"And on the other side the figure of a Vampire, stacking at the souls of men." …
And then they talked of the future, the New Life, as it would shape itself for Isabelle and her husband, talked as if the earth were fresh and life but in the opening.
"He may do something else than this," Isabelle said. "He has immense power.
But I hope it will always be something outside the main wheels of industry,
as Mr. Gossom would say,—something with another kind of reward than the
Wall Street crown."
"I wish he might find work here for Rob," Margaret said; "something out here where he belongs that will not pay him in fame or money. For he has that other thing in him, the love of beauty, of the ideal." She spoke with ease and naturally of her lover. "And there has been so little that is ideal in his life,—so little to feed his spirit."
And she added in a low voice, "I saw her in New York—his wife."
"Bessie!"
"Yes,—she was there with the girl,—Mildred…. I went to see her—I had to…. I went several times. She seemed to like me. Do you know, there is something very lovable in that woman; I can see why Rob married her. She has wrecked herself,—her own life. She would never submit to what the doctor calls the discipline of life. She liked herself just as she was; she wanted to be always a child of nature, to win the world with her charm, to have everything nice and pleasant and gay about her, and be petted into the bargain. Now she is gray and homely and in bad health—and bitter. It is pitiful to wake up at forty after you have been a child all your life, and realize that life was never what you thought it was…. I was very sorry for her."
"Will they ever come together again?"
"Perhaps! Who knows? The girl must bring them together; she will not be wholly satisfied with her mother, and Rob needs his daughter…. I hope so—for his sake. But it will be hard for them both,—hard for him to live with a spent woman, and hard for her to know that she has missed what she wanted and never quite to understand why…. But it may be better than we can see,—there is always so much of the unknown in every one. That is the great uplifting thought! We live in space and above unseen depths. And voices rise sometimes from the depths."
And lying there under the stars Margaret thought what she could not speak,—of the voice that had risen within her and made her refuse the utmost of personal joy. She had kissed her lover and held him in her arms and sent him away from her. Without him she could not have lived; nor could she live keeping him….