The Essential Elinor Glyn Collection. Glyn Elinor

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СКАЧАТЬ in the world of the marvel he was going to see. He started more perceptibly than even Mr. Carlyon had done seven years before, when he had realized the superlative beauty of the Greek head.

      Halcyone uncovered it reverently, and then took a step back, and waited silently for him to speak.

      He looked long into the marvelous face, and then he said as though he were dreaming:

      "Aphrodite herself!"

      "Ah! I felt you would know and recognize her at once--Yes, that is her name. Oh, I am glad!" and Halcyone clapped her hands. "She is my mother, and so, you see, I am never alone here, for she speaks always to me of love."

      John Derringham looked at her sharply as she said this, and in her eyes he saw two wells of purity, each with an evening star melted into its depths.

      And he suddenly was conscious of something which his whole life had missed--for he knew he did not know what real love meant, not even that which his mother might have given him, if she had lived.

      He did not speak for a moment; he gazed into Halcyone's face. It seemed as if a curtain had lifted for one instant and given him a momentary glimpse into some heaven, and then dropped again, leaving a haunting memory of sweetness, the more beautiful because indistinct.

      "Love--" he said, still dreamily. "Surely there is yet another and a deeper kind of love."

      Halcyone raised her head, while a strange look grew in her wide eyes, almost of fear. It was as though he had put into words some unspoken, unadmitted thought.

      "Yes," she said very softly, "I feel there is--but that is not all peace; that must be gloriously terrible, because it would mean life."

      He looked at her fully now; there was not an atom of coquetry or challenge; her face was pale and exquisite in its simple intentness. He turned to the goddess again, and almost chaunted:

      "Oh! Aphrodite of the divine lips and soulful eyes, what mystery do you hold for us mortals? What do you promise us? What do you make us pay? Is the good worth the anguish? Is the fulfillment a cup worth draining--without counting the cost?"

      "What does she answer you?" whispered Halcyone. "Does she say that to live and fulfill destiny as the beautiful year does is the only good? It is wiser not to question and weigh the worth, for even though we would not drink, perhaps we cannot escape--since there is Fate."

      John Derringham pulled himself together with an effort. He felt he was drifting into wonderland, where the paths were too tenderly sweet and flowered for him to dare to linger, for there he might find and quaff of the poison cup. So he said in a voice which he strove to bring back to earth:

      "Where did you get the beautiful thing? She is of untold value, of course you know?"

      Halcyone took the marble into her hands lovingly.

      "She came to me out of the night," she said. "Some day I might tell you how--but not to-day. I must put her back again. No one knows but Cheiron and me--and now--you--that she is in existence, and no one else must ever know."

      He did not speak; he watched her while she wrapped the head in its folds of silk.

      "Aphrodite never had so true a priestess, nor one so pure," he thought, and a strange feeling of sadness came over him, and he thanked her rather abruptly for showing him her treasure, and they went silently back through Sir Timothy's rooms, and down the stair; and in the Italian parlor he said good-by at once, and left.

      The wind had got up and blew freshly in his face. There would be a gale before morning. It suited his mood. He struck across the park, but instead of making for the haw-haw, he turned into Cheiron's little gate. He wanted understanding company, he wanted to talk cynical philosophy, and he wanted the stimulus of his old master's biting wit.

      But when he got there, he found Cheiron very taciturn--contributing little more than a growl now and then, while he smoked his long pipe and played with his beard. So at last he got up to go.

      "I have made up my mind to marry Mrs. Cricklander, Master," he said.

      "I supposed so," the Professor replied dryly. "A man always has to convince himself he is doing a fine thing when he gives himself up to be hanged."

      CHAPTER XVII

      John Derringham reached Wendover--by the road and the lodge gates--in an impossible temper. He had left the orchard house coming as near to a quarrel with his old master as such a thing could be. He absolutely refused to let himself dwell upon the anger he had felt; and if Fate had given him a distinct and pointed chance to ask the fair Cecilia for her lily hand, when he knocked at her sitting-room door before dinner, he would no doubt have left the next day--summoned again to London by his Chief--an engaged man. But this turn of events was not in the calculations of Destiny for the moment, and he found no less a person than Mr. Hanbury-Green already ensconced by his hostess's side. They were both smoking and looked very comfortable and at ease.

      "I just came in to tell you I shall be obliged to tear myself away to-morrow," John Derringham said, "and cannot have the pleasure of staying to the end of the week in this delightful place."

      Mrs. Cricklander got up from her reclining position among the cushions. This was a blow. She wished now she had not encouraged Mr. Hanbury-Green to come and sit with her; it might be a lost opportunity which it would be difficult to recapture again. But she had felt so very much annoyed at Mr. Derringham's capriciousness, displayed the whole of the Monday, and then at his absenting himself to-day, having gone to see the Professor, of course--since he was out of the house at tea-time when she had sent to his room to enquire--that she had determined to see what a little jealousy would do for him. But if he were off on the morrow this might not be a safe moment to try it.

      Mr. Hanbury-Green, however, had not the slightest intention of giving up his place, in spite of several well-directed hints, and sat on like one belonging to the spot.

      So they all had to go off to dress without any longed-for word having been spoken. And Mrs. Cricklander was far too circumspect a hostess to attempt to arrange a _tte--tte_ after dinner under the eye of an important social leader like Lady Maulevrier, whom she had only just succeeded in enticing to stay in her country house. So, with the usual semi-political chaff, the evening passed, and good-nights and good-bys were said, and early next day John Derringham left for London.

      He would write--he decided--and all the way up in the train he buried himself in the engrossing letters and papers he had received from his Chief by the morning's post.

      And for the next six weeks he was in such a turmoil of hard work and deep and serious questions about a foreign State that he very seldom had time to go into society, and when at last he was a little more free, Mrs. Cricklander, he found, had not returned from Paris, whither she always went several times a year for her clothes.

      But they had written to one another once or twice.

      He had promised in the last letter that he would go down to Wendover again for Whitsuntide, and this time he firmly determined nothing should keep him from his obvious and delectable fate.

      Mrs. Cricklander had no haunting fears now. She could discover no reason for John Derringham's change towards her. Arabella СКАЧАТЬ