“Time will tell you all about it. Now, you want to be down over that precipice? Well, anyway, I am glad you are warranted sound. Come on, my yellow aster!”
They were past the precipice, far down the other side when Gwen spoke again.
“Humphrey,” she said, with a stronger trace of emotion in her voice than he had ever detected there before, “upon my word, I often wish for your sake I was just a good common frowsy red cabbage-rose.”
“Ah, do you?—Well, ‘die Zeit bringt Rosen!’”
CHAPTER XXVI.
About a week later they arrived in Paris. Gwen had never been there before, and her curiosity to see everything was insatiable and unresting.
She often seemed to herself as if she were caught in the whirl of a mad intoxicating race with fate; it was glorious; it stimulated her like a draught of wine; it filled her veins with fire; it was as if the spirit of the world had got into her spirit and shot streams of the strength of immortality through all her being.
She was as a god to herself, and fate was as a thing of naught. This was in her times of exaltation however; but even in these early days there came moments of reaction in their due season. Fortunately she knew the symptoms of their approach, and could hide herself away from her husband’s eyes. Her room could tell strange tales whenever Gwen shut herself in and threw up the sponge till the next round.
Then there came shame into that proud face, fear into those fearless eyes, a stoop into those stoopless shoulders. She neither ranted nor raved, she dared not; if she had once raised her voice, she knew quite well she must shriek, and howl forth the terror and disgust and dismay with which the possible ending to this race with fate filled her.
Sometimes she would pull off her shoes and stockings, and go barefooted to and fro the length of the long polished floor with its strips of Eastern carpet—the cool slippery surface soothing the fever of her flying feet. Invariably she would pull off her guard and wedding-ring and lay them with curious gentle wistfulness down on the table. Once when she did this, she drew a deep breath, threw out her arms and laughed.