Manton could only smile faintly, as he seated himself.
“Ah, heedless child, you do not see in all this gay vision, the black and deadly realities that couch within its shadows! I understand your mother’s game fully. This will not last long; and you are about to be sorely tried, my little love!”
His head fell back heavily, and his eyelids drooped with an expression of unutterable despondency. Elna, who had been watching him eagerly, now flew to his side, and taking his head gently on her shoulder, commenced caressing his face in a peculiar manner. She did not absolutely touch it, but her lips crept over certain portions with a slow snake-like motion, while the deep heavings of her chest, disclosed that she was breathing heavily upon them, and a certain greenish dilation of the pupil of her eyes revealed—what? Ah, horror! and she so young! What? what! is that the mother’s art? Let us see.
The lines of the man’s face are sunken in the expression of hopeless prostration. Soon a slight twitching of the nerves becomes evident, then a faint smile breaks across its pallor; the inspirations become deeper, and she breathes with almost convulsive energy. The glowing air lingers and burns along the sensitive temple, and now it pauses on the cheek, close beside the ear—ha! her arm is about his neck; is it a wonder that the blood mounts flushing to that man’s cheek and forehead, that his eyes fly open filled with wild and vivid fires, that a shuddering thrill is running through his frame, as he stretches forth his arms to her, with a low, ecstatic laugh, of passionate yearning, while she clings about him, and their lips meet, in a burning, lingering kiss, and then, with a light laugh, she springs beyond his reach, and dances in tantalising mockery about him, permitting him but to touch her for a moment, eluding his grasp, with yet more subtle sleight, until exhausted by morbid excitement the unfortunate man sinks upon the sofa?
This picture is only but too real. But why should Manton have endured the repetition of a scene like this? He was a man of habits, and for years, before a thought of passion had for once intruded upon him, this young girl, under the sacred shield of childhood, had been taught to approach him with fondling caresses. There seemed no danger then, but when the real time for danger came, he felt a vague and general monition of it, yet failed to locate it where it really rested. These caresses had become so dear and natural to him; they seemed so harmless.
He blamed only himself, cursed only the unetherialised grossness of his own nature. There was to him far too much of affection and accustomed tenderness in all this to arouse his suspicions for a moment. He hated only himself, and strove on each of these now frequent occasions, to chasten, by the severest self-inflicted penance, his own soul.
In the meanwhile, this modern Tantalus grew thinner and more pale each day; was wasting rapidly to a shadow, beneath such scenes as we have witnessed.
The girl, Elna, grew fairer and more strong each day—seeming to have fed upon his slow consumption.
We will not dwell upon such pictures farther. It was enough that all the consequences dreaded by Manton followed, in slow, but sure progression, and that the last blow the subtle couple struck at him was fully characteristic and consummated the separation.
Elna had seen little, as yet, of public amusements, and her strong imitative faculty had led her to express a passion for the stage, which Manton greatly dreaded, and had particularly wished to guard her against, until her mind should become more fully developed, and until he, himself, should possess the legal right to attend her, upon all such occasions. He had, therefore, at all times resolutely opposed her going to any public place of amusement, unless he could accompany her. But now it happened that, being engaged in bringing out a new work, with the press only twenty-four hours behind him, urging him inexorably for a certain amount of daily matter, which left him no leisure whatever, except a few moments, which he wrested from the vortex, for the short evening re-union with her he so loved, he had, therefore, no time left to accompany her to such places.