Arthur scanned his companion's face curiously during the silence that followed his last words. It was a mobile face, though for years it had been trained to express nothing but cynic indifference to life and its concerns. On this special evening Maurice had given way, and emotions for which few of his friends would have given him credit were writing their impress on his brow.
He got up suddenly, and crossing to the window shut out the pale snow. "It is desolate," he said in a low tone; "it makes one shiver." Then he lighted a small reading-lamp, that cast a warm yellow light over the room, and sat down again. "I saw a picture once," he continued in the same low voice, "and the snow out there makes me think of it. It was an English scene, a bit out of a village, the church lit up from inside, a house near it, the pleasant firelight shining from within crimson curtains; outside, snow and desolation. There was a solitary figure amongst it all—a woman with thin tattered clothes and haggard face in which could be seen the remnants of beauty. She was shivering alone in the cold and darkness, looking piteously in at the light. Some moral was tacked on to it, for, if I remember rightly, I came across this long ago in a book or magazine. The whole runs strangely in my mind to-night."
"And what was the moral?" asked Arthur.
"An unloved life or some such sentimental rubbish."
He tried to laugh off the impression, but Arthur, who was deeply interested, said nothing to change the subject, and almost in spite of himself, as it were, Maurice returned to it.
"Strange how this haunts me!" he muttered. "'An unloved life!'—poets' trash. Women can always console themselves, and the misery of the fair is given rather to reclining on velvet and down than shivering out in the snow."
He laughed aloud, and raising his glass drained it at a draught; but there came a sudden change over his face, his brows knit, his hands worked convulsively. "If I had been mistaken—" he murmured, and his head sank upon his breast. Then, as the futility of his vague thoughts flashed over him, he raised it again. "There is no peace but in forgetfulness," he cried, and pouring out a glass of raw spirit he tossed it down his throat.
There followed a few moments of silence which Arthur feared to break, then Maurice looked across at him with a sad smile. "Young man," he said, "it is a good thing to be happy. Misery and remorse change a man woefully. Ah, it is wonderful," he continued, and there was a plaintive ring in his voice—"wonderful to think how entirely they can change us—how we become morose, dark, fretful—how we look for the old landmarks and find them gone, vanished like a dream—how we become absolutely others than ourselves!"
Arthur's voice was husky as he questioned: "Remorse! what have you to do with that?"
"I once thought nothing. Great God!"—he lifted his gleaming eyes; in the agony of the moment he seemed to have forgotten his companion—"we cannot all have patience like to Thine; and I thought I acted for the best. I took away my obnoxious presence, I left her to her chosen pleasures, I fled from my own disgrace."