The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1889-01-30

basket OF malits whose tired seller had
fallen asleep beside il on a marble stair,
some MadOnna's lamp burning within a
sculptured shrine. He looked at nothing,
neither outward to the sea nor upward to
the stars, nor downward at the slumber-
ing beggars. His eyes only saw, as it
were, painted on the radiant night, the
face of Beatrice Soria.
What she had demanded of him was a
greater price than if she had asked Of him
the sacrifice of existence itself.
He was a man 10 whom the curiosity
and comment OF the world were intoler-
able; to whom the honor of his name had
always been sacred and kept intact through
all his follies and excesses; his attachment
to John Vernon, lying dead in his grave at
Christslea, was sincere, and his sense of
the duty owing to his memory was strong.
The hours passed uncounted he had no
sense either of hunger or thirst; he was
wholly possessed by the agitation of his
senses and emotions, and the struggle.
which was violent, between his desires
and his consciousness OF what honor
asked of him.
The memory OF her as he had seen her
first on the moors in the pale autumn
morning came over him with a pang of
wistful repentance and regret. The recol-
riage to him smote him with the sense of
having sacrificed some innocent and trust
ful animal on the affairs of his own brief
and destroying desires.
He knew that to both the woman whom
he had married and the woman whom he
had loved he had behaved with the un-
kindness which is the inseparable off
spring of a purely selfish and physical
passion. He saw himself for the moment
as others saw him; and ne condemned
himself as they condemned him in these
solitary and bitter hours of self-examina-
ton.
What Aubrey had Justly defined in him
as feeling not OF affection. but of egot-
ism, toward his wife, made it terrible to
him 10 appear to other men as wanting in
respect or in regard for her. He was
sensitive to the insolence of public com
ment; and he abhorred the thought that
through him the world would talk of her.
He remembered her father with contri-
tlon and self-condemnation he remem-
bered his own violent self-will in insist
ing on the caprice of his momentarv de-
sires, and all the wisdom with which John
Vernon had endeavored to disSuade him
from his folly. He could not possibly
blame any one except himself. He could
lay at no one else's door the difficulty and
temptation in which he was now placed.
He had blamed her indeed for want OF
sympathy and affection, bat he knew that
he had had little right to do so.
He passed the night hours pacing to and
fro beside the sea. Once he bade a boat
man row him out on the moonlit water.
and he watched from it the receding
shores.
The boat drifted on under the stars on
the open sea, the rover, half asleep, steer
ing mechanically with his foot, and ever
and anon idly dipping his oars into the
waves. He was stretched at full length,
his head resting on the bench, his eyes
watching afar off the stately Pile OF the
Soria palace towering against the moon
bathed clouds, whilst the fragrance of its
orange gardens came to him over the
waves. After all, it seemed to him, his
first duty was to the one who dwelt there.
His marriage had been a supreme wrong
done to her. If she could find repara-
ton or consolation in. his love now, he
thought that he was bound in honor to
afford them to her; at least his wishes led
him to try and believe So And he loved
her more than he had ever loved any
woman; her touch, her voice, her regard,
stirred the very depths of his soul as no
others had ever done. Years of separa-
tiOn had given to his desires the freshness
of a new passion, and the keen jealousy
with which ne had watched the homage
of others had intensified it teniold. He
was in that mood in which a man feels
that all other things may perish if his love
is left to him; the CRY of Faust, II give
my soul forever, so that this woman may
be minel'
1t seemed to him that he never really
lived save when he was with her His
senses were stimulated, his intelligence
was aroused, his wandering fancies were
captured and concentrated by her as they
were by no other woman. The very in
dignity which he had inflicted on her, and
which she had pardoned, endeared her to
him. she had not clung to him in slavsh
humility, but she had loved him and for
given him with a greatness which emo
bled her in mis- sight. Such madness
might be passed with her; in him it was
| as living still as when, years before, he
had first watched the stars rise over these
waves and the moon shine on the pale
sculptures of her palace. She believed
that he was incapable of suffering; but
he felt that he drank its fullest cup to the
lees. She was the only woman on earth
to him: the world seemed to hold no
other. But a remOrse, which was in its
way as strong as the desire of his soul,
was also at work within him. He knew
that he would act vilely and with surpass-
ing dislovaty if he deserted so young a
woman as his wife, and one so wholly
! blameless.
She had been unable to content him in
deed; she had failed to correspond to some
ianciful ideal which he had formed and
imagined for a few months to be incor-
porated in her She was not what he had
wished or what he had cared for; but that
was no fault of hers. She had promised
him nothing which she had not fulfilled,
and she had borne his name blamelessly
through all trials.
In what she had said to him on the day
he left Ladysrood she had been wholly
justified by facts; and though he had so
violently resented her words, his con-
science told him that they were wholly de-
served; that they had indeed been more
forbearing than many a woman in her
| position would have made them.
As ludicrous and commonplace thoughts
intrude themselves sometimes on the deep
est and most tragic emotions, there re-
Cured to his mind his conversation with
his sister on the evening he had an
nounced 70 her his intended marriage !;
and of how he had replied to her prophe-
cies of woe with the jest that no one ever
abandoned his wife in these latter days,
unless it were a workman who went off
4