The Essential Elinor Glyn Collection. Glyn Elinor

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      An ideal spot for--poets and dreamers--and lovers--Theodora thought.

      "Now we are here! Look this way and that! Five paths for us to choose from!"

      Then something made Theodora say, "Oh, let us stay in the centre, in this one round place, where we can see them all and their possibilities."

      "And do you think uncertain possibilities are more agreeable perhaps than certain ends?" he asked.

      "I never speculate," said Theodora.

      "As you will, then," he said, while he looked into her eyes, and he placed the rug up against a giant tree between two avenues, so that their view really only extended down three others now.

      "We have turned our backs on the road we came," he said, "and on another road that leads in a roundabout way to the Grande Avenue again. So now we must look into the unknown and the future."

      "It seems all very green and fair," said Theodora, and she leaned back against the tree and half closed her eyes.

      He lay on the grass at her feet, his hat thrown off beside him, and in a desert island they could not have been more alone and undisturbed.

      The greatest temptation that Hector Bracondale had ever yet had in his life came to him then. To make love to her, to tell her of all the new thoughts she had planted in his soul, of the windows she had opened wide to the sunlight. To tell her that he loved her, that he longed to touch even the tips of her fingers, that the thought of caressing her lips and her eyes and her hair drove the blood coursing madly through his veins. That to dream of what life could be like, if she were really his own, was a dream of intoxicating bliss.

      And something of all this gleamed in his eyes as he gazed up at her--and Theodora, all unused to the turbulence of emotion, was troubled and moved and yet wildly happy. She looked away down the centre avenue, and she began to speak fast with a little catch in her breath, and Hector clinched his hands together and gazed at a beetle in the grass, or otherwise he would have taken her in his arms.

      "Tell me the story of all these avenues," she said; "tell me a fairy story suitable to the day."

      And he fell in with her mood. So he began:

      "Once upon a time there was a fairy prince and princess, and a witch had enchanted them and put them in a green forest, but had set a watch-dog over Love--so that the poor Cupid with his bow and arrows might not shoot at them, and they were told they might live and enjoy the green wood and find what they could of sport and joy. But Cupid laughed. 'As if,' he said, 'there is anything in a green wood of good without me--and my shafts!' So while the watch-dog slept--it was a warm, warm day in May, just such as this--he shot an arrow at the prince and it entered his heart. Then he ran off laughing. 'That is enough for one day,' he said. And the poor prince suffered and suffered because he was wounded and the princess had not received a dart, too--and could not feel for him."

      "Was she not even sympathetic?" asked Theodora, and again there was that catch in her breath.

      "Yes, she was sympathetic," he continued, "but this was not enough for the prince; he wanted her to be wounded, too."

      "How very, very cruel of him," said Theodora.

      "But men are cruel, and the prince was only a man, you know, although he was in a green forest with a lovely princess."

      "And what happened?" asked Theodora.

      "Well, the watch-dog slept on, so that a friendly zephyr could come, and it whispered to the prince: 'At the end of all these alles, which lead into the future, there is only one thing, and that is Love; he bars their gates. As soon as you start down one, no matter which, you will find him, and when he sees your princess he will shoot an arrow at her, too.'"

      "Oh, then the princess of course never went down an alle," said Theodora--and she smiled radiantly to hide how her heart was beating--"did she?"

      "The end of the story I do not know," said Lord Bracondale; "the fairy who told it to me would not say what happened to them, only that the prince was wounded, deeply wounded, with Love's arrow. Aren't you sorry for the prince, beautiful princess?"

      Theodora opened her blue parasol, although no ray of sunshine fell upon her there. She was going through the first moment of this sort in her life. She was quite unaccustomed to fencing, or to any intercourse with men--especially men of his world. She understood this story had himself and herself for hero and heroine; she felt she must continue the badinage--anything to keep the tone as light as it could be, with all these new emotions flooding her being and making her heart beat. It was almost pain she experienced, the sensation was so intense, and Hector read of these things in her eyes and was content. So he let his voice grow softer still, and almost whispered again:

      "And aren't you sorry for the prince--beautiful princess?"

      "I am sorry for any one who suffers," said Theodora, gently, "even in a fairy story."

      And as he looked at her he thought to himself, here was a rare thing, a beautiful woman with a tender heart. He knew she would be gentle and kind to the meanest of God's creatures. And again the vision of her at Bracondale came to him--his mother would grow to love her perhaps even more than Morella Winmarleigh! How she would glorify everything commonplace with those tender ways of hers! To look at her was like looking up into the vast, pure sky, with the light of heaven beyond. And yet he lay on the grass at her feet with his mind full of thoughts and plans and desires to drag this angel down from her high heaven--into his arms!

      Because he was a man, you see, and the time of his awakening was not yet.

      X

      Man is a hunter--a hunter always. He may be a poor thing and hunt only a few puny aims, or he may be a strong man and choose big game. But he is hunting, hunting--something--always.

      And primitive life seems like the spectrum of light--composed of three primary colors, and white and black at the beginning and ending of it. And the three colors of blue, red, and yellow have their counterparts in the three great passions in man--to hunt his food, to continue his species, and to kill his enemy.

      And white and black seem like birth and death--and there is the sun, which is the soul and makes the colors, and allows of all combinations and graduations of beautiful other shades from them for parallels to all other qualities and instincts, only the original are those great primary forces--to hunt his food, to continue his species, and to kill his enemy.

      And if this is so to the end of time, man will be the same, I suppose, until civilization has emasculated the whole of nature and so ends the world! Or until this wonderful new scientist has perfected his researches to the point of creating human life by chemical process, as well as his present discovery of animating jellyfish!

      Who knows? But by that time it will not matter to any of us!

      Meanwhile, man is at the stage that when he loves a woman he wishes to possess her, and, in a modified form, he wishes to steal her, if necessary, from another, or kill the enemy who steals her from him.

      But the Sun of the Soul is there, too, so the poor old world is not in such a very bad case after all.

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