"Oh, well for him whose will is strong!"
Tennyson.
THERE come times in our lives when the mind lies broken on the revolving wheel of our thought. "I am illegitimate." That was the one thought which made John's bed for him at night, which followed him throughout the spectral day until it brought him back to the spectral night again.
It was a quiver in which were many poisoned arrows. Because the first that struck him was well-nigh unbearable, the others did not fail to reach their mark.
If he were nameless and penniless, he could not marry Di. That was the first arrow. Such marriages are possible only in books and in that sacred profession which, in spite of numerous instances to the contrary, believes that "the Lord will provide." Di would not be allowed to marry him, even if she were willing to do so. And after a time—a long time, perhaps—she would marry some one else, possibly Lord Hemsworth.
John writhed. He had set his heart on this woman. He had bent her strong will to love him as a proud woman only can. She had been hard to win, but she was his as much as if they were already married; his by right, as the living Galatea was by right the sculptor's, who gave her marble heart the throbbing life and love of his own.
"She is mine—I cannot give her up," he said aloud.
There was no voice, nor any that answered.
Strange how the ploughshare turns up little tags and ends of forgotten rubbish buried by the mould of a few years' dust.
One utterance of Archie's, absolutely forgotten till now, was continually recurring to John's mind. Its barbed point rankled.