His head sank. Emotion, fatigue, strong drink had combined to unnerve him utterly. "The face in the picture is hers," he continued in a low, broken voice; "last night I saw her so—pale, wasted by misery, an outcast—and I opened my arms to take her to a shelter, but she fled from me with horror."
Arthur was listening with an interest so deep and earnest that for a moment he forgot his self-imposed caution. He started forward impulsively, and gazing into the bloodshot eyes of the man who faced him, "It was a lying dream," he cried. "She—"
But he broke off suddenly, for Maurice looked at him in a strange, questioning manner. He could have bitten off his tongue for its betrayal. "I mean—I mean—" he explained falteringly, "it was a strange dream."
His explanation could not mend matters; the mischief was done. Maurice was sufficiently himself to be able to detect a certain reality in those first hasty words. He looked at Arthur with suspicion. Could it be possible that the young man knew something of his history? The bare idea made him hastily resume his cloak of proud reserve.
He drew himself up, composed his face, and threw out his hands with a yawn: "I really should crave your indulgence. Something has come over me to-night. I feel as if I had been talking a considerable amount of nonsense." He shook his fist at the whisky-bottle. "There's the traitor. Then," bending his head courteously, "it is long since I have enjoyed anything so pleasant as an evening gossip with a friend. Really, the worst of this kind of life is the difficulty of passing one's evening. Come! a recipe for killing the time: what do you advise?"
"I know no means but endurance," replied Arthur, trying to speak lightly, though his heart was full, for the earnestness had left Maurice's face, the smile of the cynic was playing round his lips.
Indignant and disappointed, Arthur turned away, in case his less manageable features should betray him. The sphere of his experience was narrow, and therefore it was that in this relapse to his indifferent mood he failed to sympathize with Maurice.
It is only when the world has given thrust upon thrust to the heart, it is only when the dreary cry, "Vanity of vanities!" has written itself in all its desolation on the spirit, that these rapid changes from grave to gay, from deep earnestness to bitter cynicism, can be understood; for they are the product of the world's harsh lessons, the carrying out into practice of a creed taught by repeated disappointments. They speak of the soul's fear of revealing itself. Its best and its highest it would cover over with the frost-work of frivolity and cynicism, lest the pearls of its spiritual being should be trampled under the feet of swine.
Too often, unhappily, the result is that the pearls are buried irrecoverably and for ever, that the soul gains the indifference it assumes—an undying heritage of bitterness.
Ah! it is sad, infinitely sad, to think of a soul torn, ruined, in its struggles with wayward fate—too sad, if there were no beyond. But if man be weak, God is merciful. It may be that for the disappointed there is a haven, after all, in the great Hereafter to which all humanity is hastening.