Edward Macleod was no sentimentalist, and yet he was conscious of a very delicate, infinitely sad satisfaction in the belief that he would expiate with his life the folly he had committed in permitting her to love him. In the loftiest sense he would be true to her. He could not be selfish and shameless enough to set forever aside the desolation that his hands had callously wrought. As her sorrow could never be mitigated it should always be shared. He would do everything for her. She should be educated, and inducted by gentle degrees into the refinement of civilization--he fervently hoped that it might not prove the refinement of cruelty. She should not be left desolate, forsaken, uncared-for; she should share everything he had except his heart. That was to be kept empty for her sake--for the sake of the sweet dusky maiden who had once possessed it.

 

Who had once possessed it! Ah, was it true then that she no longer held a claim? He had closed the door hesitatingly and with sharp pain in her face, but now the bare recollection of the little brown hands fumbling upon it thrilled him with a blissful sense that perhaps, after all, his life was not to be the utter sacrifice that he had supposed. Perhaps this peerless creature by some magical process of development might yet meet and satisfy his intellectual demands. She had already the soul of an angel--yes, and the beauty of an angel. And yet he was not satisfied.

 

It was this haunting dissatisfaction that kept him a prisoner in his room, one brilliant afternoon, when the fresh world without seemed too insupportable a mockery of his jaded and cynical state of mind. He stepped out upon the little balcony that ran under the windows of his own and his sister's apartments, and looked with a sore heart upon the eternal miracle of earth and sky. He sank heavily down upon a low seat, feeling very old and worn. If the back is fitted to the burden, it occurred to him that the painful process of adjustment would have to be continued through an interminable period of years. Perhaps it is only the stiff, bent shoulders of age that are really fitted to bear the burdens that impetuous youth find unendurably irksome.

 

While he sat in utter silence, thrilled occasionally with shrill sweet bursts of irrepressible bird song, and inwardly tortured by the hateful whisperings of doubt, remorse and despair, the door of his sister's apartment was opened, and a murmur of voices told him that Rose and Helene had returned together from an afternoon drive. Through the lightly draped open window their conversation, distinctly heard, forced him into the position of an unintentional eaves-dropper. There seemed at first no reason why he should withdraw, and when the reason became apparent he found it impossible to make his presence known.

 

"Is your brother in the house?" asked Helene, waiting for the answer before laying aside hat and gloves, and dropping languidly into an easy chair.

 

"Oh, no," returned Rose, "he is never at home at this hour of the day. Why? Did you wish to see him?"

 

"I? No! I wish never to see him!" The words were uttered in a passionate undertone.

 

Rose came directly and beseechingly over to her friend. "Dear Helene," she said, "what is this terrible trouble that is preying upon your life? Every day you grow thinner and whiter and colder--more like a moonbeam than a mortal woman. Soon I fear you will fade from my grasp altogether, and I shall have nothing left but the recollection that you did not care enough for me to confide in me. I am sure there is something dreadful between you and Edward."

 

"Something, yes, but not enough; there should be an ocean--a whole world between us."

 

"I wish I could help you a little."

 

"Help me, dearest? It is like your goodness to think of such a thing; but it is impossible. No, there is nothing tragic, or terrible, or awe compelling, in my fate. It is nothing, I suppose, beyond the common lot of a great portion of humanity. It is simply--" she hesitated a moment, while a choking sob rose in her throat; she clasped her white hands above her head in a stern effort at self control, and then flung them down with an irrepressible moan--"it is simply that I am hungry, and thirsty, and cold, and tired and I want to go back to my old home, to my only home in the heart of the man I love. My poor child, do I startle you by talking in this passionate lawless, way? You invited my confidence, and it is such a relief to give it to you. To every one else in the world I must keep up the desolate show of appearing heartless and lifeless, incapable of compassion, of suffering and yearning. But with you, for a little while, I want to be myself. I am not a mere drawing-room ornament, prized by its owner, and gazed at by curious beholders. I am a wretched woman. Oh, Rose, Rose, I am an inexpressibly wretched woman!"

 

She caught the little warm hands, sympathizingly outstretched towards her, and pressed them to her neck, where the veins throbbed fast.

 

"No, don't pity me yet--only listen to me. I am so tired of living on husks, I seem to be nothing but a husk myself, brainless, soulless, and empty. I am so tired of sham and pretence, of keeping up appearances. I hate appearances. They are all false, unreal, loathsome. Yes, I am a well-trained puppet; I smile and chatter, dance and sing, am haughtily self-satisfied; but at night--at night my sick heart cries like a starving child, and I pace the floor with it until I fear that its wailings will drive me mad. I heap insults on my darling, and profess to scorn his tenderness, and all the time I could fly to him, and rain caresses upon him, and hold him closely folded in the arms of my love perpetually. No, he is not to blame, and Wanda is not to blame, for all this wretchedness. I don't understand how a woman can hate her rival. The fact of their loving the same object gives them a closer kinship than that between twin sisters. Wanda's sufferings are too much like my own to permit me even to dislike her. She has rich beauty, a rarely luxuriant vitality, and the immense advantage of being free to show her love in a natural way. I have nothing but my love for her lover! If I could only trample on it, despise it, spurn it, but I can't, I can't! My love is stronger than my pride, stronger than my life. It is not a mere fancy of yesterday, it has grown and strengthened with my years."

 

"I remember one evening in York, last spring," Helene continued, "when it was warm enough to leave doors and windows open to admit the free breeze from the lake; I happened to pass a wretched little shanty in the lower part of the town. A commonplace woman within was cooking supper in plain sight of the street, and I thought what a miserable lot must be hers. Then her husband, a grimy-looking workman came home, and she put her toil-worn hands about his neck, and gave him a welcome that left me dazed and desolate, filled with unbearable pain and envy, because I knew then, as I know now, that for my darling and me there can be no sweet home-coming, no interposition of my love between him and the sordid cares of the day. The measure of my need will never be filled. Ah, mon Dieu, it is very hard--it is bitterly hard!"

 

The low passionate tones died away into absolute silence. Rose's tender arms were closely clasped about her friend, and her wet cheek was pressed against the pale face on her shoulder; but she could find no words to match the heart-sickness that had at last found free vent in speech. Perhaps the deepest sympathy can be expressed only by silence. In a few moments Helene looked up gratefully and with a quivering smile. "Dear little, pet," she said, "it is a sin for me to burden you with the shameless story of my griefs. I hardly know what I have been saying, so you must not attach too much importance to it. After all, it is only a mood." The inevitable reaction after deep feeling had come.

 

"I wish with all my heart that I could help you," said Rose, soothingly but despairingly.

 

"So you can. Give me those two blue eyes of yours to kiss. They are blue as wood-violets, and look grieved and sad--so exactly like Edward's." She leaned over and kissed them fervently. "Oh, I must not yield to such thoughts. I must control myself. I must be strong. I must conquer everything. Heaven help me!" The last words sounded like a piteous prayer, as indeed they were. "Come and sing to me, Rose. Sing my soul out of this perdition if you can."

 

The two girls departed to the music-room, and, shortly after, Edward, with the soundless step of a murderer, crept down stairs and far out into the forest. Like one driven by an indwelling demon into the wilderness he walked swiftly with great strides away from his trouble. No, not away from it, for it surrounded him like the atmosphere. Sometimes he stopped from sheer exhaustion, and leaned heavily against a tree, while the perspiration stood on his brow in large drops. At one of these times there was a rustling among the thick leaves behind him, and Wanda stole timidly, yet with the fearless innocence of a child, to his side. He groaned aloud as she hid her face upon his breast. "Ah, you are sad as a night in the moon of dying ............