Rita

“ Am I not pure? Am I not brave? Yet why do I tremble? One weakness is still unconquered, one human love burns true and deep and steadfast in my heart. I cannot cast it out. I will not; not even at your bidding; not even to make my task easier.
“A step in the silence... Who dares to cross my chambers? Courage, my heart. There on the threshold stand my White Guard. Why should I fear? Courage! courage—”
Like one carved in stone Julian Estcourt sat and listened. The dumb misery of a terrible expectance held every faculty in its iron grasp. Was his dread to be realised? ”

“ I always go where I can be amused myself. It is the best thing to do after all."
"To amuse oneself?" questions Lauraine. "And afterwards?"
"Oh, after that—the deluge," laughs Lady Jean, shaking out the countless lace ruffles and frills of her cambric morning gown. "I could not take life au grand sérieux; it would kill me. Oh, I know what you would say. Excitement is frivolous, useless, wearing to our nerves, destruction to health and beauty. Perhaps so. But you are blessed with a serene temperament; I am not. I like to live, to enjoy, to be in one whirl from morning till night. ”

“ The Princess is an angel of goodness; she will save us. She has said it.”
They both turned involuntarily towards a small image, before which a lamp burned. He saw them kneel hand in hand before it; then the room faded into darkness—he was in another place now.
A sense of luxury, of perfume, of dreamy warmth, and then he saw, opening before him in a vista of exquisite colour, a suite of softly lighted chambers. They seemed to glow like jewels, each perfect in the richness and loveliness of its setting, and at the farthest end of one of them a woman reclined on a couch of white furs. ”

“ That is one advantage of poetry—it clothes a thought in grace so exquisite that we feel as if conversing with a being from another world. I never can understand people saying they don't like, or can't comprehend it. Sense, memory, love, pleasure, joy, pain, all that is sensitive, emotional, purest, best, is acted upon and intensified by poetry. A word, a line, will thrill us to the very core and centre of our beings—will make joy more sweet—-pain less bitter—love more exquisite and life less hard, even beneath its burden of regrets."
"You love poetry so much?" questions Lauraine. ”

“ Julian Estcourt had learnt his heart’s secret by then, but there was a coldness, a strangeness, about the girl who had been his boyhood’s friend that kept him back from anything bearing the imputation of love-making.
Much as they were together, long and frequent as were their talks, those talks were yet curiously impersonal for their age and sex, and, however much the young man’s heart might throb with its hidden passion, there yet lay between them a barrier, a restraint, light, yet strangely strong, and his lips never dared betray the secret of his long-cherished devotion. ”

“ Lady Jean is a dangerous woman to offend."
Lauraine pushes the hair off her temples as if the weight oppressed her. "I do not expect anything else but suffering now. And I may as well endure it for right as for wrong. If I have respected my husband's name, at least he might respect mine."
"And whatever you do be sure of this," says Lady Etwynde gently: "my house is always open to you. Let the whole world turn its back upon you, Lauraine, my friendship will never fail." Lauraine looks up at the beautiful face. Her heart is too full for words. ”

“ Lauraine says faintly, "I see."
"Duty demands much, but it also repays much,", continues Lady Etwynde gently. "Heaven knows I am not fit to preach to you; but in the world, as we know it, Lauraine, there are so many faithless wives, so many divided households. Oh, my dear, don't you add to the number! You have many enemies of whom you know nothing, and they would gladly seize your name, and smirch its purity with scandals, and whispers, and evil words. I want you to be brave, and face them all, and live out your life nobly and well. ”

“ She trembles with mingled rage and shame. If Lauraine had stood before her now she could have killed her without a regret, crushed out her youth and beauty with ruthless hands and rejoicing heart; but Lauraine is not there, and Lauraine has all the triumph, and she all the shame and defeat. Like a wounded tigress she paces to and fro her room, a thousand schemes and projects flashing through her brain, and all the fierceness and savagery of her nature roused into an insensate, furious longing to revenge this insult, as she terms it, upon the woman who has dealt it to her. ”

“ I have never forgotten; and now I am thirty years old, and my parents, as you know, are dead, and I live alone, and am looked upon as a marvel of eccentricity, and have my school of apostles and fool them to the top of their bent. Sometimes life seems a horrible travesty of all that is dignified and pure, and sometimes a jest that one laughs at and forgets. But no one knows me as I really am, save you, Lauraine. To most people I suppose I hardly seem a woman. But my true self and my lost love live a life apart, a life of dreams, sad but yet beautiful. ”

“ A wilder sky is above their heads, one that foretells a storm close at hand.
Lauraine turns her face seaward, and the fierce wind and dashing spray seem to give it a new and wonderful beauty. "It is glorious!" she murmurs, as she stands there in a sort of rapture. "It seems as if one could move, breathe, be free in a place like this."
"Free?" says Lady Etwynde. "Is any one that? As long as life shackles our souls, so long does bondage curb our wishes. I never met a single person, man or woman, who could do exactly as they wished." ”

“ All the remorse and all the regret are so futile. Tears of blood cannot wash away one memory, take out the sting of one mistake. We must just bear life as it is, till Death seals all its woes into forgetfulness."
"You are so good," cries Lauraine sadly. "I am not like you. I am wicked and rebellious, and I cannot accept my fate with patience, even though I know my own past weakness is to blame for all my present misery."
"I am not good. Do not praise me," says Lady Etwynde humbly. "And I know I do not deserve my present happiness. It makes me fearful of my great joy. ”

“ I cannot bear to hear you talk like that," cries Lady Etwynde. "Does he—does Sir Francis suspect anything?"
"He said he knew Keith loved me," answers Lauraine wearily. "Fancy hearing one's husband speak of the love of another man! I felt treacherous—shamed in his sight and my own. He could not understand—he would not believe in the long, long struggle, the pain, the suffering of it all. I feel as if conscience and honour had both suffered in the conflict, as if with my child I had lost all that was pure and of any worth in me. And now the world may say what it likes. ”

“ Love is something purer, holier, nobler than sensual gratification. It is sympathy, it is fidelity without reward; it is consecration without a vow. Did we take our teaching of it from them, Heaven help us all. Thank God, something within us helps us to the right, the pure, the better part of it. Lauraine, do not waste your pity thus. What right had he to dishonour you in your grief, your loneliness, by any such words as these? If indeed he loved you, you should have been sacred to him for your child's sake, even though he ignored your husband. Can you not see it too, dear? ”

“ For thirteen years my darling has been true; thirteen years during which I have made no sign, given no token of relenting. But it is all over and forgotten now. Once more I seem to wake and live. The old, cheerless, weary years that I have dreamt away, have lost their pain, are only full now of a soft regret that my folly delayed my happiness; for oh! how short life seems when one is glad, and the possibilities of the future seem limitless. My poor disciples are in despair, of course. I am bound to neglect them, for Cyril is a more exigeant lover now than in those days of old. ”

“ But be sure of my sympathy always."
"I am sure of it," answers Lauraine. "I think I have never made a friend of any woman but you. You are always so good, and one always feels one can trust you. But you are right. Something is troubling me very much. I feel to-night as if life was altogether too hard!"
"Who of us does not feel that at some time or other?" says Lady Etwynde, sadly. "A time when to look back or to look forward seems alike equally hard; for during the one we think of what 'might have been,' and during the other we dread to think what may be. ”

“ Am I never to see you?" she says with a foolish longing that he may not pass utterly out of her life—a longing she feels to be wrong, and yet cannot refrain from expressing.
A sudden light flashes up into the young man's face, then fades, and it grows black and thunderous once more. "If I see you again it will either be a great deal better, or a great deal—worse—for us both," he says huskily. "You had better not tempt me, Lauraine."
A great wave of crimson flushes her face. Her eyes sink before the sudden fire and passion that leap up beneath those dusky lashes of his. ”

“ The master-hand that produces the highest order of melody is perhaps too often that of some passing stranger who goes carelessly by—and who, so to speak, finds the instrument open—runs his hands lightly over the keys, awakens brilliance, life, beauty, where others have produced but dull, prosaic sounds, and then goes away and—forgets."
"Ah, if we were only wood and leather, and had wire for our strings, not hearts and souls, we should not miss the player, or sigh for the vanished music," says Lauraine. "Unfortunately, forgetfulness is not always possible for us, desire it as we may." ”

“ It is a relief when she finds herself alone in her own room. But with Lady Etwynde's words ringing in her ears, with her new resolves firm and close to her heart, she will not listen to whispers of distaste and discontent. She enters more into the business of her toilette than she has done since her child's death. She astonishes her maid by her critical objections. When she descends she looks like the Lauraine of old. Her cheeks are flushed with excitement, her eyes burn with feverish brilliancy. Her soft, snowy robes seem to make her beauty more fair, more young, more pathetic. ”

“ They can only wait, wait in that agony of suspense which is the cruellest suffering of life. Weeping, frightened, the little crowd fill the room. The mother alone is dry-eyed and calm. Her voice from time to time wakes the silence with all the fond and tender words the baby ears have grown familiar with. Sometimes a quiver of agony passes over her face as she sees the terrible suffering, as the lovely star-like eyes gaze up at her in a wondering, imploring way, seeming to beseech help and ease from one who loves him so. ”

“ They take our snubs and insults, and flatter and fawn just the same only for a card in their halls, a half-hour passage through their drawing-rooms, the honour and glory of a 'name' to figure in a society journal as one of their guests. Faugh! it is sickening!"
"But the society who eats and drinks and amuses itself at their expense is alone to blame," says Lauraine calmly. "If people had sufficient dignity and self-respect to oppose such innovations, to keep these people at a distance, they could not force themselves in."
"But they are always so abominably rich," laughs Lady Jean. ”