Waterbury evening Democrat., 1889-02-13
MISS BRBTHERT0N
By MRS. HUMPHREY WARD,

By MRS. HUMPHREY WARD, your sister will take care that she sees tho right people Perrault, 1 tear. Is to give her lessons-under the rose. Happy man"
 Kerdal read this letter on glowing Au gust morning as he walked homeward along the side of the pond, where the shade of the hr trees was a welcome protection against the rising heat and the air was fragrant with the scent of the ling, which was just out in all it's first faint flush of beauty. He threw himself down among it after he had finished the sheets and stared for long at the sunlit, motionless water, his hat drawn forward over his brows. So this was the outcome of it all Isabel Bretherton was about to be- come a great actress-Undine had found her soull
 It seemed to him, as he lay there buried in the ling, that during the past three weeks he had lived through whole drama of feeling -a drama which had its beginning. its con- plications, its climax. While it had been going on he had been only half conscious of its bearings, half conscious of himself. Wal lace's letter had made him sensible of the sit uation, as it concerned himself, with deci- sive sharpness and completeness. There was no possibility of any further self delusion; 
 between himself and the pursuing force which had overtaken him had fallen, and Kendall, with 8 shiver or pain, found him. self looking straight into the wide, hungry eyes of Love! Oh, was this love-sore de- sire, this dumb craving, this restlessness of the whole beingf
 The bees hummed among the heather, every now and then a little brown streaked lizard rustled faintly beside him, pair of kingfshers flashed across the pond. But he saw and heard nothing, responsive as every sense in him commonly was to the details of the wild life about him. His own miserable reverie absorbed him. What was it that had made the charm of those early weeks in July immediately after his parting with hsri What was 1t which had added zest to his work, and enchantment to the summer beauty of the country, and, like @ hidden harmony dimiy resonant within him, had kept life tuneful and delightfull He could put words to it now. It had been nothing less than settled foresight, deep conviction of Isabel Bretherton's failurel What a treachery! But, yes-the vision perpetually before his eyes had been the vision of dying fame, a waning celebrity, a forsaken and discrowned beauty And from that abandonment and that failure he had dimly toreseen the rise and upspringing of new and indescrib- able joy. He had seen her, conscious of de- feat and of the inexorable limits of her own personality, turning to the man who had read her truly and yet had loved her, surely, from the very beginning, and finding in his love 8 fresh glory and an all sufficient conso- lation. This had been the inmost truth, the center, the kernel of all his thought, of all his life. He saw 1t now with sharp distinctness now that every perception was intensified by pain and longing.
 Then, as he went over the past, he saw how this consciousness had been gradually invaded and broken up by his sisters letters. He remembered the incredulous impatience with which he had read the earlier ones. So Marie thought him mistaken! ''Isabel Breth erton would be an actress yet"-''she had genius after all"-''she was learning, grow ing, developing every day" AbsurdI He had been able to keep his critical estimate of the actress and his personal admiration of the woman separate from one another. But evidently Marie's head had been confused, misled by her heart. And then little by lit tie his incredulity had yielded and his point of view had changed. Instead of impatience of Marie's laxity of judgment, what he had been fercely conscious of for days was jeal- ousy of Paul de Chateauvieux-jea1ousy of his opportunities, his influence. his relation towards that keen, sweet nature. That, too, had been one of his dreams of the future the dream of tutoring and training her young, uniformed intelligence. He had done some thing towards it; he had, as it were, touched the spring which had set free all this new and unexpected store of power. But, if he had planted, others had watered and others would reap. In this great crisis of her fortunes he had been nothing to her. Other voices and other hands had guided and directed her. irll fof, oVI tortured him. They seemed to him the mer- est friendly commonplace. In reality her life had passed out of his ken; her nature had lowered into a new perfection, and he had not been there to see or to help. She would never connect him with the incidents or the influences which had transformed ex- istence to her, and would probably irrevoca- bly change the whole outline of her future. Once he had wounded and startled her and had despaired for awhile of undoing the i'm pression made upon her. But now he felt no quick anxiety, no fear how things might turn, only . settled dat consciousness of di- vision, of a life that had once been near to bis swept away from him forever, of diverging roads which no kindly fate would ever join again.
 For, by the end of this time of solitary waiting, his change of attitude was complete It was evident to him that his anticipation | of her failure, potent as it had been over his life, had never been half SO real, half so vivid, ss this new and strange foreboding of her true success. Marie must be right. He had been Q mere blind, hair splitting pedant, judging Isabel Bretherton by principles and standards which left out of count the inborn energy, the natural power of growth. of such . personality as hers. And the more he had oncs doubted. the moro he now believed. Yes, she would be great-she would make her way into that city of the mind in which he himsen had made his dwelling place; she, too, would enter upon the worlds vast inheri- tance of knowledge. She would become, if only her physical frame proved equal to tho demands upon it, ono of that little band of interpreters, of ministers of the idea, by
 whom the intellectual life of society is fed and Quickened. Was he SO lost in his own selfish, covetous need as not to rejoicef Oh, but she was a woman-she was beauti- full and he loved heri Do what he would, all ideal and impersonal considerations fell ut l terly away from him. Day by day he knew
 moro of his own heart; day by day the phi losopher grew weaker in him and the mans claim Hercer Before him pernetuallv ware