THE PASSING OF WANDA.
After night comes morning in the material world, but in that inner sphere of thought and feeling, which is the only reality, it frequently happens that after night comes a greater depth of darkness. The early light of successive summer mornings falling into the sleeping-room of Edward Macleod seemed to mock the heavy gloom which perpetually enshrouded his heart. He was back in his old home, for the pleasant circle at Stamford Cottage had broken up shortly after the unexpected advent of Wanda. A few days of enforced civilization had affected her more severely than the hard journey preceding it, and she had returned to her native wilds with the feeling of a bird regaining its freedom. Where in all the limitless forest she could be found at any particular time her lover could not tell. He was her lover still—he must always remain her lover. He had attempted to limit and define the strange irresistible attraction she exerted over him, he had voluntarily resolved upon life-long celibacy rather than subject her to the bitterness of seeing him belong to another; and if in thought he ever yielded to this great, untamed unrepressed love of hers, it was with something of the exaltation and ardour of one who makes a supreme sacrifice.
Edward Macleod was no sentimentalist, and yet he was conscious of a very delicate, infinitely sad satisfaction in the belief that he would expiate with his life the folly he had committed in permitting her to love him. In the loftiest sense he would be true to her. He could not be selfish and shameless enough to set forever aside the desolation that his hands had callously wrought. As her sorrow could never be mitigated it should always be shared. He would do everything for her. She should be educated, and inducted by gentle degrees into the refinement of civilization—he fervently hoped that it might not prove the refinement of cruelty. She should not be left desolate, forsaken, uncared-for; she should share everything he had except his heart. That was to be kept empty for her sake—for the sake of the sweet dusky maiden who had once possessed it.
Who had once possessed it! Ah, was it true then that she no longer held a claim? He had closed the door hesitatingly and with sharp pain in her face, but now the bare recollection of the little brown hands fumbling upon it thrilled him with a blissful sense that perhaps, after all, his life was not to be the utter sacrifice that he had supposed. Perhaps this peerless creature by some magical process of development might yet meet and satisfy his intellectual demands. She had already the soul of an angel—yes, and the beauty of an angel. And yet he was not satisfied.
It was this haunting dissatisfaction that kept him a prisoner in his room, one brilliant afternoon, when the fresh world without seemed too insupportable a mockery of his jaded and cynical state of mind. He stepped out upon the little balcony that ran under the windows of his own and his sister's apartments, and looked with a sore heart upon the eternal miracle of earth and sky. He sank heavily down upon a low seat, feeling very old and worn. If the back is fitted to the burden, it occurred to him that the painful process of adjustment would have to be continued through an interminable period of years. Perhaps it is only the stiff, bent shoulders of age that are really fitted to bear the burdens that impetuous youth find unendurably irksome.
While he sat in utter silence, thrilled occasionally with shrill sweet bursts of irrepressible bird song, and inwardly tortured by the hateful whisperings of doubt, remorse and despair, the door of his sister's apartment was opened, and a murmur of voices told him that Rose and Helene had returned together from an afternoon drive. Through the lightly draped open window their conversation, distinctly heard, forced him into the position of an unintentional eaves-dropper. There seemed at first no reason why he should withdraw, and when the reason became apparent he found it impossible to make his presence known.
"Is your brother in the house?" asked Helene, waiting for the answer before laying aside hat and gloves, and dropping languidly into an easy chair.
"Oh, no," returned Rose, "he is never at home at this hour of the day.
Why? Did you wish to see him?"
"I? No! I wish never to see him!" The words were uttered in a passionate undertone.
Rose came directly and beseechingly over to her friend. "Dear Helene," she said, "what is this terrible trouble that is preying upon your life? Every day you grow thinner and whiter and colder—more like a moonbeam than a mortal woman. Soon I fear you will fade from my grasp altogether, and I shall have nothing left but the recollection that you did not care enough for me to confide in me. I am sure there is something dreadful between you and Edward."