He returned the catalogue mechanically to Miss Regan.
“They’re Rossetti’s—fine, are they not?” said Mrs. Wyndwood.
The question dragged him up from abysses of dream. But even though he felt he must be answering it, he lingered in luxurious agony over the music of the question, its vibrations prolonging themselves in his ear.
“They are indeed exquisite,” he said, slowly, at last. “But do you think there would be any ‘hope tempestuous’?”
“There is always hope,” said Mrs. Wyndwood, gently.
There seemed a sweet assurance in the unconscious words: he heard a chime of golden bells floating up from some sea-buried city. Perhaps it was only from the band in the Sculpture Room. But he felt he must not attach himself further to the fascinating twain; his solicitude would be too marked, and he was aware of many eyes drawn by their beauty.
But before he could speak, Mrs. Wyndwood went on, musingly:
“And after all, hope is better than fulfilment. There are blue hills on the horizon which the child longs to go beyond; but happiness always lies on the hither side, with the blue hills still beckoning.” Her eyes filled with dreamy light. “It is as George Herbert so beautifully says:
“ ‘False glozing pleasures, casks of happiness,
Foolish night-fires, women’s and children’s wishes,
Chases in arras, gilded emptiness,
Shadows well-mounted, dreams in a career,
Embroider’d lies, nothing between two dishes,
These are the pleasures here.’ ”
How exquisitely she spoke the melancholy lines that seemed fraught with all the pathos of the human destiny, her words rippling through the buzz of platitudinarian trivialities he heard vaguely all around him, like a silver stream through an unlovely country. She had suffered too. She, too, had found life and its pleasures hollow; he saw that in the quiver of the beautiful lip, in the wistful brightness of the eye. Straightway his heart was full of tears for her. He longed to comfort her, to sacrifice himself for her. Why could she not be happy?