

I stopped short at this, and looked straight at him. There was a fine smile on his delicate mouth.

"An angel!" I repeated slowly--"or a devil? Which would you say she is?--you, who sometimes declare that you believe in Heaven,--and Hell?"

He was silent, but the dreamy smile remained still on his lips.

"Come, speak!" I said roughly--"You can be frank with me, you know,--angel or devil--which?"

"My dear Geoffrey!" he remonstrated gently and with gravity--"A woman is always an angel,--both here and hereafter!"

I laughed bitterly. "If that is part of your faith I am sorry for you!"

"I have not spoken of my faith,"--he rejoined in colder accents, lifting his brilliant eyes to the darkening heaven--"I am not a Salvationist, that I should bray forth a creed to the sound of trump and drum."

"All the same, you _have_ a creed;"--I persisted--"And I fancy it must be a strange one! If you remember, you promised to explain it to me----"

"Are you ready to receive such an explanation?" he asked in a somewhat ironical tone--"No, my dear friend!--permit me to say you are _not_ ready--not yet! My beliefs are too positive to be brought even into contact with your contradictions,--too frightfully real to submit to your doubts for a moment. You would at once begin to revert to the puny, used-up old arguments of Voltaire, Schopenhauer and Huxley,--little atomic theories like grains of dust in the whirlwind of My knowledge! I can tell you I believe in God as a very Actual and Positive Being,--and that is presumably the first of the Church articles."

"You believe in God!" I echoed his words, staring at him stupidly. He seemed in earnest. In fact he had always seemed in earnest on the subject of Deity. Vaguely I thought of a woman in society whom I slightly knew,--an ugly woman, unattractive and mean-minded, who passed her time in entertaining semi-Royalties and pushing herself amongst them,--she had said to me one day--[4] "I hate people who believe in God, don't you? The idea of a God makes me _sick_!"

"You believe in God!" I repeated again dubiously.

"Look!" he said, raising his hand towards the sky--"There a few drifting clouds cover millions of worlds, impenetrable, mysterious, yet _actual_;--down there--" and he pointed to the sea, "lurk a thousand things of which, though the ocean is a part of earth, human beings have not yet learned the nature. Between these upper and lower spaces of the Incomprehensible yet Absolute, you, a finite atom of limited capabilities stand, uncertain how long the frail thread of your life shall last, yet arrogantly balancing the question with your own poor brain, as to whether you,--_you_ in your utter littleness and incompetency shall condescend to accept a God or not! I confess, that of all astonishing things in the Universe, this particular attitude of modern mankind is the most astonishing to me!"

"Your own attitude is?----"

"The reluctant acceptance of such terrific knowledge as is forced upon me,--" he replied with a dark smile--"I do not say I have been an apt or a willing pupil,--I have had to suffer in learning what I know!"

"Do you believe in hell?" I asked him suddenly--"And in Satan, the Arch-Enemy of mankind?"

He was silent for so long that I was surprised, the more so as he grew pale to the lips, and a curious, almost deathlike rigidity of feature gave his expression something of the ghastly and terrible. After a pause he turned his eyes upon me,--an intense burning misery was reflected in them, though he smiled.

"Most assuredly I believe in hell! How can I do otherwise if I believe in heaven? If there is an Up there must be a Down; if there is Light, there must also be Darkness! And, ... concerning the Arch-Enemy of mankind,--if half the stories reported of him be true, he must be the most piteous and pitiable figure in the Universe! What would be the sorrows of a thousand million worlds, compared to the sorrows of Satan!"

"Sorrows!" I echoed--"He is supposed to rejoice in the working of evil!"

"Neither angel nor devil can do that,"--he said slowly--"To rejoice in the working of evil is a temporary mania which affects man only. For actual joy to come out of evil, Chaos must come again, and God must extinguish Himself." He stared across the dark sea,--the sun had sunk, and one faint star twinkled through the clouds. "And so I again say--the sorrows of Satan! Sorrows immeasurable as eternity itself,--imagine them! To be shut out of Heaven!--to hear all through the unending æons, the far-off voices of angels whom once he knew and loved!--to be a wanderer among deserts of darkness, and to pine for the light celestial that was formerly as air and food to his being,--and to know that Man's folly, Man's utter selfishness, Man's cruelty, keep him thus exiled, an outcast from pardon and peace! Man's nobleness may lift the Lost Spirit almost within reach of his lost joys,--but Man's vileness drags him down again,--easy was the torture of Sisyphus compared with the torture of Satan! No wonder that he loathes Mankind!--small blame to him if he seeks to destroy the puny tribe eternally,--little marvel that he grudges them their share of immortality! Think of it as a legend merely,"--and he turned upon me with a movement that was almost fierce--"Christ redeemed Man,--and by his teaching, showed how it was possible for Man to redeem the Devil!"

"I do not understand you--" I said feebly, awed by the strange pain and passion of his tone.

"Do you not? Yet my meaning is scarcely obscure! If men were true to their immortal instincts and to the God that made them,--if they were generous, honest, fearless, faithful, reverent, unselfish, ... if women were pure, brave, tender and loving,--can you not imagine that in the strong force and fairness of such a world, 'Lucifer, son of the Morning' would be moved to love instead of hate?--that the closed doors of Paradise would be unbarred--and that he, lifted towards his Creator on the prayers of pure lives, would wear again his Angel's crown? Can you not realize this, even by way of a legendary story?"

"Why yes, as a legendary story the idea is beautiful,"--I admitted--"And to me, as I told you once before, quite new. Still, as men are never likely to be honest or women pure, I'm afraid the poor devil stands a bad chance of ever getting redeemed!"

"I fear so too!" and he eyed me with a curious derision--"I very much fear so! And his chances being so slight, I rather respect him for being the Arch-Enemy of such a worthless race!" He paused a moment, then added--"I wonder how we have managed to get on such an absurd subject of conversation? It is dull and uninteresting as all 'spiritual' themes invariably are. My object in bringing you out on this voyage is not to indulge in psychological argument, but to make you forget your troubles as much as possible, and enjoy the present while it lasts."

There was a vibration of compassionate kindness in his voice which at once moved me to an acute sense of self-pity, the worst enervator of moral force that exists. I sighed heavily.

"Truly I have suffered"--I said--"More than most men!"

"More even than most millionaires deserve to suffer!" declared Lucio, with that inevitable touch of sarcasm which distinguished some of his friendliest remarks--"Money is supposed to make amends to a man for everything,--and even the wealthy wife of a certain Irish 'patriot' has not found it incompatible with affection to hold her moneybags close to herself while her husband has been declared a bankrupt. How she has 'idolized' him, let others say! Now, considering _your_ cash-abundance, it must be owned the fates have treated you somewhat unkindly!"

The smile that was half-cruel and half-sweet radiated in his eyes as he spoke,--and again a singular revulsion of feeling against him moved me to dislike and fear. And yet,--how fascinating was his company! I could not but admit that the voyage with him to Alexandria on board 'The Flame' was one of positive enchantment and luxury all the way. There was nothing in a material sense left to wish for,--all that could appeal to the intelligence or the imagination had been thought of on board this wonderful yacht which sped like a fairy ship over the sea. Some of the sailors were skilled musicians, and on tranquil nights or at sunset, would bring stringed instruments and discourse to our ears the most dulcet and ravishing melodies. Lucio himself too would often sing,--his luscious voice resounding, as it seemed, over all the visible sea and sky, with such passion as might have drawn an angel down to listen. Gradually my mind became impregnated with these snatches of mournful, fierce, or weird minor tunes,--and I began to suffer in silence from an inexplicable depression and foreboding sense of misery, as well as from another terrible feeling to which I could scarcely give a name,--a dreadful _uncertainty of myself_, as of one lost in a wilderness and about to die. I endured these fits of mental agony alone,--and in such dreary burning moments, believed I was going mad. I grew more and more sullen and taciturn, and when we at last arrived at Alexandria I was not moved to any particular pleasure. The place was new to me, but I was not conscious of novelty,--everything seemed flat, dull, and totally uninteresting. A heavy almost lethargic stupor chained my wits, and when we left the yacht in harbour and went on to Cairo, I was not sensible of any personal enjoyment in the journey, or interest in what I saw. I was only partially roused when we took possession of a luxurious dahabeah, which, with a retinue of attendants, had been specially chartered for us, and commenced our lotus-like voyage up the Nile. The reed-edged, sluggish yellow river fascinated me,--I used to spend long hours reclining at full length in a deck-chair, gazing at the flat shores, the blown sand-heaps, the broken columns and mutilated temples of the dead kingdoms of the past. One evening, thus musing, while the great golden moon climbed languidly up into the sky to stare at the wrecks of earthly ages I said--

"If one could only see these ancient cities as they once existed, what strange revelations might be made! Our modern marvels of civilization and progress might seem small trifles after all,--for I believe in our days we are only re-discovering what the peoples of old time knew."

Lucio drew his cigar from his mouth and looked at it meditatively. Then he glanced up at me with a half-smile--

"Would you like to see a city resuscitated?" he inquired--"Here, in this very spot, some six thousand years ago, a king reigned, with a woman not his queen but his favourite, (quite a lawful arrangement in those days) who was as famous for her beauty and virtue, as this river is for its fructifying tide. Here civilization had progressed enormously,--with the one exception that it had not outgrown faith. Modern France and England have beaten the ancients in their scorn of God and creed, their contempt for divine things, their unnameable lasciviousness and blasphemy. This city"----and he waved his hand towards a dreary stretch of shore where a cluster of tall reeds waved above the monster fragment of a fallen column,--"was governed by the strong pure faith of its people more than anything,--and the ruler of social things in it was a woman. The king's favourite was something like Mavis Clare in that she possessed genius,--she had also the qualities of justice, intelligence, love, truth and a most noble unselfishness,--she made this place happy. It was a paradise on earth while she lived,--when she died, its glory ended. So much can a woman do if she chooses,--so much does she _not_ do, in her usual cow-like way of living!"

"How do you know all this you tell me of?" I asked him.

"By study of past records"--he replied--"I read what modern men declare they have no time to read. You are right in the idea that all 'new' things are only old things re-invented or re-discovered,--if you had gone a step further and said that some of men's present lives are only the continuation of their past, you would not have been wrong. Now, if you like, I can by my science, show you the city that stood here long ago,--the 'City Beautiful' as its name is, translated from the ancient tongue."

I roused myself from my lounging attitude and looked at him amazedly. He met my gaze unmoved.

"You can show it to me!" I exclaimed--"How can you do such an impossible thing?"

"Permit me to hypnotize you,"--he answered smiling,--"My system of hypnotism is, very fortunately, not yet discovered by meddlesome inquirers into occult matters,--but it never fails of its effect,--and I promise you, you shall, under my influence, see not only the place, but the people."

My curiosity was strongly excited, and I became more eager to try the suggested experiment than I cared to openly show. I laughed however, with affected indifference.

"I am perfectly willing!" I said--"All the same, I don't think you can hypnotize me,--I have much too strong a will of my own----" at which remark I saw a smile, dark and saturnine, hover on his lips--"But you can make the attempt."

He rose at once, and signed to one of our Egyptian servants.

"Stop the dahabeah, Azimah," he said--"We will rest here for the night."

Azimah, a superb-looking Eastern in picturesque white garments, put his hands to his head in submission and retired to give the order. In another few moments the dahabeah had stopped. A great silence was around us,--the moonlight fell like yellow wine on the deck,--in the far distance across the stretches of dark sand, a solitary column towered so clear-cut against the sky that it was almost possible to discern upon it the outline of a monstrous face. Lucio stood still, confronting me,--saying nothing, but looking me steadily through and through, with those wonderful mystic, melancholy eyes that seemed to penetrate and burn my very flesh. I was attracted as a bird might be by the basilisk eyes of a snake,--yet I tried to smile and say something indifferent. My efforts were useless,--personal consciousness was slipping from me fast,--the sky, the water and the moon whirled round each other in a giddy chase for precedence;--I could not move, for my limbs seemed fastened to my chair with weights of iron, and I was for a few minutes absolutely powerless. Then suddenly my vision cleared (as I thought)--my senses grew vigorous and alert, ... I heard the sound of solemn marching music, and there,--there in the full radiance of the moon, with a thousand lights gleaming forth from high cupolas, shone the 'City Beautiful'!

[4] Said in the author's hearing by one of the 'lady leaders' of 'smart' society.

XXXIX

A vision of majestic buildings, vast, stately and gigantic!----of streets crowded with men and women in white and coloured garments adorned with jewels,--of flowers that grew on the roofs of palaces and swung from terrace to terrace in loops and garlands of fantastic bloom,--of trees, broad-branched and fully leafed,--of marble embankments overlooking the river,--of lotus-lilies growing thickly below, by the water's edge,--of music that echoed in silver and brazen twangings from the shelter of shady gardens and covered balconies,--every beautiful detail rose before me more distinctly than an ivory carving mounted on an ebony shield. Just opposite where I stood or seemed to stand, on the deck of a vessel in the busy harbour, a wide avenue extended, opening up into huge squares embellished with strange figures of granite gods and animals,--I saw the sparkling spray of many fountains in the moonlight, and heard the low persistent hum of the restless human multitudes that thronged the place as thickly as bees clustered in a hive. To the left of the scene I could discern a huge bronze gate guarded by sphinxes; there was a garden beyond it, and from that depth of shade a girl's voice, singing a strange wild melody, came floating towards me on the breeze. Meanwhile the marching music I had first of all caught the echo of, sounded nearer and nearer,--and presently I perceived a great crowd approaching with lighted torches and garlands of flowers. Soon I saw a band of priests in brilliant robes that literally blazed with sun-like gems,--they were moving towards the river, and with them came young boys and little children, while on either side, maidens white-veiled and rose-wreathed, paced demurely, swinging silver censers to and fro. After the priestly procession walked a regal figure between ranks of slaves and attendants,--I knew it for the King of this 'City Beautiful,' and was almost moved to join in the thundering acclamations which greeted his progress. And that snowy palanquin, carried by lily-crowned girls, that followed his train,--who occupied it? ... what gem of his land was thus tenderly enshrined? I was consumed by an extraordinary longing to know this,--I watched the white burden coming nearer to my point of vantage,--I saw the priests arrange themselves in a semi-circle on the river-embankment, the King in their midst, and the surging shouting multitude around,--then came the brazen clangour of many bells, intermixed with the rolling of drums and the shrilling sound of reed-pipes lightly blown upon,--and, amid the blaze of the flaring torches, the White Palanquin was set down upon the ground. A woman, clad in some silvery glistening tissue, stepped forth from it like a sylph from the foam of the sea, but----she was veiled,--I could not discern so much as the outline of her features,--and the keen disappointment of this was a positive torture to me. If I could but see her, I thought, I should know something I had never hitherto guessed! "Lift, oh lift the shrouding veil, Spirit of the City Beautiful!" I inwardly prayed--"For I feel I shall read in your eyes the secret of happiness!"

But the veil was not withdrawn, ... the music made barbaric clamour in my ears, ... the blaze of strong light and colour blinded me, ... and I felt myself reeling into a dark chaos, where as I imagined, I chased the moon, as she flew before me on silver wings,--then ... the sound of a rich baritone trolling out a light song from a familiar modern _opera bouffe_ confused and startled me,----and in another second I found myself staring wildly at Lucio, who, lying easily back in his deck-chair, was carolling joyously to the silent night and the blank expanse of sandy shore, in front of which our dahabeah rested motionless. With a cry I flung myself upon him.

"Where is she?" I exclaimed--"_Who_ is she?"

He looked at me without replying, and smiling quizzically, released himself from my sudden grasp. I drew back shuddering and bewildered.

"I saw it all!" I murmured--"The city--the priests,--the people--the King!----all but Her face! Why was that hidden from me!"

And actual tears rose to my eyes involuntarily,--Lucio surveyed me with evident amusement.

"What a 'find' you would be to a first-class 'spiritual' impostor playing his tricks in cultured and easily-gulled London society!" he observed--"You seem most powerfully impressed by a passing vision!"

"Do you mean to tell me," I said earnestly "that what I saw just now was the mere thought of your brain conveyed to mine?"

"Precisely!" he responded--"I know what the 'City Beautiful' was like, and I was able to draw it for you on the canvas of my memory and present it as a complete picture to your inward sight. For you _have_ an inward sight,--though like most people, you live unconscious of that neglected faculty."

"But--who was She?" I repeated obstinately.

"'She' was, I presume, the King's favourite. If she kept her face hidden from you as you complain, I am sorry!--but I assure you it was not my fault! Get to bed, Geoffrey,--you look dazed. You take visions badly,--yet they are better than realities, believe me!"

Somehow I could not answer him. I left him abruptly and went below to try and sleep, but my thoughts were all cruelly confused, and I began to be more than ever overwhelmed with a sense of deepening terror,--a feeling that I was being commanded, controlled and, as it were, driven along by a force that had in it something unearthly. It was a most distressing sensation,--it made me shrink at times, from the look of Lucio's eyes,--now and then indeed I almost cowered before him, so increasingly great was the indefinable dread I had of his presence. It was not so much the strange vision of the 'City Beautiful' that had inspired this in me,--for after all, that was only a trick of hypnotism, as he had said, and as I was content to argue it with myself,--but it was his whole manner that suddenly began to impress me as it had never impressed me before. If any change was slowly taking place in my sentiments towards him, so surely it seemed was he changing equally towards me. His imperious ways were more imperial,--his sarcasm more sarcastic,--his contempt for mankind more openly displayed and more frequently pronounced. Yet I admired him as much as ever,--I delighted in his conversation, whether it were witty, philosophical or cynical,--I could not imagine myself without his company. Nevertheless the gloom on my mind deepened,--our Nile trip became infinitely wearisome to me, so much so, that almost before we had got half-way on our journey up the river, I longed to turn back again and wished the voyage at an end. An incident that occurred at Luxor was more than sufficient to strengthen this desire. We had stayed there for several days exploring the district and visiting the ruins of Thebes and Karnac, where they were busy excavating tombs. One afternoon they brought to light a red granite sarcophagus intact,--in it was a richly painted coffin which was opened in our presence, and was found to contain the elaborately adorned mummy of a woman. Lucio proved himself an apt reader of hieroglyphs, and he translated in brief, and with glib accuracy the history of the corpse as it was pictured inside the sepulchral shell.

"A dancer at the court of Queen Amenartes;" he announced for the benefit of several interested spectators who with myself, stood round the sarcophagus--"Who because of her many sins, and secret guilt which made her life unbearable, and her days full of corruption, died of poison administered by her own hand, according to the King's command, and in presence of the executioners of law. Such is the lady's story,--condensed;--there are a good many other details of course. She appears to have been only in her twentieth year. Well!" and he smiled as he looked round upon his little audience,--"We may congratulate ourselves on having progressed since the days of these over-strict ancient Egyptians! The sins of dancers are not, with us, taken _au grand serieux_! Shall we see what she is like?"

No objection was raised by the authorities concerned in the discoveries,--and I, who had never witnessed the unrolling of a mummy before, watched the process with great interest and curiosity. As one by one of the scented wrappings were removed, a long tress of nut-brown hair became visible,--then, those who were engaged in the task, used more extreme and delicate precaution, Lucio himself assisting them to uncover the face. As this was done, a kind of sick horror stole over me,--brown and stiff as parchment though the features were, their contour was recognisable,--and when the whole countenance was exposed to view I could almost have shrieked aloud the name of '_Sibyl!_' For it was like her!--dreadfully like!--and as the faint, half-aromatic half-putrid odours of the unrolled cerements crept towards me on the air, I reeled back giddily and covered my eyes. Irresistibly I was reminded of the subtle French perfume exhaled from Sibyl's garments when I found her dead,--that, and this sickly effluvia were similar! A man standing near me saw me swerve as though about to fall, and caught me on his arm.

"The sun is too strong for you I fear?" he said kindly--"This climate does not suit everybody."

I forced a smile and murmured something about a passing touch of vertigo,--then, recovering myself I gazed fearfully at Lucio, who was studying the mummy attentively with a curious smile. Presently stooping over the coffin he took out of it a piece of finely wrought gold in the shape of a medallion.

"This, I imagine must be the fair dancer's portrait,"--he said, holding it up to the view of all the eager and exclaiming spectators--"Quite a treasure-trove! An admirable piece of ancient workmanship, besides being the picture of a very lovely woman. Do you not think so, Geoffrey?"

He handed me the medallion,--and I examined it with deadly and fascinated interest,--the face was exquisitely beautiful,--but assuredly it was the face of Sibyl!

I never remember how I lived through the rest of that day. At night, as soon as I had an opportunity of speaking to Rimânez alone, I asked him ...

"Did you see,----did you not recognize? ..."

"That the dead Egyptian dancer resembled your late wife?" he quietly continued--"Yes,--I noticed it at once. But that should not affect you. History repeats itself,--why should not lovely women repeat themselves? Beauty always has its double somewhere, either in the past or future."

I said no more,--but next morning I was very ill,--so ill that I could not rise from my bed, and passed the hours in restless moaning and irritable pain that was not so much physical as mental. There was a physician resident at the hotel at Luxor, and Lucio, always showing himself particularly considerate for my personal comfort, sent for him at once. He felt my pulse, shook his head, and after much dubious pondering, advised my leaving Egypt immediately. I heard his mandate given with a joy I could scarcely conceal. The yearning I had to get quickly away from this 'land of the old gods' was intense and feverish,--I loathed the vast and awful desert silences, where the Sphinx frowns contempt on the puny littleness of mankind,--where the opened tombs and coffins expose once more to the light of day, faces that are the very semblances of those we ourselves have known and loved in our time,--and where painted history tells us of just such things as our modern newspapers chronicle, albeit in different form. Rimânez was ready and willing to carry out the doctor's orders,--and arranged our return to Cairo and from thence to Alexandria, with such expedition as left me nothing to desire, and filled me with gratitude for his apparent sympathy. In as short a time as abundance of cash could make possible, we had rejoined 'The Flame,' and were _en route_, as I thought, for France or England. We had not absolutely settled our destination, having some idea of coasting along the Riviera,--but my old confidence in Rimânez being now almost restored, I left this to him for decision, sufficiently satisfied in myself that I had not been destined to leave my bones in terror-haunted Egypt. And it was not till I had been about a week or ten days on board, and had made good progress in the recovery of my health, that the beginning of the end of this never-to-be-forgotten voyage was foreshadowed to me in such terrific fashion as nearly plunged me into the darkness of death,--or rather let me now say, (having learned my bitter lesson thoroughly) into the fell brilliancy of that Life beyond the tomb which we refuse to recognise or realize till we are whirled into its glorious or awful vortex!

One evening, after a bright day of swift and enjoyable sailing over a smooth and sunlit sea, I retired to rest in my cabin, feeling almost happy. My mind was perfectly tranquil,--my trust in my friend Lucio was again re-established,--and I may add, so was my old arrogant and confident trust in myself. My access to fortune had not, so far, brought me either much joy or distinction,--but it was not too late for me yet to pluck the golden apples of Hesperides. The various troubles I had endured, though of such recent occurrence, began to assume a blurred indistinctness in my mind, as of things long past and done with,--I considered the strength of my financial position again with satisfaction, to the extent of contemplating a second marriage--and that marriage with--Mavis Clare! No other woman should be my wife, I mentally swore,--she, and she only should be mine! I foresaw no difficulties in the way,--and full of pleasant dreams and self-delusions I settled myself in my berth, and dropped easily off to sleep. About midnight I awoke, vaguely terrified, to see the cabin full of a strong red light and fierce glare. My first dazed impression was that the yacht was on fire,--the next instant I became paralysed and dumb with horror. Sibyl stood before me! ... Sibyl, a wild, strange, tortured writhing figure, half nude, waving beckoning arms, and making desperate gestures,--her face was as I had seen it last in death, livid and hideous, ... her eyes blazed mingled menace, despair, and warning upon me! Round her a living wreath of flame coiled upwards like a twisted snake, ... her lips moved as though she strove to speak, but no sound came from them,----and while I yet looked at her, she vanished! I must have lost consciousness then,--for when I awoke it was broad day. But this ghastly visitation was only the first of many such,--and at last, _every night_ I saw her thus, sheeted in flame, till I grew well-nigh mad with fear and misery. My torment was indescribable,--yet I said nothing to Lucio, who watched me, as I imagined, narrowly,--I took sleeping-draughts in the hope to procure unbroken rest, but in vain,--always I woke at one particular moment, and always I had to face this fiery phantom of my dead wife, with despair in her eyes and an unuttered warning on her lips. This was not all. One day in the full sunlight of a quiet afternoon, I entered the saloon of the yacht alone, and started back amazed to see my old friend John Carrington seated at the table, pen in hand, casting up accounts. He bent over his papers closely,--his face was furrowed and very pale,--but so life-like was he, so seemingly substantial that I called him by name, whereat he looked up,--smiled drearily, and was gone! Trembling in every limb I realized that here was another spectral terror added to the burden of my days; and sitting down, I tried to rally my scattered forces and reason out what was best to be done. There was no doubt I was very ill;--these phantoms were the warning of brain-disease. I must endeavour, I thought, to keep myself well under control till I got to England,--there I determined to consult the best physicians, and put myself under their care till I was thoroughly restored.

"Meanwhile"--I muttered to myself--"I will say nothing, ... not even to Lucio. He would only smile, ... and I should hate him! ..."

I broke off, wondering at this. For was it possible I should ever hate him? Surely not!

That night by way of a change, I slept in a hammock on deck, hoping to dispel midnight illusions by resting in the open air. But my sufferings were only intensified. I woke as usual, ... to see, not only Sibyl, but also to my deadly fear, the Three Phantoms that had appeared to me in my room in London on the evening of Viscount Lynton's suicide. There they were,--the same, the very same!--only this time all their livid faces were lifted and turned towards me, and though their lips never moved, the word 'Misery!' seemed uttered, for I heard it tolling like a funeral bell on the air and across the sea! ... And Sibyl, with her face of death in the coils of a silent flame, ... Sibyl smiled at me!----a smile of torture and remorse! ... God!--I could endure it no longer! Leaping from my hammock, I ran towards the vessel's edge, ... one plunge into the cool waves, ... ha!--there stood Amiel, with his impenetrable dark face and ferret eyes!

"Can I assist you sir?" he inquired deferentially.

I stared at him,--then burst into a laugh.

"Assist me? Why no!--you can do nothing. I want rest, ... and I cannot sleep here, ... the air is too close and sulphureous,----the very stars are burning hot! ..." I paused,--he regarded me with his usual gravely derisive expression. "I am going down to my cabin"--I continued, trying to speak more calmly----"I shall be _alone_ there ... perhaps!" Again I laughed wildly and involuntarily, and staggered away from him down the deck-stairs, afraid to look back lest I should see those Three Figures of fate following me.

Once safe in my cabin I shut to the door violently, and in feverish haste, seized my case of pistols. I took out one and loaded it. My heart was beating furiously,--I kept my eyes fixed on the ground, lest they should encounter the dead eyes of Sibyl.

"One click of the trigger--" I whispered--"and all is over! I shall be at peace,--senseless,--sightless and painless. Horrors can no longer haunt me, ... I shall sleep!"

I raised the weapon steadily to my right temple, ... when suddenly my cabin-door opened, and Lucio looked in.

"Pardon me!" he said, as he observed my attitude--"I had no idea you were busy! I will go away. I would not disturb you for the world!"

His smile had something fiendish in its fine mockery;--moved with a quick revulsion of feeling I turned the pistol downwards and held its muzzle firmly against the table near me.

"_You_ say that!" I exclaimed in acute anguish,--"_you_ say it--seeing me thus! I thought you were my friend!"

He looked full at me, ... his eyes grew large and luminous with a splendour of scorn, passion and sorrow intermingled.

"Did you?" and again the terrific smile lit up his pale features,--"You were mistaken! _I am your Enemy!_"

A dreadful silence followed. Something lurid and unearthly in his expression appalled me, ... I trembled and grew cold with fear. Mechanically I replaced the pistol in its case,----then I gazed up at him with a vacant wonder and wild piteousness, seeing that his dark and frowning figure seemed to increase in stature, towering above me like the gigantic shadow of a storm-cloud! My blood froze with an unnameable sickening terror, ... then, thick darkness veiled my sight, and I dropped down senseless!

XL

Thunder and wild tumult,--the glare of lightning,--the shattering roar of great waves leaping mountains high and hissing asunder in mid-air,--to this fierce riot of savage elements let loose in a whirling boisterous dance of death, I woke at last with a convulsive shock. Staggering to my feet I stood in the black obscurity of my cabin, trying to rally my scattered forces,--the electric lamps were extinguished, and the lightning alone illumined the sepulchral darkness. Frantic shoutings echoed above me on deck,--fiend-like yells that sounded now like triumph, now like despair, and again like menace,--the yacht leaped to and fro like a hunted stag amid the furious billows, and every frightful crash of thunder threatened, as it seemed, to split her in twain. The wind howled like a devil in torment,--it screamed and moaned and sobbed as though endowed with a sentient body that suffered acutest agony,--anon it rushed downwards with an angry swoop as of wide-flapping wings, and at each raging gust I thought the vessel must surely founder. Forgetting everything but immediate personal danger, I tried to open my door. It was locked outside!--I was a prisoner! My indignation at this discovery exceeded every other feeling, and beating with both hands on the wooden panels, I called, I shouted, I threatened, I swore,----all in vain! Thrown down twice by the topsy-turvey lurching of the yacht, I still kept up a desperate hammering and calling, striving to raise my voice above the distracting pandemonium of noise that seemed to possess the ship from end to end, but all to no purpose,--and finally, hoarse and exhausted, I stopped and leaned against the unyielding door to recover breath and strength. The storm appeared to be increasing in force and clamour,--the lightning was well-nigh incessant, and the clattering thunder followed each flash so instantaneously as to leave no doubt but that it was immediately above us. I listened,--and presently heard a frenzied cry--

"Breakers ahead!" This was followed by peals of discordant laughter. Terrified, I strained my ears for every sound,--and all at once some-one spoke to me quite closely, as though the very darkness around me had found a tongue.

"Breakers ahead! Throughout the world, storm and danger and doom! Doom and Death!--but afterwards--Life!"

A certain intonation in these words filled me with such frantic horror that I fell on my knees in abject misery, and almost prayed to the God I had through all my life disbelieved in and denied. But I was too mad with fear to find words;--the dense blackness,--the horrid uproar of the wind and sea,--the infuriated and confused shouting,--all this was to my mind as though hell itself had broken loose, and I could only kneel dumbly and tremble. Suddenly a swirling sound as of an approaching monstrous whirlwind made itself heard above all the rest of the din,--a sound that gradually resolved itself into a howling chorus of thousands of voices sweeping along on the gusty blast,----fierce cries were mingled with the jarring thunder, and I leapt erect as I caught the words of the clangorous shout--

"AVE SATHANAS! AVE!"

Rigidly upright, with limbs stiffening for sheer terror, I stood listening,--the waves seemed to roar "AVE SATHANAS!"--the wind shrieked it to the thunder,--the lightning wrote it in a snaky line of fire on the darkness "AVE SATHANAS!" My brain swam round and grew full to bursting,--I was going mad,--raving mad surely!--or why should I thus distinctly hear such unmeaning sounds as these? With a sudden access of superhuman force I threw the whole weight of my body against the door of my cabin in a delirious effort to break it open,--it yielded slightly,--and I prepared myself for another rush and similar attempt,--when all at once it was flung widely back, admitting a stream of pale light, and Lucio, wrapped in heavy shrouding garments, confronted me.

"Follow me, Geoffrey Tempest,--" he said in low clear tones--"Your time has come!"

As he spoke, all self-possession deserted me,--the terrors of the storm, and now the terror of his presence, overwhelmed my strength, and I stretched out my hands to him appealingly, unknowing what I did or said.

"For God's sake...!" I began wildly.

He silenced me by an imperious gesture.

"Spare me your prayers! For God's sake, for your own sake, and for mine! Follow!"

He moved before me like a black phantom in the pale strange light surrounding him,--and I, dazzled, dazed and terror-stricken, trod in his steps closely, moved, as it seemed by some volition not my own, till I found myself alone with him in the saloon of the yacht, with the waves hissing up against the windows like live snakes ready to sting. Trembling and scarcely able to stand I sank on a chair,--he turned round and looked at me for a moment meditatively. Then he threw open one of the windows,--a huge wave dashed in and scattered its bitter salt spray upon me where I sat,--but I heeded nothing,--my agonised looks were fixed on Him,--the Being I had so long made the companion of my days. Raising his hand with a gesture of authority he said--

"Back, ye devils of the sea and wind!--ye which are not God's elements but My servants, the unrepenting souls of men! Lost in the waves, or whirled in the hurricane, whichever ye have made your destiny, get hence and cease your clamour! This hour is Mine!"

Panic-stricken I heard,--aghast I saw the great billows that had shouldered up in myriads against the vessel, sink suddenly,--the yelling wind dropped, silenced,--the yacht glided along with a smooth even motion as though on a tranquil inland lake,--and almost before I could realize it, the light of the full moon beamed forth brilliantly and fell in a broad stream across the floor of the saloon. But in the very cessation of the storm the words "AVE SATHANAS!" trembled as it were upwards to my ears from the underworld of the sea, and died away in distance like a parting echo of thunder. Then Lucio faced me,--with what a countenance of sublime and awful beauty!

"Do you know Me now, man whom my millions of dross have made wretched?--or do you need me to tell you WHO I am?"

My lips moved,--but I could not speak; the dim and dreadful thought that was dawning on my mind seemed as yet too frenzied, too outside the boundaries of material sense for mortal utterance.

"Be dumb,--be motionless!--but hear and feel!" he continued--"By the supreme power of God,--for there is no other power in any world or any heaven,--I control and command you at this moment, your own will being set aside for once as naught! I choose you as one out of millions to learn in this life the lesson that all must learn hereafter;--let every faculty of your intelligence be ready to receive that which I shall impart,--and teach it to your fellow-men if you have a conscience as you have a Soul!"

Again I strove to speak,--he seemed so human,--so much my friend still, though he had declared himself my Enemy,----and yet ... what was that lambent radiance encircling his brows?--that burning glory steadily deepening and flashing from his eyes?

"You are one of the world's 'fortunate' men,--" he went on, surveying me straightly and pitilessly--"So at least this world judges you, because you can buy its good-will. But the Forces that govern all worlds, do not judge you by such a standard,--you cannot buy _their_ good-will, not though all the Churches should offer to sell it you! They regard you as you _are_, stripped soul-naked,--not as you _seem_! They behold in you a shameless egoist, persistently engaged in defacing their divine Image of Immortality,--and for that sin there is no excuse and no escape but Punishment. Whosoever prefers Self to God, and in the arrogance of that Self, presumes to doubt and deny God, invites another Power to compass his destinies,--the power of Evil, made evil and kept evil by the disobedience and wickedness of Man alone,--that power whom mortals call Satan, Prince of Darkness,--but whom once the angels knew as Lucifer, Prince of Light!" ... He broke off,--paused,--and his flaming regard fell full upon me. "Do you know Me, ... now?"

I sat a rigid figure of fear, dumbly staring, ... was this man, for he seemed man, mad that he should thus hint at a thing too wild and terrible for speech?

"If you do not know Me,--if you do not feel in your convicted soul that you are aware of Me,--it is because you will not know! Thus do I come upon men, when they rejoice in their wilful self-blindness and vanity!--thus do I become their constant companion, humouring them in such vices as they best love!--thus do I take on the shape that pleases _them_, and fit myself to their humours! _They_ make me what I am;--they mould my very form to the fashion of their flitting time. Through all their changing and repeating eras, they have found strange names and titles for me,--and their creeds and churches have made a monster of me,--as though imagination could compass any worse monster than the Devil in Man!"

Frozen and mute I heard, ... the dead silence, and his resonant voice vibrating through it, seemed more terrific than the wildest storm.

"You,--God's work,--endowed as every conscious atom of His creation is endowed,--with the infinite germ of immortality;--you, absorbed in the gathering together of such perishable trash as you conceive good for yourself on this planet,--you dare, in the puny reach of your mortal intelligence to dispute and question the everlasting things invisible! You, by the Creator's will, are permitted to see the Natural Universe,--but in mercy to you, the veil is drawn across the Super-natural! For such things as exist there, would break your puny earth-brain as a frail shell is broken by a passing wheel,--and because you cannot see, you doubt! You doubt not only the surpassing Love and Wisdom that keeps you in ignorance till you shall be strong enough to bear full knowledge, but you doubt the very fact of such another universe itself. Arrogant fool!--your hours are counted by Super-natural time!--your days are compassed by Super-natural law!--your every thought, word, deed and look must go to make up the essence and shape of your being in Super-natural life hereafter!--and what you _have been_ in your Soul _here_, must and shall be the aspect of your Soul _there_! That law knows no changing!"

The light about his face deepened,--he went on in clear accents that vibrated with the strangest music.

"Men make their own choice and form their own futures," he said--"And never let them dare to say they are not _free_ to choose! From the uttermost reaches of high Heaven the Spirit of God descended to them as Man,--from the uttermost depths of lowest Hell, I, the Spirit of Rebellion, come,--equally as Man! But the God-in-Man was rejected and slain,--I, the Devil-in-Man live on, forever accepted and adored! Man's choice this is--not God's or mine! Were this self-seeking human race once to reject me utterly, I should exist no more as I am,--nor would they exist who are with me. Listen, while I trace your career!--it is a copy of the lives of many men;--and judge how little the powers of Heaven can have to do with you!--how much the powers of Hell!"

I shuddered involuntarily;--dimly I began to realize the awful nature of this unearthly interview.

"You, Geoffrey Tempest, are a man in whom a Thought of God was once implanted,--that subtle fire or note of music out of heaven called Genius. So great a gift is rarely bestowed on any mortal,--and woe betide him, who having received it, holds it as of mere personal value, to be used for Self and not for God! Divine laws moved you gently in the right path of study,--the path of suffering, of disappointment, of self-denial and poverty,--for only by these things is humanity made noble and trained in the ways of perfection. Through pain and enduring labour the soul is armed for battle, and strengthened for conquest. For it is more difficult to bear a victory well, than to endure many buffetings of war! But you,--you resented Heaven's good-will towards you,--the Valley of Humiliation suited you not at all. Poverty maddened you,--starvation sickened you. Yet poverty is better than arrogant wealth,--and starvation is healthier than self-indulgence! You could not wait,--your own troubles seemed to you enormous,--your own efforts laudable and marvellous,--the troubles and efforts of others were nothing to you;--you were ready to curse God and die. Compassionating yourself, admiring yourself and none other, with a heart full of bitterness, and a mouth full of cursing, you were eager to make quick havoc of both your genius and your soul. For this cause, your millions of money came----and,--_so did I_!"

Standing now full height he confronted me,--his eyes were less brilliant, but, they reflected in their dark splendour a passionate scorn and sorrow.

"O fool!--in my very coming I warned you!--on the very day we met I told you I was not what I seemed! God's elements crashed a menace when we made our compact of friendship! And I,--when I saw the faint last struggle of the not quite torpid soul in you to resist and distrust me, did I not urge you to let that better instinct have its way? You,--jester with the Supernatural!--you,--base scoffer at Christ! A thousand hints have been given you,--a thousand chances of doing such good as must have forced me to leave you,--as would have brought me a welcome respite from sorrow,--a moment's cessation of torture!"

His brows contracted in a sombre frown,--he was silent a moment,--then he resumed--

"Now learn from me the weaving of the web you so willingly became entangled in! Your millions of money were Mine!--the man that left you heir to them, was a wretched miser, evil to the soul's core! By virtue of his own deeds he and his dross were Mine! and maddened by the sheer accumulation of world's wealth, he slew himself in a fit of frenzy. He lives again in a new and much more realistic phase of existence, and knows the actual value of mankind's cash-payments! This _you_ have yet to learn!"

He advanced a step or two, fixing his eyes more steadily upon me.

"Wealth is like Genius,--bestowed not for personal gratification, but for the benefit of those who lack it. What have _you_ done for your fellow-men? The very book you wrote and launched upon the tide of bribery and corruption was published with the intention to secure applause for Yourself, not to give help or comfort to others. Your marriage was prompted by Lust and Ambition, and in the fair Sensuality you wedded, you got your deserts! No love was in the union,--it was sanctified by the blessing of Fashion, but not the blessing of God. You have done without God; so you think! Every act of your existence has been for the pleasure and advancement of Yourself,--and this is why I have chosen you out to hear and see what few mortals ever hear or see till they have passed the dividing-line between this life and the next. I have chosen you because you are a type of the apparently respected and unblamable man;--you are not what the world calls a criminal,--you have murdered no-one,--you have stolen no neighbour's goods--, your unchastities and adulteries are those of every 'fashionable' vice-monger,--and your blasphemies against the Divine are no worse than those of the most approved modern magazine-contributors. You are guilty nevertheless of the chief crime of the age--Sensual Egotism--the blackest sin known to either angels or devils, because hopeless. The murderer may repent, and save a hundred lives to make up for the one he snatched,--the thief may atone with honest labour,--the adulterer may scourge his flesh and do grim penance for late pardon,--the blasphemer may retrieve his blasphemies,--but for the Egoist there is no chance of wholesome penitence, since to himself he is perfect, and counts his Creator as somewhat inferior. This present time of the world breathes Egotism,--the taint of Self, the hideous worship of money, corrodes all life, all thought, all feeling. For vulgar cash, the fairest and noblest scenes of Nature are wantonly destroyed without public protest,[5]--the earth, created in beauty, is made hideous,--parents and children, wives and husbands are ready to slay each other for a little gold,--Heaven is barred out,--God is denied,--and Destruction darkens over this planet, known to all angels as the Sorrowful Star! Be no longer blind, millionaire whose millions have ministered to Self without relieving sorrow!----for when the world is totally corrupt,--when Self is dominant,--when cunning supersedes honesty,--when gold is man's chief ambition,--when purity is condemned,--when poets teach lewdness, and scientists blasphemy,--when love is mocked, and God forgotten,--the End is near! I take My part in that end!--for the souls of mankind are not done with when they leave their fleshly tenements! When this planet is destroyed as a bubble broken in the air, the souls of men and women live on,--as the soul of the woman you loved lives on,--as the soul of the mother who bore her, lives on,--aye!--as all My worshippers live on through a myriad worlds, a myriad phases, till they learn to shape their destinies for Heaven! And I, with them live on, in many shapes, in many ways!--when they return to God cleansed and perfect, so shall I return!--but not till then!"

He paused again,--and I heard a faint sighing sound everywhere as of wailing voices, and the name "Ahrimanes!" was breathed suddenly upon the silence. I started up listening, every nerve strained----Ahrimanes?--or Rimânez? I gazed fearfully at him, ... always beautiful, his countenance was now sublime, ... and his eyes shone with a lustrous flame.

"You thought me friend!" he said--"You should have known me Foe! For everyone who flatters a man for his virtues, or humours him in his vices is that man's worst enemy, whether demon or angel! But you judged me a fitting comrade,--hence I was bound to serve you,--I and my followers with me. You had no perception to realize this,--you, supreme scorner of the Supernatural! Little did you think of the terrifying agencies that worked the wonders of your betrothal feast at Willowsmere! Little did you dream that fiends prepared the costly banquet and poured out the luscious wine!"

At this, a smothered groan of horror escaped me,--I looked wildly round me, longing to find some deep grave of oblivious rest wherein to fall.

"Aye!" he continued--"The festival was fitted to the time of the world to-day!--Society, gorging itself blind and senseless, and attended by a retinue from Hell! My servants looked like men!--for truly there is little difference 'twixt man and devil! 'Twas a brave gathering!--England has never seen so strange a one in all her annals!"

The sighing, wailing cries increased in loudness,--my limbs shook under me, and all power of thought was paralysed in my brain. He bent his piercing looks upon me with a new expression of infinite wonder, pity and disdain.

"What a grotesque creation you men have made of Me!" he said--"As grotesque as your conception of God! With what trifling human attributes you have endowed me! Know you not that the changeless, yet ever-changing Essence of Immortal Life can take a million million shapes and yet remain unalterably the same? Were I as hideous as your Churches figure me,--could the eternal beauty with which all angels are endowed, ever change to such loathsomeness as haunts mankind's distorted imaginations, perchance it would be well,--for none would make of me their comrade, and none would cherish me as friend! As fits each separate human nature, so seems my image,--for thus is my fate and punishment commanded. Yet even in this mask of man I wear, men own me their superior,--think you not that when the Supreme Spirit of God wore that same mask on earth, men did not know Him for their Master? Yea, they did know!--and knowing, murdered Him,--as they ever strive to murder all divine things as soon as their divinity is recognised. Face to face I stood with Him upon the mountain-top, and there fulfilled my vow of temptation. Worlds and kingdoms, supremacies and powers!----what were they to the Ruler of them all! 'Get thee hence, Satan!' said the golden-sounding Voice;--ah!--glorious behest!--happy respite!--for I reached the very gate of Heaven that night, and heard the angels sing!"

His accents sank to an infinitely mournful cadence.

"What have your teachers done with me and my eternal sorrows?" he went on--"Have not they, and the unthinking churches, proclaimed a lie against me, saying that I rejoice in evil? O man to whom, by God's will and because the world's end draws nigh, I unveil a portion of the mystery of my doom, learn now once and for all, that there is no possible joy in evil!--it is the despair and the discord of the Universe,--it is Man's creation,--My torment,--God's sorrow! Every sin of every human being adds weight to my torture, and length to my doom,--yet my oath against the world must be kept! I have sworn to tempt,--to do my uttermost to destroy mankind,--but man has not sworn to yield to my tempting. He is free!--let him resist and I depart;--let him accept me, I remain! Eternal Justice has spoken,--Humanity, through the teaching of God made human, must work out its own redemption,--and Mine!"

Here, suddenly advancing he stretched out his hand,--his figure grew taller, vaster and more majestic.

"Come with me now!" he said in a low penetrating voice that sounded sweet, yet menacing--"Come!--for the veil is down for you to-night! You shall understand with WHOM you have dwelt so long in your shifting cloud-castle of life!--and in What company you have sailed perilous seas!--one, who proud and rebellious, like you, errs less, in that he owns GOD as his Master!"

At these words a thundering crash assailed my ears,--all the windows on either side of the saloon flew open, and showed a strange glitter as of steely spears pointed aloft to the moon,-- ... then, ... half-fainting, I felt myself grasped and lifted suddenly and forcibly upwards, ... and in another moment found myself on the deck of 'The Flame,' held fast as a prisoner in the fierce grip of hands invisible. Raising my eyes in deadly despair,--prepared for hellish tortures, and with a horrible sense of conviction in my soul that it was too late to cry out to God for mercy,--I saw around me a frozen world!--a world that seemed as if the sun had never shone upon it. Thick glassy-green walls of ice pressed round the vessel on all sides and shut her in between their inflexible barriers!--fantastic palaces, pinnacles, towers, bridges and arches of ice formed in their architectural outlines and groupings the semblance of a great city,--over all the coldly glistening peaks, the round moon, emerald-pale, looked down,--and standing opposite to me against the mast, I beheld, ... not Lucio, ... but an Angel!

[5] Witness the destruction of Foyers, to the historical shame and disgrace of Scotland and Scotsmen.

XLI

Crowned with a mystic radiance as of trembling stars of fire, that sublime Figure towered between me and the moonlit sky; the face, austerely grand and beautiful, shone forth luminously pale,--the eyes were full of unquenchable pain, unspeakable remorse, unimaginable despair! The features I had known so long and seen day by day in familiar intercourse were the same,--the same, yet transfigured with ethereal splendour, while shadowed by an everlasting sorrow! Bodily sensations I was scarcely conscious of;--only the Soul of me, hitherto dormant, was awake and palpitating with fear. Gradually I became aware that others were around me, and looking, I saw a dense crowd of faces, wild and wonderful,--imploring eyes were turned upon me in piteous or stern agony,--and pallid hands were stretched towards me more in appeal than menace. And I beheld as I gazed, the air darkening, and anon lightening with the shadow and the brightness of wings!--vast pinions of crimson flame began to unfurl and spread upwards all round the ice-bound vessel,--upwards till their glowing tips seemed well-nigh to touch the moon. And He, my Foe, who leaned against the mast, became likewise encircled with these shafted pinions of burning rose, which like finely-webbed clouds coloured by a strong sunset, streamed outward flaringly from his dark Form and sprang aloft in a blaze of scintillant glory. And a Voice infinitely sad, yet infinitely sweet, struck solemn music from the frozen silence.

"Steer onward, Amiel! Onward, to the boundaries of the world!"

With every spiritual sense aroused, I glanced towards the steerman's wheel,--was _that_ Amiel whom I had instinctively loathed?--that Being, stern as a figure of deadliest fate, with sable wings and tortured countenance? If so, I knew him now for a fiend in very truth!--if burning horror and endless shame can so transfigure the soul of man! A history of crime was written in his anguished looks, ... what secret torment racked him no living mortal might dare to guess! With pallid skeleton hands he moved the wheel;--and as it turned, the walls of ice around us began to split with a noise of thunder.

"Onward Amiel!" said the great sad Voice again--"Onward where never man hath trod,--steer on to the world's end!"

The crowd of weird and terrible faces grew denser,--the flaming and darkening of wings became thicker than driving storm-clouds rent by lightning,--wailing cries, groans and dreary sounds of sobbing echoed about me on all sides, ... again the shattering ice roared like an earthquake under the waters, ... and, unhindered by her frozen prison-walls, the ship moved on! Dizzily, and as one in a mad dream I saw the great glittering bergs rock and bend forward,--the massive ice-city shook to its foundations, ... glistening pinnacles dropped and vanished, ... towers lurched over, broke and plunged into the sea,--huge mountains of ice split up like fine glass, yawning asunder with a green glare in the moonlight as the 'Flame' propelled, so it seemed, by the demon-wings of her terrific crew, cut through the frozen passage with the sharpness of a sword and the swiftness of an arrow! Whither were we bound? I dared not think,--I deemed myself dead. The world I saw was not the world I knew,--I believed I was in some spirit-land beyond the grave, whose secrets I should presently realize perchance too well! On,--on we went,--I keeping my strained sight fixed for the most part on the supreme Shape that always confronted me,--that Angel-Foe whose eyes were wild with an eternity of sorrows! Face to face with such an Immortal Despair, I stood confounded and slain forever in my own regard,--a worthless atom, meriting naught but annihilation. The wailing cries and groans had ceased,--and we sped on in an awful silence,--while countless tragedies,--unnameable histories,--were urged upon me in the dumb eloquence of the dreary faces round me, and the expressive teaching of their terrific eyes!

Soon the barriers of ice were passed,--and the 'Flame' floated out beyond them into a warm inland sea, calm as a lake, and bright as silver in the broad radiance of the moon. On either side were undulating shores, rich with lofty and luxuriant verdure,--I saw the distant hazy outline of dusky purple hills,--I heard the little waves plashing against hidden rocks, and murmuring upon the sand. Delicious odours filled the air;--a gentle breeze blew, ... was this the lost Paradise?--this semi-tropic zone concealed behind a continent of ice and snow? Suddenly, from the tops of the dark branching trees, came floating the sound of a bird's singing,--and so sweet was the song, so heart-whole was the melody, that my aching eyes filled with tears. Beautiful memories rushed upon me,--the value and graciousness of life,--life on the kindly sunlit earth,--seemed very dear to my soul! Life's opportunities,--its joys, its wonders, its blessings, all showered down upon a thankless race by a loving Creator,--these appeared to me all at once as marvellous! Oh for another chance of such life!--to redeem the past,--to gather up the wasted gems of lost moments,--to live as a man should live, in accordance with the will of God, and in brotherhood with his fellow-men! ... The unknown bird sang on in a cadence like that of a mavis in spring, only more tunefully,--surely no other woodland songster ever sang half so well! And as its dulcet notes dropped roundly one by one upon the mystic silence, I saw a pale Creature move out from amid the shadowing of black and scarlet wings,--a white woman-shape, clothed in her own long hair. She glided to the vessel's edge, and there she leaned, with anguished face upturned,--it was the face of Sibyl! And even while I looked upon her, she cast herself wildly down upon the deck and wept! My soul was stirred within me, ... I saw in very truth all that she might have been,--I realized what an angel a little guiding love and patience might have made her, ... and at last I pitied her! I never pitied her before!

And now many familiar faces shone upon me like white stars in a mist of rain,--all faces of the dead,--all marked with unquenchable remorse and sorrow. One figure passed before me drearily, in fetters glistening with a weight of gold,--I knew him for my college-friend of olden days; another, crouching on the ground in fear, I recognised as him who had staked his last possession at play, even to his immortal soul,--I even saw my father's face, worn and aghast with grief, and trembled lest the sacred beauty of Her who had died to give me birth, should find a place among these direful horrors. But no!--thank God I never saw her!----_her_ spirit had not lost its way to Heaven!

Again my eyes reverted to the Mover of this mystic scene,--that Fallen Splendour whose majestic shape now seemed to fill both earth and sky. A fiery glory blazed about him, ... he raised his hand, ... the ship stopped,--and the dark Steersman rested motionless on the wheel. Round us the moonlit landscape was spread like a glittering dream of fairyland,--and still the unknown bird of God sang on with such entrancing tenderness as must have soothed hell's tortured souls.

"Lo, here we pause!" said the commanding Voice--"Here, where the distorted shape of Man hath never cast a shadow!--here,--where the arrogant mind of Man hath never conceived a sin!--here, where the godless greed of Man hath never defaced a beauty, or slain a woodland thing!--here, the last spot on earth left untainted by Man's presence! Here is the world's end!--when this land is found, and these shores profaned,--when Mammon plants its foot upon this soil,--then dawns the Judgment-Day! But, until then, ... here, where only God doth work perfection, angels may look down undismayed, and even fiends find rest!"

A solemn sound of music surged upon the air,--and I who had been as one in chains, bound by invisible bonds and unable to stir, was suddenly liberated. Fully conscious of freedom I still faced the dark gigantic figure of my Foe,--for his luminous eyes were now upon me, and his penetrating voice addressed me only.

"Man, deceive not thyself!" he said--"Think not the terrors of this night are the delusion of a dream or the snare of a vision! Thou art awake,--not sleeping,--thou art flesh as well as spirit! This place is neither hell nor heaven nor any space between,--it is a corner of thine own world on which thou livest. Wherefore know from henceforth that the Supernatural Universe in and around the Natural is no lie,--but the chief Reality, inasmuch as God surroundeth all! Fate strikes thine hour,--and in this hour 'tis given thee to choose thy Master. Now, by the will of God, thou seest me as Angel;--but take heed thou forget not that among men I am as Man! In human form I move with all humanity through endless ages,--to kings and counsellors, to priests and scientists, to thinkers and teachers, to old and young, I come in the shape their pride or vice demands, and am as one with all. Self finds in me another Ego;--but from the pure in heart, the high in faith, the perfect in intention, I do retreat with joy, offering naught save reverence, demanding naught save prayer! So am I,--so must I ever be,--till Man of his own will releases and redeems me. Mistake me not, but know me!--and choose thy Future for truth's sake and not out of fear! Choose and change not in any time hereafter,--this hour, this moment is thy last probation,--choose, I say! Wilt thou serve Self and Me? or God only?"

The question seemed thundered on my ears, ... shuddering, I looked from right to left, and saw a gathering crowd of faces, white, wistful, wondering, threatening and imploring,--they pressed about me close, with glistening eyes and lips that moved dumbly. And as they stared upon me I beheld another spectral thing,--the image of Myself!--a poor frail creature, pitiful, ignorant, and undiscerning,--limited in both capacity and intelligence, yet full of strange egotism and still stranger arrogance; every detail of my life was suddenly presented to me as in a magic mirror, and I read my own chronicle of paltry intellectual pride, vulgar ambition and vulgarer ostentation,--I realised with shame my miserable vices, my puny scorn of God, my effronteries and blasphemies; and in the sudden strong repulsion and repudiation of my own worthless existence, being and character, I found both voice and speech.

"GOD only!" I cried fervently--"Annihilation at His hands, rather than life without Him! GOD only! I have chosen!"

My words vibrated passionately on my own ears, ... and ... even as they were spoken, the air grew misty with a snowy opalescent radiance, ... the sable and crimson wings uplifted in such multitudinous array around me, palpitated with a thousand changeful hues, ... and over the face of my dark Foe a light celestial fell like the smile of dawn! Awed and afraid I gazed upward, ... and there I saw a new and yet more wondrous glory, ... a shining Figure outlined against the sky in such surpassing beauty and vivid brilliancy as made me think the sun itself had risen in vast Angel-shape on rainbow pinions! And from the brightening heaven there rang a silver voice, clear as a clarion-call,--

"_Arise, Lucifer, Son of the Morning! One soul rejects thee,--one hour of joy is granted thee! Hence and arise!_"

Earth, air, and sea blazed suddenly into fiery gold,--blinded and stunned, I was seized by compelling hands and held firmly down by a force invisible, ... the yacht was slowly sinking under me! Overwhelmed with unearthly terrors, my lips yet murmured,

"GOD! God only!" The heavens changed from gold to crimson--anon to shining blue, ... and against this mass of wavering colour that seemed to make a jewelled archway of the sky, I saw the Form of him whom I had known as man, swiftly ascend god-like, with flaming pinions and upturned glorious visage, like a vision of light in darkness! Around him clustered a million winged shapes,--but He, supreme, majestic, wonderful, towered high above them all, a very king of splendour, the glory round his brows resembling meteor-fires in an Arctic midnight,--his eyes, twin stars, ablaze with such great rapture as seemed half agony! Breathless and giddy, I strained my sight to follow him as he fled; ... and heard the musical calling of strange sweet voices everywhere, from east to west, from north to south.

"Lucifer! ... Belovëd and unforgotten! Lucifer, Son of the morning! Arise! ... arise! ..."

With all my remaining strength I strove to watch the vanishing upward of that sublime Luminance that now filled the visible universe,--the demon-ship was still sinking steadily, ... invisible hands still held me down, ... I was falling,--falling,--into unimaginable depths, ... when another Voice, till then unheard, solemn yet sweet, spoke aloud--

"Bind him hand and foot, and cast him into the outermost darkness of the world! There let him find My Light!"

I heard,--yet felt no fear.

"God only!" I said, as I sank into the vast profound,--and lo! while the words yet trembled on my lips, I saw the sun! The sweet earth's sun!--the kindly orb familiar,--the lamp of God's protection,--its golden rim came glittering upwards in the east,--higher and higher it rose, making a shining background for that mighty Figure, whose darkly luminous wings now seemed like sable storm-clouds stretched wide across the horizon! Once more ... yet once, ... the Angel-visage bent its warning looks on me, ... I saw the anguished smile, ... the great eyes burning with immortal sorrows! ... then, I was plunged forcibly downwards and thrust into an abysmal grave of frozen cold.

XLII

The blue sea--the blue sky!--and God's sunshine over all! To this I woke, after a long period of unconsciousness, and found myself afloat on a wide ocean, fast bound to a wooden spar. So strongly knotted were my bonds that I could not stir either hand or foot, ... and after one or two ineffectual struggles to move I gave up the attempt, and lay submissively resigned to my fate, face upturned and gazing at the infinite azure depths above me, while the heaving breath of the sea rocked me gently to and fro like an infant in its mother's arms. Alone with God and Nature, I, a poor human wreck, drifted,----lost, yet found! Lost on this vast sea which soon should serve my body as a sepulchre, ... but found, inasmuch as I was fully conscious of the existence and awakening of the Immortal Soul within me,--that divine, actual and imperishable essence, which now I recognised as being all that is valuable in a man in the sight of his Creator. I was to die, soon and surely;--this I thought, as the billows swayed me in their huge cradle, running in foamy ripples across my bound body, and dashing cool spray upon my brows,--what could I do now, doomed and helpless as I was, to retrieve my wasted past? Nothing! save repent,--and could repentance at so late an hour fit the laws of eternal justice? Humbly and sorrowfully I considered, ... to me had been given a terrific and unprecedented experience of the awful Reality of the Spirit-world around us,--and now I was cast out on the sea as a thing worthless, I felt that the brief time remaining to me of life in this present sphere was indeed my "last probation," as that Supernatural Wonder, the declared Enemy of mankind, whom still in my thoughts I called Lucio, had declared.

"If I dared,--after a life's denial and blasphemy,--turn to Christ!" I said--"Would He,--the Divine Brother and Friend of man,--reject me?"

I whispered the question to the sky and sea, ... solemn silence seemed to invest the atmosphere, and marvellous calm. No other answer came than this, ... a deep and charmëd peace, that insensibly stole over my fretting conscience, my remorseful soul, my aching heart, my tired mind. I remembered certain words heard long ago, and lightly forgotten. "_Him who cometh unto Me will I in no wise cast out._" Looking up to the clear heavens and radiant sun, I smiled; and with a complete abandonment of myself and my fears to the Divine Will, I murmured the words that in my stress of mystic agony had so far saved me,--

"God only! Whatsoever He shall choose for me in life, in death, and after death, is best."

And closing my eyes, I resigned my life to the mercy of the soft waves, and with the sunbeams warm upon my face, I slept.

* * * * * * * * *

I woke again with an icy shudder and cry,--rough cheery voices sounded in my ears,--strong hands were at work busily unfastening the cords with which I was bound, ... I was on the deck of a large steamer, surrounded by a group of men,--and all the glory of the sunset fired the seas. Questions were poured upon me, ... I could not answer them, for my tongue was parched and blistered, ... lifted upright upon my feet by sturdy arms, I could not stand for sheer exhaustion. Dimly, and in feeble dread I stared around me,----was this great vessel with smoking funnels and grinding engines another devil's craft set sailing round the world! Too weak to find a voice I made dumb signs of terrified inquiry, ... a broad-shouldered bluff-looking man came forward, whose keen eyes rested on me with kindly compassion.

"This is an English vessel," he said--"We are bound for Southampton. Our helmsman saw you floating ahead,--we stopped and sent a boat for rescue. Where were you wrecked? Any more of the crew afloat?"

I gazed at him, but could not speak. The strangest thoughts crowded into my brain, moving me to wild tears and laughter. England! The word struck clashing music on my mind, and set all my pulses trembling. England! The little spot upon the little world, most loved and honoured of all men, save those who envy its worth! I made some gesture, whether of joy or mad amazement I know not,----had I been able to speak I could have related nothing that those men around me could have comprehended or believed, ... then I sank back again in a dead swoon.

They were very good to me, all those English sailors. The captain gave me his own cabin,--the ship's doctor attended me with a zeal that was only exceeded by his curiosity to know where I came from, and the nature of the disaster that had befallen me. But I remained dumb, and lay inert and feeble in my berth, grateful for the care bestowed upon me, as well as for the temporary exhaustion that deprived me of speech. For I had enough to do with my own thoughts,--thoughts far too solemn and weighty for utterance. I was saved,--I was given another chance of life in the world,--and _I knew why_! My one absorbing anxiety now was to retrieve my wasted time, and to do active good where hitherto I had done nothing!

The day came at last, when I was sufficiently recovered to be able to sit on deck and watch with eager eyes the approaching coast-line of England. I seemed to have lived a century since I left it,--aye, almost an eternity,--for time is what the Soul makes it, and no more. I was an object of interest and attention among all the passengers on board, for as yet I had not broken silence. The weather was calm and bright, ... the sun shone gloriously,--and far off the pearly rim of Shakespeare's 'happy isle' glistened jewel-like upon the edge of the sea. The captain came and looked at me,--nodded encouragingly,--and after a moment's hesitation, said--

"Glad to see you out on deck! Almost yourself again, eh?"

I silently assented with a faint smile.

"Perhaps"--he continued, "as we're so near home, you'll let me know your name? It's not often we pick up a man alive and drifting in mid-Atlantic."

In mid-Atlantic! What force had flung me there I dared not think, ... nor whether it was hellish or divine.

"My name?" I murmured, surprised into speech,--how odd it was I had never thought of myself lately as having a name or any other thing belonging to me!--"Why certainly! Geoffrey Tempest is my name."

The captain's eyes opened widely.

"Geoffrey Tempest! Dear me! ... _The_ Mr Tempest?----the great millionaire that _was_?"

It was now my turn to stare.

"That _was_?" I repeated--"What do you mean?"

"Have you not heard?" he asked excitedly.

"Heard? I have heard nothing since I left England some months ago--with a friend, on board his yacht ... we went on a long voyage and ... a strange one! We were wrecked, ... you know the rest, and how I owe my life to your rescue. But of news I am ignorant ..."

"Good heavens!" he interrupted quickly--"Bad news travels fast as a rule they say,--but you have missed it ... and I confess I don't like to be the bearer of it ..."

He broke off, and his genial face looked troubled. I smiled,--yet wondered.

"Pray speak out!" I said--"I don't think you can tell me anything that will deeply affect me,--_now_. I know the best and worst of most things in the world, I assure you!"

He eyed me dubiously;--then, going into his smoking-cabin, he brought me out an American newspaper seven days old. He handed it to me pointing to its leading columns without a word. There I saw in large type--"A Millionaire Ruined! Enormous Frauds! Monster Forgeries! Gigantic Swindle! On the track of Bentham and Ellis!"

My brain swam for a minute,--then I read on steadily, and soon grasped the situation. The respectable pair of lawyers whom I had implicitly relied on for the management of all my business affairs in my absence, had succumbed to the temptation of having so much cash in charge for investment,--and had become a pair of practised swindlers. Dealing with the same bank as myself, they had forged my name so cleverly that the genuineness of the signature had never been even suspected,--and, after drawing enormous sums in this way, and investing in various 'bubble' companies with which they personally were concerned, they had finally absconded, leaving me almost as poor as I was when I first heard of my inherited fortune. I put aside the paper, and looked up at the good captain, who stood watching me with sympathetic anxiety.

"Thank you!" I said--"These thieves were my trusted lawyers,--and I can cheerfully say that I am much more sorry for them than I am for myself. A thief is always a thief,--a poor man, if he be honest, is at any rate the thief's superior. The money they have stolen will bring them misery rather than pleasure,--of that I am convinced. If this account be correct, they have already lost large sums in bogus companies,--and the man Bentham, whom I thought the very acme of shrewd caution has sunk an enormous amount of capital in a worn-out gold mine. Their forgeries must have been admirably done!--a sad waste of time and cleverness. It appears too that the investments I have myself made are worthless;--well, well!--it does not matter,--I must begin the world again, that's all!" He looked amazed.

"I don't think you quite realize your own misfortune, Mr Tempest"--he said--"You take it too quietly by half. You'll think worse of it presently."

"I hope not!" I responded, with a smile--"It never does to think the worst of anything. I assure you I realize perfectly. I am in the world's sight a ruined man,--I quite understand!"

He shrugged his shoulders with quite a desperate air, and left me. I am convinced he thought me mad,--but I knew I had never been so sane. I did indeed entirely comprehend my 'misfortune,' or rather the great chance bestowed on me of winning something far higher than all the coffers of Mammon; I read in my loss of world's cash the working of such a merciful providence and pity as gave me a grander hope than any I had ever known. Clear before me rose the vision of that most divine and beautiful necessity of happiness,--Work!--the grand and too often misprized Angel of Labour, which moulds the mind of man, steadies his hands, controls his brain, purifies his passions, and strengthens his whole mental and physical being. A rush of energy and health filled my veins,--and I thanked God devoutly for the golden opportunities held out afresh for me to accept and use. Gratitude there should be in every human soul for every gift of heaven,--but nothing merits more thankfulness and praise to the Creator than the call to work, and the ability to respond to it.

England at last! I bade farewell to the good ship that had rescued me, and to all on board her, most of whom now knew my name and looked upon me with pity as well as curiosity. The story of my being wrecked on a friend's yacht was readily accepted,--and the subject of that adventure was avoided, as the general impression was that my friend, whoever he was, had been drowned with his crew, and that I was the one survivor. I did not offer any further explanation, and was content to so let the matter rest, though I was careful to send both the captain and the ship's doctor a handsome recompense for their united attention and kindness. I have reason to believe, from the letters they wrote me, that they were more than satisfied with the sums received, and that I really did some actual good with those few last fragments of my vanished wealth.

On reaching London, I interviewed the police concerning the thieves and forgers, Bentham and Ellis, and stopped all proceedings against them.

"Call me mad if you like,"--I said to the utterly confounded chief of the detective force--"I do not mind! But let these rascals keep the trash they have stolen. It will be a curse to them, as it has been to me! It is devil's money! Half of it was already gone, being settled on my late wife,--at her death, it reverted by the same deed of settlement, to any living members of her family, and it now belongs to Lord Elton. I have lived to make a noble Earl rich, who was once bankrupt,--and I doubt if he would lend me a ten-pound-note for the asking! However, I shall not ask him. The rest has gone into the universal waste of corruption and sham--let it stay there! I shall never bother myself to get it back. I prefer to be a free man."

"But the bank,--the principle of the thing!" exclaimed the detective with indignation.

I smiled.

"Exactly! The principle of the thing has been perfectly carried out. A man who has too much money _creates_ forgers and thieves about him,--he cannot expect to meet with honesty. Let the bank prosecute if it likes,--I shall not. I am free!--free to work for my living. What I earn I shall enjoy,--what I inherited, I have learnt to loathe!"

With that I left him, puzzled and irate,--and in a day or two the papers were full of strange stories concerning me, and numerous lies as well. I was called 'mad,' 'unprincipled,' 'thwarting the ends of justice,'--and sundry other names, while scurrilous civilities known only to the penny paragraphist were heaped upon me by the score. To complete my entire satisfaction, a man on the staff of one of the leading journals, dug out my book from Mudie's underground cellar, and 'slashed' it with a bitterness and venom only excelled by my own violence when anonymously libelling the work of Mavis Clare! And the result was remarkable,--for in a sudden wind of caprice, the public made a rush for my neglected literary offspring,--they took it up, handled it tenderly, read it lingeringly, found something in it that pleased them, and finally bought it by thousands! ... whereat the astute Morgeson, as virtuous publisher, wrote to me in wonder and congratulation, enclosing a cheque for a hundred pounds on 'royalties,' and promising more in due course, should the 'run' continue. Ah, the sweetness of that earned hundred pounds! I felt a King of independence!--realms of ambition and attainment opened out before me,--life smiled upon me as it had never smiled before. Talk of poverty! I was rich!----rich with a hundred pounds made out of my own brain-labour,--and I envied no millionaire that ever flaunted his gold beneath the sun! I thought of Mavis Clare, ... but dared not dwell too long upon her gentle image. In time perhaps, ... when I had settled down to fresh work, ... when I had formed my life as I meant to form it, in the habits of faith, firmness and unselfishness, I would write to her and tell her all,--all, even to that dread insight into worlds unseen, beyond the boundaries of an unknown region of everlasting frozen snow! But now,----now I resolved to stand alone,--fighting my battle as a man should fight, seeking for neither help nor sympathy, and trusting not in Self, but God only. Moreover I could not induce myself yet to look again upon Willowsmere. The place was terror-haunted for me; and though Lord Elton with a curious condescension, (seeing that it was to me he owed the free gift of his former property) invited me to stay there, and professed a certain lame regret for the 'heavy financial losses' I had sustained, I saw in the tone of his epistle that he looked upon me somewhat in the light of a madman after my refusal to take up the matter of my absconding solicitors, and that he would rather I stayed away. And I did stay away;--and even when his marriage with Diana Chesney took place with great pomp and splendour, I refused his invitation to be present. In the published list of guests, however which appeared in the principal papers, I was scarcely surprised to read the name of 'Prince Lucio Rimânez.'

I now took a humble room and set to work on a new literary enterprise, avoiding everyone I had hitherto known, for being now almost a poor man, I was aware that 'swagger society' wished to blot me from its visiting-list. I lived with my own sorrowful thoughts,--musing on many things, training myself to humility, obedience, and faith with fortitude,--and day by day I did battle with the monster, Egotism, that presented itself in a thousand disguises at every turn in my own life as well as in the lives of others. I had to re-form my character,--to mould the obstinate nature that rebelled, and make its obstinacy serve for the attainment of higher objects than world's renown,--the task was difficult,--but I gained ground a little with every fresh effort.

I had lived for some months like this in bitter self-abasement, when all the reading world was suddenly electrified by another book of Mavis Clare's. My lately favoured first work was again forgotten and thrust aside,--hers, slated and screamed at as usual by the criticasters, was borne along to fame by a great wave of honest public praise and enthusiasm. And I? I rejoiced!--no longer grudging or envious of her sweet fame, I stood apart in spirit as it were, while the bright car of her triumph went by, decked, not only with laurels, but with roses,--the blossoms of a people's love and honour. With all my soul I reverenced her genius,--with all my heart I honoured her pure womanliness! And in the very midst of her brilliant success, when all the world was talking of her, she wrote to me, a simple little letter, as gracious as her own fair name.

Dear Mr Tempest,

I heard by chance the other day that you had returned to England. I therefore send this note to the care of your publisher to express my sincere delight in the success your clever book has now attained after its interval of probation. I fancy the public appreciation of your work must go far to console you for the great losses you have had both in life and fortune, of which I will not here speak. When you feel that you can bear to look again upon scenes which I know will be sure to rouse in your mind many sad and poignant memories, will you come and see me?

Your friend Mavis Clare.

A mist came before my eyes,--I almost felt her gentle presence in my room,--I saw the tender look, the radiant smile,--the innocent yet earnest joy in life and love of purity that emanated from the fair personality of the sweetest woman I had ever known. She called herself my friend!--... it was a privilege of which I felt myself unworthy! I folded the letter and put it near my heart to serve me as a talisman, ... she, of all bright creatures in the world surely knew the secret of happiness! ... Some-day, ... yes, ... I would go and see her, ... my Mavis that sang in her garden of lilies,--some day when I had force and manliness enough to tell her all,--save my love for her! For that, I felt, must never be spoken,--Self must resist Self, and clamour no more at the gate of a forfeited Paradise! Some day I would see her, ... but not for a long time, ... not till I had, in part at least, worked out my secret expiation. As I sat musing thus, a strange memory came into my brain, ... I thought I heard a voice resembling my own, which said--

"_Lift, oh lift the shrouding veil, spirit of the City Beautiful! For I feel I shall read in your eyes the secret of happiness!_"

A cold shudder ran through me,--I sprang up erect, in a kind of horror. Leaning at my open window I looked down into the busy street below,--and my thoughts reverted to the strange things I had seen in the East,--the face of the dead Egyptian dancer, uncovered to the light again after two thousand years,--the face of Sibyl!--then I remembered the vision of the "City Beautiful," in which one face had remained veiled,--the face I most desired to see!----and I trembled more and more as my mind, despite my will, began to weave together links of the past and present, till they seemed growing into one and the same. Was I again to be the prey of evil forces?----did some new danger threaten me?--had I, by some unconscious wicked wish invited new temptation to assail me?

Overcome by my sensations, I left my work and went out into the fresh air, ... it was late at night,--and the moon was shining. I felt for the letter of Mavis,--it pressed against my heart, a shield against all vileness. The room I occupied was in a house not far from Westminster Abbey, and I instinctively bent my steps towards that grey old shrine of kings and poets dead. The square around it was almost deserted,----I slackened my pace, strolling meditatively along the narrow paved way that forms a short cut across into Old Palace Yard, ... when suddenly a Shadow crossed my path, and looking up, I came face to face with----Lucio! The same as ever,--the perfect impersonation of perfect manhood! ... his countenance, pale, proud, sorrowful yet scornful, flashed upon me like a star!----he looked full at me, and a questioning smile rested on his lips!

My heart almost stopped beating, ... I drew a quick sharp breath, ... again I felt for the letter of Mavis, and then, ... meeting his gaze fixedly and straightly in my turn, I moved slowly on in silence. He understood,--his eyes flashed with the jewel-like strange brilliancy I knew so well, and so well remembered,--and drawing back he stood aside and--let me pass! I continued my walk steadily, though dazed and like one in a dream,--till reaching the shadowed side of the street opposite the Houses of Parliament, I stopped for a moment to recover my startled senses. There again I saw him!----the superb man's form,--the Angel's face,--the haunting, splendid sorrowful eyes!----he came with his usual ease and grace of step into the full moonlight and paused,--apparently waiting for some one. For me?--ah no!--I kept the name of God upon my lips,--I gathered all the strength of faith within my soul,--and though I was wholesomely afraid of Myself, I feared no other foe! I lingered therefore--watching;--and presently I saw a few members of Parliament walking singly and in groups towards the House,--one or two greeted the tall dark Figure as a friend and familiar, and others knew him not. Still he waited on, ... and so did I. At last, just as Big Ben chimed the quarter to eleven, one man whom I instantly recognised as a well-known Cabinet minister, came walking briskly towards the House, ... then, and then only, He, whom I had known as Lucio, advanced smiling. Greeting the minister cordially, in that musical rich voice I knew of old, he took his arm,--and they both walked on slowly, talking earnestly. I watched them till their figures receded in the moonlight, ... the one tall, kingly and commanding, ... the other burly and broad, and self-assertive in demeanour;--I saw them ascend the steps, and finally disappear within the House of England's Imperial Government,--Devil and Man,--together!

+--------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | Transcriber's Note | | | | Inconsistent hyphenation and word boundaries have been | | retained: any rate / anyrate, bluebells / blue-bells, | | commonplace / common-place, deathlike / death-like, | | goodwill / good-will, honeysuckle / honey-suckle, Maypole / | | May-pole, notepaper / note-paper, nowadays / now-a-days, | | overhead / over-head, Pall Mall / Pall-Mall, pocket book / | | pocketbook / pocket-book, someone / some-one, Supernatural / | | Super-natural, uplifted / up-lifted. | | | | Minor punctuation and spelling repairs have been made | | without comment. | | | +--------------------------------------------------------------+