CHAPTER XIX
“Only for man; how bitter not to grave On his Soul’s palms one fair, good, wise thing Just as he grasped it.” —ROBERT BROWNING.
LESLIE went back to the studio bewildered. She had sent him away without excuses. He wondered blankly what he was being punished for, and why she was denied him in the present; and as Kew Gardens, unless one is a naturalist, is not the place one goes to alone, he sat down before his picture and thought about her in the past.
He was young and full of ideals when he first met her. He believed in the possibility of a Galahad, and that all women were exquisitely good, except a sad few who were picturesquely unfortunate. He had had a good mother, two beautiful sisters, and he had only seen Paris in a veil. He met Cynthia in the studios; her glorious red hair and the wonderful way she looked at him became the key to the universe. After that followed months of ideal companionship, and on his part at least unprecedented blindness. Perhaps she loved him for that most of all. Then she told him. He was horribly startled. He said surprised and terrible things, and then she looked at him—Oh that wonderful, broken, tragic look!—and went back to her brother. And he grew older, and wiser, and less surprised.
He had not meant to find her in London. When he had, and they met again and yet again, and in fact even from the moment when she had told him where and how she lived, he had made the great decision.
The locusts should eat no more empty years. If she could forget (_could_ she forget, forgive at least?) that stammering judgment eight years ago, how happy they would be together! What noble, magnificent work would they not do—together—and now she had sent him away with no excuse. Had that self-made barrier of his fallen for another to rise? He smoked hard and rang the bell. There is always one way of finding out things if a man has sense and no false pride—to ask. He was going to ask, and he smiled grimly to himself as he thought of the answer she would give him—_should_ give him!—if strength and power and purpose went for anything. The tea-things that were set out for her looked miserable as only neglected food can look, and the room lost in the gathering twilight seemed emptily expectant of the guest who had not come.
Leslie Damores cared nothing at all for omens and less for gloom, and even the fact that he could not find his matches did not evoke a frown. He was going to see her, and he _meant_ to see her, and he terribly over-paid the cabman’s fare. How many sullen looks and surly words do we not owe to the over-generosity of lovers, who appear to think that by tipping the universe they will earn the reward of Providence in the shape they most desire? Alas! we human beings are always misplacing our tips, and then we wonder when the raps that come to us seem to be misplaced as well!