"Arguments that should prove that you ought to let the dead past bury its dead, and live in the richer present," he said, earnestly.
"The richer present!" she repeated slowly, and her face grew almost stern in its reproach.
"Forgive me—in the present you so enrich, then," he said, eagerly.
Again she averted her face, and he saw that for some reason she wished to avoid his eyes.
"I am too weak and unnerved to do more than say good-night again," she said, trying to smile. "You are fast learning that if you would be my friend you must be a patient and generous one."
"Thank heaven I came to the Lake House!" ejaculated the artist as he strolled out into the star-light. Thank heaven for this mingling mystery and crystal purity. It does me good to trust her. There is a deep and abiding joy in the very generosity she inspires. I am learning the spell under which Emily Musgrave came. But how strange it all is! She expected some one to-night, whom she would have welcomed as she never will me. "The only rival I have to fear may not be dead, as I supposed, and yet my perverse heart is more full of pity for her than jealousy. I had no idea that I was capable of such self-abnegation. Has she the art of spiritual alchemy, and so can transmute natures full of alloy into fine gold?"
Van Berg was an acute observer, and had large acquaintance with the world in which he lived, and its inhabitants. He was in the main, however, an unknown quantity to himself.
Chapter XXXIV. Puzzled.
Tuesday was dreary enough to more than one at the Lake House. Clouds covered the sky, yet they gave little promise of the rain which the thirsty earth so needed. To Ida, as she looked out late in the morning, they seemed like a leaden wall around her, shutting off all avenues of escape.
Her mother joined her as she went down to a cold and dismal breakfast, long after all the other guests had left the dining-room, and she commenced fretting and fuming, as was her custom when the world did not arrange itself to suit her mood.