Ye are not bound! The soul of things is sweet,
The Heart of being is celestial rest,
Stronger than woe is will: that which was good
Doth pass to better—best.
—EDWIN ARNOLD.
The shadows of that same exquisite evening fell very softly across the walled-in pleasance at Nicolashof. Dinner was over, and the Governor sat upon the terrace with his cigarette, and Vronsky as his companion. From within the drawing-room, which was but faintly lighted, came the sound of Nadia's singing. Miss Forester played, and the two men—Denzil Vanston within, and Vronsky without—listened spellbound to the magic of that mysteriously appealing voice.
The evening was untroubled even by a breath of wind. The tops of the forest trees, visible beyond the garden bowers, were motionless in the warm air. The hues of the sky were such as must have been seen to be imagined.
Denzil sat with a kind of helplessness in his whole attitude, his eyes devouring the girl who sang to him.
He had been in a pitiable condition when the kindness of Stepan Stepanovitch had carried him off to the luxurious simplicity of Nicolashof, and the unforeseen seductions of the life there. Fresh from his lonely journey, his heart full of sensations to which he had till then been a stranger, torn with anxiety respecting the fate of his brother, and uncertain as to the extent of the danger with which the reappearance of her uncle menaced Rona—he had been in dire need of sympathy.
He found himself received with a cordiality for whose charm he had been utterly unprepared. The change from foreign ways, discomfort, loneliness, and sickness, to the delightful atmosphere of sympathy, and the perfect comfort of a well-regulated household, modeled upon the English standard, was astounding, and its effects much greater than could have been foreseen.
In truth, his own frame of mind at this crisis of his history was a sealed mystery to himself.
Rona had touched in him springs of feeling of a kind different from anything in his previous experience. She had—all unconsciously—called these sensations into being; but she had not satisfied them. This last fact, so all-important, his intelligence did not recognize, though his physical instinct knew it well enough.
To his passion there had been, in Veronica Leigh, no response. No pulse in her had thrilled in concert with his own. This he felt, without knowing it. He had quitted England with a fierce desire unsatisfied.
And, all unknown to both of them, Nadia was bestowing what Rona had withheld.