The Essential Elinor Glyn Collection. Glyn Elinor

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СКАЧАТЬ want them to be happy."

      "Permanently, or for the moment?"

      "Both."

      "An impossible combination, with these abominably inconsiderate marriage laws we suffer under in this country, my child."

      "Then what ought I to do?"

      "You can do nothing but accelerate or hinder matters for a little. If Hector is really in love, and the woman, too, they are bound to dree their weird, one way or the other, themselves. You will be doing the greatest kindness if you can keep them apart, and avoid a scandal if possible."

      "My dear Crow, I have never heard of your being so thoroughly unsympathetic before."

      "And I have never heard of Hector being really in love before, and with an angel, too--deuced dangerous folk at the best of times!"

      "Then there are mother and Morella Winmarleigh to be counted with."

      "Neither of them can see beyond their noses. Miss Winmarleigh is sure of him, she thinks--and your mother, too."

      "No; mother has her doubts."

      "They will both be anti?"

      "Extremely anti."

      "To get back to facts, then, your plan is to assist your brother to see this 'angel,' and smooth the path to the final catastrophe."

      "You worry me, Crow. Why should there be a catastrophe?"

      "Is she a young woman?"

      "A mere baby. Certainly not more than twenty or so."

      "Then it is inevitable, if the husband don't count. You have not described him yet."

      "Because I have never seen him," said Lady Anningford. "Hector did say last night, though, that he was an impossible Australian millionaire."

      "These people have a strong sense of personal rights--they are even blood-thirsty sometimes, and expect virtue in their women. If he had been just an English snob, the social bauble might have proved an immense eye-duster; but when you say Australian it gives me hope. He'll take her away, or break Hector's head, before things become too embarrassing."

      "Crow, you are brutal."

      "And a good thing, too. That is what we all want, a little more brutality. The whole of the blessed show here is being ruined with this sickly sentimentality. Flogging done away with; every silly nerve pandered to. By Jove! the next time we have to fight any country we shall have an ansthetic served round with the rations to keep Tommy Atkins's delicate nerves from suffering from the consciousness of the slaughter he inflicts upon the enemy."

      "Crow, you are violent."

      "Yes, I am. I am sick of the whole thing. I would reintroduce prize-fighting and bear-baiting and gladiatorial shows to brace the nation up a bit. We'll get jammed full of rotten vices like those beastly foreigners soon."

      "I did not bring you into Regent's Park to hear a tirade upon the nation's needs, Crow," Anne reminded him, smiling, "but to get your sympathy and advice upon this affair of Hector. You know you are the only person in the world I ever talk to about intimate things."

      "Dear Queen Anne," he said, "I will always do what I can for you. But I tell you seriously, when a man like Hector loves a woman really, you might as well try to direct Niagara Falls as to turn him any way but the one he means to go."

      "He wants me to be kind to her. Do you advise me just to let the thing drop, then?"

      "No; be as kind as you like--only don't assist them to destruction."

      "She goes into the country on Saturday for Whitsuntide, as we all do. Hector is going down to Bracondale alone."

      "That looks desperate. I shall see Hector, and judge for myself."

      "You must be sure to go to the ball at Harrowfield House to-night, then," Anne said. "They are both going. I say both because I know she is, and so, of course, Hector will be there too. I shall go, naturally, and then we can decide what we can do about it after we have seen them together."

      And all this time Theodora was thinking how charming Anne was, and how kind, and that she felt a little happier because of her kindness. And, hard as it would be, she would not leave Josiah's side that night or dance with Hector.

      And Hector was thinking--

      "What is the good of anything in this wide world without her? I _must_ see her. For good or ill, I cannot keep away."

      He was deep in the toils of desire and passionate love for a woman belonging to someone else and out of his reach, and for whom he was hungry. Thus the primitive forces of nature were in violent activity, and his soul was having a hard fight.

      It was the first time in his life that a woman had really mattered or had been impossible to obtain.

      He had always looked upon them as delightful accessories: sport first, and woman, who was only another form of sport, second.

      He had not neglected the obligations of his great position, but they came naturally to him as of the day's work. They were not real interests in his life. And when stripped of the veneer of civilization he was but a passionate, primitive creature, like numbers of others of his class and age.

      While the elevation of Theodora's pure soul was an actual influence upon him, he had thought it would be possible--difficult, perhaps--but possible to obey her--to keep from troubling her--to regulate his passion into worship at a distance. But since then new influences had begun to work--prominent among them being jealousy.

      To see her surrounded by others--who were men and would desire her, too--drove him mad.

      Josiah was difficult enough to bear. The thought that he was her husband, and had the rights of this position, always turned him sick with raging disgust; but that was the law, and a law accepted since the beginning of time. These others were not of the law--they were the same as himself--and would all try to win her.

      He had no fear of their succeeding, but, to watch them trying, and he himself unable to prevent them, was a thought he could not tolerate.

      He had no settled plan. He did not deliberately say to himself: "I will possess her at all costs. I will be her lover, and take her by force from the bonds of this world." His whole mind was in a ferment and chaos. There was no time to think of the position in cold blood. His passion hurried him on from hour to hour.

      This day after the opera, when the hideous impossibility of the situation had come upon him with full force, he felt as Lancelot--

      "His mood was often like a fiend, and rose and drove him into wastes and solitudes for agony, Who was yet a living soul."

      There are all sorts of loves in life, but when it is the real great passion, nor fear of hell nor hope of heaven can stem the tide--for СКАЧАТЬ