"——and so I said to myself: I'll go down to the sea, where I had my darling all my own, pure and loving, before the stain of the world reached her or evil tongues made busy with her name. She's there still, I know. She's haunting those lonely sands, crying and wringing her hands and kissing the old letters because I won't write her any new. But she must forgive me when I ask her pardon and show her my punishment, and when it's all told, we'll sit hand in hand and knee to knee and watch the sun foundering out at sea and when the last little red streak has gone——"
He broke off suddenly, and sat up in bed.
"Where are my clothes? Haven't they sent them yet? I can't—I can't be found like this, you know! It's a wretched little piece of vanity, but I can't. And now I'm getting so weak, I can't go into town again. Perhaps I didn't tell them where to—send—the right number."...
His voice died away in his throat, and he lay back, quite exhausted.
It was nearly two hours afterward before I left the house for the last time. A doctor had seen him, and a nurse was settling in an arm-chair to watch him for the night. We'd done what we could to that awful room. That wasn't much, but the train was nearly due now, so it didn't really matter. There was a lot of work before me on the morrow.
And it wasn't until I was halfway home that I remembered the sixty thousand pounds!
VIII
'TWIXT SHINE AND SHADE
To be young, to be beautiful, to be free; to radiate a charm which it is felt not ungracious alone but ridiculous to pretend to withstand, and to be paid for its exercise in the tangible form that renders all else possible; to wake one morning and discover that pleasure, change of scene, and gracious surroundings have become the anxious concern of good genii whose motives are too evident to make any demands upon gratitude: to find each day a fairy vista wherein, by a happy perversion of the gray old rule, fulfilment waits upon desire: in one word, to be "the vogue." Has life ever offered more than this? and is it not a mere question of time how long any memory of old defeat, any regret for a lost Eden, can resist an assault by happiness made from so many quarters?
I think, if the whole truth could be known, Fenella's state of mind during her two years of furore would be a curious psychological study. I have just been looking through a pile of Sceptres and Prattlers, the issue of those enchanted years. It is hardly an exaggeration to say her photograph appeared in one or the other every week.—Fenella at Ascot—"The Secret of Success. One favorite whispers it to another."—"Look pleasant, please! A recent snapshot of Lord Lulford's popular niece." (I forget who invented this phrase. It was rather done to death.) Here are more: "Commons idol among the 'backwoodsmen' at the Burbery point-to-point. Names from left to right: Miss Barbour, Sir Bryan Lumsden, et cetera, et cetera." "Will 'No. 8' go up to-night? After a strenuous day with the North Herts, Miss Barbour has to hustle to catch the London train." I say, take out all the palpable poses, all the profitable winsomeness of poster or postcard—there must be one or two where she was taken off her guard—and then try to trace the shadow poor Paul fancied he saw. I can only say I have failed. Complete absorption in the business of the moment—that is all I ever found.