It is always hard for a second person to judge of our actions. No one can understand those secret springs—that inner mechanism which moves us to do certain things by certain impulses. That one mad moment had been to Keith Athelstone as the turning-point of his life. A fiery temptation had to be withstood, or yielded to. He had chosen to do the latter.
With his hot-blooded, impetuous temperament—with the knowledge in his heart that he loved this woman beyond and above all others in the world, beyond all possibility of forgetfulness—he knew also that such a thing as mere cold, prosaic friendship was an utter impossibility. At some moment like to-night, when senses and heart thrilled with answering rapture, when passion ran riot in his veins, when the aching and longing of his life spoke one impetuous desire and hurled aside all scruples, as the strength of Samson rent asunder the withes that bound his mighty limbs—at some such moment as this, forms and ceremonies, right and wrong, all would be again forgotten, and those words of Lauraine's would be verified when she said "there can be no safety in such a compact."
He paces to and fro his rooms—the rooms Lauraine's judgment and choice has selected and furnished—luxurious apartments that look out on St. James's Park.
The radiance of the early summer dawn—beautiful even in a great city—is over all the sky. A faint breeze rustles the trees—the birds sing and chirp among boughs that are moist with the night's rain, just some tender freshening shower that had fallen scarce an hour before.
Those young tired eyes of Keith Athelstone's look out on it all, and a sigh parts his lips.
"There are so many women in the world," he mutters, as he ceases his restless pacing, and leans against the open window. "So many that are beautiful and young, and easy to win, and yet all my life is but a longing for one who can be nothing to me. How hard fate is!"
The cool, fresh air blows over his brow, but it does not still its aching. His whole soul is hardened, and bitterly ashamed. He has gained his will, he has forced Lauraine to say "Stay," but all the same his triumph brings no satisfaction. That she loves him he knows, but she is not a woman to lend herself to the base frailties of a lax morality, to sink to the low level that pursues its joys in secret, and smiles serenely on the face of society at large. There would be no playing at innocence with her, and she was too proud as well as too passionate not to suffer intensely in the struggle. And then, after all, how would it end—how do these poor pretences ever end? The barrier is so frail—a look, a word, a chance meeting, and it is overthrown, and then——
He springs impetuously to his feet here. He dares not pursue that train of thought any further.
"I won't think of the end," he mutters. "I shall see her still, and sufficient unto the day is the—evil—thereof!"
The evil?