The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1889-02-20

sooner or later would be more-how-
how? 1t has perplexed and baf1led every
voluptuary and every artist since the
world began ~ She interrogated in vain
/ the shades of the great pleasure-seekers
! and the glad lovers who had passed down
| those marble staircases and under those
J canopies of trellised vine before her in
the days that were dead.
Sulle rive d'Adria bella.
! Men had always been her playthings;
! she had done whatever she had chosen
with them but she had always for them
that indolent indulgent, and yet, at times,
! impatient derision with which a woman
/ of high intelligence and profound passions
/ is apt to regard both her lovers and her
! friends
And in her, now, besides this, was
vague, slight-yery vague, very slight
! sense OF disappointment.
! Was it because she failed to feel those
/ intensiies of emotion which she had felt
! before? Was it because no one summer
/ is like another? Was it because the
mind and nature change with time, and
what is delightful and exquisite in one
| season cannot wholly content them in an
/ other. Or was IL because the passions are
such subtle, self-willed and mysterious
agents of our being that that they resist
| the appeal to them to build in last years
nests? She could not tell; all the pene-
| tration and intuition of her intelligence
and experience did not suffice to explain
to her why this vague, faint sense OF dis
| appointment followed on the renewal OF
| her romance.
1t was no fault of his.
He was the most devoted and the most
/ tender Of lovers. 1t was perhaps that her
memory and her Imagination had ex-
| pected more than it was humanity possi-
/ BILE for any love to give from their re-
union; or perhaps she uncOnsciously
missed the stimulantof that desire to re-
/ gain his affections which had moved all
! her strongest feelings since his marriage
/ She had nothing more left to wish for; in
/ the full, rich, and pampered life of
] Beatrice SOria that fact was almost a loss
/ in itself. She felt for him Uenderlv and
with warmth indeed; but it was not the
same feeling as had subjugated all her
soul and her senses in the first days of its
! ascendency.
Perhaps l grow old, and so indiffer-
| ent," she thoughts but then she looked in
/ her mirror and smiled, and knew that it
was not that
Was it then the inevitable reaction of
/ expectations too great for finite human
passions to fulfill them? Was 1t that the
| lost music had seemed so sweet in its re-
| membrance that no strain OF il, heard now,
could ever seem to equal it in melody?
! Il loved him better when he was not
mine," she thought sometimes, with the
saddest consciousness that can ever visit
| love. Alas it is not an infrequent visit
| ant.
Coming down the Grand canal one
early forenoon, when the pressure OF gon-
Ill,
TO some church festival, his own was
/ jostled between two others and had to
/ pause in its outward voyage while the
rival rowers exchanged the usual
maledictions with uplifted oars
| and infinite variety of florid oaths He
| heard his own name spoken by one of the
two men who were skeUching in gondola
/ tied to one of the piles before water
gate. They were making drawings of all
/ that is left of the Falier palace, and of its
/ little garden court and wooden wicket;
they were painters well known in the
/ artistic world of London, and they recog-
/ nized him as he passed
'Where is his wife, do you know" said
/ one of them "She was lovely creature.
! You remember Leighton's portrait of her
! three years ago"
"She is always living alone in little
house on the sea-coast, L believe" replied
| the other.
Separated, them"
yes, virtually. Lord Aubrey consoles
her, believe. Some people say that he
always did"
aubrey? The minister"
'The man who was minister in the last
| administratiOn-yes There is only one.
! He is this mans cousin"
THE relationship gave him opportuni-
| ties, / suppose ?"
The other artist laughed; and they both
went on with the drawing OF the little
accacia tree by the green gate OF the court
of the palazzo.
Guilderov felt a strange emotion as his
gondola, extricated, passed OH its way to-
/ ward the Lido. There was no truth, he
/ knew, in this foolish gossiping; and yet it
wounded, offended and irritated him.
AS he passed outward on his way tow
ards the lagoon, lying back on his black
/ cushions, he could not shake of the rough
! unpleasant impression of the words which
| he had overheard. Was that how they
we're talking of him in England? Such a
! possibility had never come into his
/ thoughts before.
! He had actually and morally set his wife
as free as though his death had released
/ her from him. He did not believe that
| Aubrey had as yet become her lover, but
ne suddenly realized that it was posi-
! bility which was more than possible. It
! did not find him Indifferent. IL touched
that sensitive nerve in him which men
call honor for want of a clearer name for
| it. although it is in truth rather personal
pride and love of dignity than honor.
1t suddenly walked the image of Gladys
from that dim forgotten past into which it
had retreated, and restored her to place,
not in his heart indeed, but in his men,
ories and in his susceptibilities.
She had seemed TO him scarcely more
| than a shade, as she had last appeared be-
fore him in the ghastly and pallid hues of
/ the dreamlike chambers of his Neapolitan
palace; an avenging shape arisen TO re-
| proach him and to curse him. But now
she became more than this; he realized
that she was a living woman of breathing
| life and motion, who had it in her power,
| if she chose, TO return him the harm that
| he had done her by a vengeance which
would touch him to the quick and humble
| him in the eyes OF all men.
And why should she not do it? II she
did. could he honestly blame her?
He knew he could not.
Why should he demand from young
and lonely woman a force of self-control
of which his own strength and manhood
|