“How thoroughly Tennyson gives expression to the revolt of youth against the shackles that civilization, so called, has thrown around it! I think I know, to my cost, how he felt when he wrote certain lines in ‘Locksley Hall.’”
Richard took a few steps up and down the room, and then threw himself into a chair and looked steadfastly at Mrs. Percy-Bartlett. Her face had lost its color, and there were dark shadows beneath her eyes, while a smile of sadness, perhaps of regret, hovered round her mouth.
“I have something to say to you,” she remarked, after a moment’s silence, her voice low and firm. “You must sit where you are and listen to me attentively. Will you promise me to weigh my words carefully and—and—not misunderstand me?”
He saw that she was essaying a difficult task, and he said gently,—
“I promise; go on.”
“Then,” she continued, smiling at him gratefully, “I want to say frankly that I have taken a great deal of pleasure in our friendship. It is hardly necessary, however, to tell you that. I think I have proved it to you in many ways. But the time has come when it rests with you as to what the future shall hold for us. If you are willing to be a true and unselfish friend to me,—to be ‘civilized’ in the highest sense of the word,—we can go on as we have gone before. But if—if your chains fret you too much, or if there is the slightest danger that you will ever break them, then it is better that we should part. It is so easy for a man to misunderstand a woman—therefore, I am frank with you. Are you not grateful? Don’t you thank me?” There was a note of pleading in her voice.
Richard arose, and moved restlessly up and down the room a moment. Civilization decreed that he should remain seated and suppress all evidences of emotion; but there is a strong vein of savagery in youth, and Richard Stoughton was very young.
“‘They also serve who only stand and wait!’” he exclaimed irrelevantly.
Mrs. Percy-Bartlett laughed outright.
“The quotation does you credit in one way, Mr. Stoughton, even if it doesn’t seem to be very àpropos.”