"I am sorry for you."
For a moment he seemed taken aback by this expression of sympathy; but when our eyes met his were dimmed. In a moment, however, he had recovered control, and said:
"It doesn't make any difference in one way. I see her still; and one of these days she will be sorry for me and become my wife; she will then end by loving me. I mean to work to this end; the hope of attaining all this gives me courage."
It seemed all the worse to me that Ariston, with his gayety and humor, should be in his heart so sad. And yet, if it was to be, better that it should come to one who had a fund of joyousness within himself, on which he could draw.
The next day Lydia sent word to Ariston that she would like to see him, and Ariston suggested that I should go with him to the cloister. "I shall, of course," he said, "wish to see Lydia alone for a little, but you will have an opportunity of seeing the cloister and what they do there."
The cloister of Demeter and all the institutions which clustered around it were situated in the neighborhood of what was in my time Madison Square. All the buildings between Twentieth Street and Thirty-fourth Street, north and south, and between Sixth Avenue and Fourth Avenue, east and west, had been cleared away; and upon the cleared space had been constructed a building dedicated to the cult. The temple of Demeter, closely resembling the Pantheon, was surrounded by a grove of ilex trees. At a short distance from the temple and connected with it by a columned arcade, was the cloister, built also of white marble, around a court carpeted with lawn; this cloister was the dwelling place of the priestesses of Demeter and of all those women who were either in retreat or in novitiate. A short distance from the cloister was a large building, similar to the other large buildings of which New York now mainly consisted. Twenty stories in height, covering acres of ground and built around a large open court, these buildings were no longer open to the objection alleged against them in my time, owing to the fact that they were now removed from one another by large spaces planted with trees. This particular building was devoted to the education of youth, and particularly all children who, for any reason, became what was termed "children of the state." The building was so large that it permitted of a running track within the court of four laps to the mile. New York had been transformed by the construction of these enormous buildings, each one of which constituted practically a city of itself. Some of them, such as the one in which I was living with Ariston, were devoted exclusively to bachelors and childless widowers; others were entirely for unmarried women and childless widows; others, on the contrary, were set aside for the use of families and consisted of apartments of different sizes.
Although the inmates of these buildings constantly met after the fulfillment of their daily task, every family had as separate a home as in my day. Almost every building had a dramatic corps of its own, a musical choir of its own, a football club, a tennis club, and other athletic, amusement, and educational clubs of its own, and all these clubs contributed to the amusement one of the other, each colony contributing its share to the enjoyment of the whole community.
Lydia was in the hospital ward of the state children's building, where at last we found her, for though in retreat she was by no means idle. She was not discountenanced when she saw us; nor would she even allow me to leave them, but told Ariston what she had to say simply and in a few words. It was this: She had come to the cloister, she said, very largely for the purpose of seeing Iréné there; she took it for granted that Iréné's duties at the temple would bring them together. Lydia feared, however, that Iréné was avoiding her, and wanted Ariston to arrange a meeting between them.
Ariston promised to do this, and then we all three walked through the buildings, Lydia taking great pride in her share of the work there.