Mary herself found so much in common with the Sailor that she began to show him the sights of the town. She was quite a modern girl in her breadth and independence, happily inoculated against every sort of ism, but at the same time capable of following any line she marked out for herself. The Sailor had soon begun to interest her very much, and instinctively divining something of his handicap, she wished to help him all she could.
About a week after the first visit to Queen Street, she led the young man to the National Gallery to see the Turners. They spent a very profitable morning holding high communion before them. His unstudied comments seemed to give her a juster view not of art merely, but of life as well. The depth of his intoxication as he stood before these seascapes, sensing them, drinking them in, filled her with wonder.
"God!" he muttered once. She saw his eyes were full of tears, and she felt a stab of pity.
Life had not been kind to this man. A thousand subtle, half apprehended things had already told her that. He had said in his odd way, which was yet so poignant, that he "had started a long way behind scratch." Indeed, it was the sight of these very Turners which had wrung the admission from him.
After this, they went one day to Manchester Square to see the Wallace collection, and to concerts on several Sunday afternoons, but the climax of esthetic delight was reached for Henry Harper when one evening he was taken to the Opera to hear "Tristan." Edward Ambrose, who it seemed numbered the super-rich among his friends, had been lent a box on the grand tier. And nothing would content him save that others should share the blessings which attend acquaintance with plutocracy.
The box was able to accommodate six persons, and those whom Edward Ambrose lured into honoring it and being honored by it were the three ladies, the Prince, Henry Harper, and himself. Lady Pridmore and the Prince were a little bored undoubtedly. She had the lowest opinion of Wagner and thought the Germans overrated generally. The Prince was more discreet in his condemnation, but he certainly thought the Prelude was too long. Edward Ambrose, Mary, and Silvia had heard it so often that it was almost ceasing to be an excitement for them: a frame of mind, it is said, which connotes the amateur. As for Mr. Harper, that was an ever-memorable night.
From this time on he was in a state of growing ecstasy which threatened to become perilous. Existence was now an enchanted thing. A veritable Fairy Princess had come into his life. In speech, in manner, in look, in deed, she was of royal kin. In all the Sailor's wanderings, in all his imaginings, no mortal woman had assumed the significance of this sister of the immortal Klondyke.
O goddess rare and strange! He was already in her thrall. She was gray-eyed Athena of whom his reading had lately been telling him, she was Wisdom herself come to earth in the disciplined splendor of her spirit. Already he was prostrate at the shrine. It was for Her that he had sailed the multitudinous seas, it was for Her that he had traversed noisome caverns measureless to man.
Aladdin, with a flash of the wonderful lamp, had shown him a reason for many things. Strange and dreadful burdens had been laid upon him, every inch of his endurance had been tested in Fate's crucible, that in the end he might win through to a high destiny. Was it for nothing that, shoeless and stockingless, he had cried, "Orrible Crime on the Igh Seas," in the slush of a Blackhampton gutter? Was it for nothing that he had looked on the Island of San Pedro? No; there was purpose behind it all. At the chosen hour the goddess Athena was to appear in order that he might be healed with the divine wisdom.
Life was touched to very fine issues for the Sailor now. And yet so swift was the change that he did not realize its peril. The sister of Klondyke meant much to him already. Sometimes he read his work to her. When they discussed it afterwards her comments would reveal a depth of knowledge that astonished him, and raised the whole matter of the argument to a higher plane. Many an enchanted talk they had together. So miraculously were their minds in tune that it almost seemed they must have conversed through unnumbered ages. Then, too, in the most tactful and delicate way, she was his guide amid the elusive paths of this new and divine world he was entering. Yet she asked so little and gave so much, such a change was wrought in his life by subtle degrees, that he was blind to the terrible danger.