The lovers sat on beside the water till twilight fell, talking of a thousand things, yet always of one thing—of one thing through which they saw all the thousand other things, and saw them transfigured with the radiance of the one. Even the bright hues of Harry's future grew a hundredfold brighter when beheld through this enchanted medium, while Vivien's simple ideal of life seemed heaven realized. Visions were their only facts, and dreams alone their truth. Neither from without nor from within could aught harm the airy fabric that they built—Vivien out of ignorance, Harry by help of that fine oblivion of his.
For a long while Isobel Vintry—fled to her room lest Wellgood should seek her—watched them from her window with envious eyes. For them the dreams; for her, most uninspiring reality! At last she turned away with a weary impatient shrug.
"Well, it's a good thing to have it over and done with, anyhow!" she exclaimed, and smiled once more to think how she had stung Harry Belfield with her insinuations and her "Meriton ideal." If we cannot be happy ourselves, it is a temptation to make happy people a little uncomfortable. In that lies an evidence of power consolatory to the otherwise unfortunate.
Chapter IX.
"INTERJECTION."
Settling the question of the butcher's shop had seemed to Andy Hayes like a final solution of life's problems. Therein he showed the quality of his mind. One thing at a time, settle that. As he had learnt to say 'on the other side,' "Don't look for trouble!" He had yet to realize what the man of imagination knows instinctively—that the problems of life end only with life itself.
An eight-ten train to town is not, however, favourable to such a large and leisurely survey as a consideration of life in its totality. It involved a half-hour's race for the station. And this morning the Bird—standing at the door of his father's hostelry—delayed a hard-pressed man who had absolutely no time to stop.
"Heard the news about Mr. Harry?" cried the Bird across the street.
Andy slowed down. "About Harry?"