“You have brought the most that will ever be there.”
“Oh, don’t say that just as I am going; that kind of sun shines not only through the senses, but through the soul. It will always shine if you will only think so.”
She bowed her head, the wide fringe of brown seaweed trembled under the waves that ran up on the warm-hued sand.
“And I am glad that we have had this year. With all its pain—it is ours. Think of me sometimes when I am gone, Esther. Be good—by that I mean, brave.”
His voice broke.
The tense strain of the moment was ended, as he bent forward. His heart was in the kiss he left on her hair. He turned and walked quickly away without looking back.
In the darkness of her room, a young figure lay stricken with grief across her bed, mourning the vision of her ideals that seemed gone without fulfillment. In the morning when she heard the happy sound of laughing voices the hopelessness of her bereavement came over her afresh. She was alone in her sorrow and memories. She was so weak that her body felt bruised, and her arms lay like a dead weight at her side. Was her courage broken? She prayed a passionate prayer for the poor, heartless women who had kept faith with virtue, and had not been rewarded—who had scattered their broken ideals along the road that they went, that all who followed must bleed and suffer. She reached out for her violin; for a while she lay still with it in her arms. It was not sufficient. She needed some human thing for companionship. Her soul hated its bodily enthrallment—she would fly out of it—she must. With a supreme effort she raised herself, and faced the mirror. Her wide, dim eyes looked out at her in pity. Then from her window she saw a steamer going out. It was time for the Majestic that was to take Glenn Andrews out of New York—out of her life. The two loves of her life—they must die together. Suddenly grasping the neck of her violin, she struck it against the side of the bed and shattered the exquisite thing. She fell back prostrate, and there for weeks she lay between this life and the eternal.
CHAPTER V.
Glenn Andrews went to France, to Moret-sur-Loing, an old cathedral town, thinly peopled, on the skirts of the forest of Fontainbleu. It was secluded and out of the way. Here he would lead a quiet life of study and work. This was his delight. A poet-soul living in the pursuit, not possession of the ideal. He had taken up his abode in a little, old inn. Away from the world and yet so near it. This was a beautiful country; the sight of it did his spirit good. He loved the hills and valleys and streams. On one side the ruins of an old Keep belting him, and on the other, the mills with long rows of deep windows, from which the workers looked out upon the sunshine and their homes. The small mill-houses nestled low in the leaves.
One day, returning late from a long walk, Glenn passed a peasant mother, poorly clothed, seated in her doorway; her child was sitting by with its hands about its knees. She kept pointing to the path that led to the mill. She was evidently looking for some one. Soon a man came in sight. A glow lit in the sombre eyes of the mother, and a smile leaped from her haggard face to the weary man, who suddenly straightened his drooping shoulders. There was something besides pain and work in the world, and they had found it. He took the child in his arms, tossing it up and letting it fall back again—this human miniature of their love and youth. Many a day, Glenn strolled at evening to see their meeting when the father came home from the mill. It rested him. He became absorbed in his work, reading the proof of the third book that was to add something to, or take from, the name of the lyrical poet.