He knew this to be false; that he possessed a grip on life which she did not; that he had passed far beyond her since they had last parted. She had had her opportunity and had thrown it away. It was too late. She could not follow him now, she had missed the psychological moment. Even had she cast her lot with his in the beginning, he knew that she never could have followed him. She was immeshed; her feet were caught in the net. The blandishments of life had taken too deep root in her soul for her to cast them forth as he had done. And yet his conscience smote him for her sake, for what she suffered, that she was thus forced to humiliate herself before him. Sentiment and old memories surged up within him and urged him to keep her. What, after all, did it matter where or how they lived? The world would go on its way the same as it had always done; it didn't wish to be reformed and wasn't worth reforming.
"Take her! take her!" cried those voices more persistently than ever. "Don't be a fool and miss this opportunity which, once gone, shall pass out of your life forever. She's as beautiful and as brilliant as the other woman; one of your own race and, after all, will wear as well. Besides, you know her and you don't know the other woman, and if disappointed in the latter—what then? Take her!"
The vision of Glaire's wonderful conception, "The Lost Illusions," rose before him. He saw again that exquisite figure of the Egyptian, strong and sensitive, in the prime of manhood, seated upon the shore of the Nile, watching the bark of destiny laden with the fair illusions of youth, draw slowly away from him and grow fainter and fainter in the soft, mellow light of age, as it floated away on the evening tide of life. He, too, stood in the prime of manhood. Was this to be his end, mocked and laughed at by fate—the price he must pay for daring to lift his eyes from the dust to the stars to fulfill the dream of the ages? God knew how he had fought against the invisible power that had driven him on step by step to his present state. He looked down into the beautiful upturned face of the woman before him whom he had known so long, whom he had loved and adored; gazed deep into those soft, azure eyes, limpid as two crystal pools, saw those full red upturned lips waiting to be kissed—kissed. Again her lips parted.
"Jack, Jack, Sweetheart, I'm waiting—" she murmured softly, encircling his neck completely with her arm and drawing his face gently down to her own. Just then the rhythmic silvery whir of wings caused them to look upward. Through the boughs of the tree they saw the indistinct form of a white dove that fluttered overhead for an instant and then was gone. At the same moment Captain Forest distinctly recognized the scent of Castilian roses, as though their fragrance had been wafted full in his face by a breeze, and yet there was no breeze, nor were there any roses close at hand; the season of roses had passed.
No man could have resisted for long the fascinations of a woman like Blanch Lennox if she chose to make love to him. It was the sound of those wings and the fragrance of the roses that upheld Captain Forest's resolution; especially the fragrance of the roses. Whence it came or how it originated, who could say? For it came and passed like a mere breath. Perhaps the invisible angel who, it is said, presides over the destiny of the individual, caused it; for with it flashed the vision of Chiquita before his eyes as he had seen her on that day in the garden among the roses and had silently watched her from the back of his horse and breathed deep drafts of the flowery fragrance. The same subtle, invisible something that has changed the destiny of individuals and of nations through all the ages, caused him to remember, recalled him to himself. The manhood surged up within him, asserting its supremacy, and he drew himself up with a sudden impulse. She noted the change, and in a fierce, passionate voice, almost of terror, cried: "Jack, you are mine, you have always been mine! I will not give you up—I claim my own!" and she flung her arms passionately about his neck in an endeavor to draw his lips down to her own.
"I can't—I can't do it, Blanch!" he said, and shook himself free. With a cry, terrible in its intensity and despair, she sank across the table.
XXVIII
Pale and trembling and humiliated, Blanch pulled herself together with an effort and stood for some time as one dazed where the Captain had left her. Then, she remembered, she had smiled and bowed absently to the men and women in the patio on the way back to her room, where she flung herself down upon the couch in a frenzy, burying her face in the cushions; her frame shaking with passionate, convulsive sobs as she writhed in paroxysms of untold grief and pain.
He had refused her, dared to refuse her—her! She had failed! Was this, then, the end, the reward for righteous ambition, conscientious endeavor? For years she had worked and schemed for the realization of her ideal, and this was the end. How proud she always had been of him, and how perfectly her beauty and brilliancy would have crowned his career—their lives! And now, when ambition's goal was attained, that rare cup of earthly joys of which few men drink, had been rudely dashed from her lips.
So this was the reward that had been reserved for her who had been endowed with wealth and position, and who was the fairest and best this civilization could produce? Fate had been kind to her merely in order that she might realize to the utmost the bitterness and emptiness of life.