“But you! If you saw with your soul what man am I, You would praise me at least that my soul all through Clove to you—loathing the lives that lie. The souls and lips that are bought and sold, The smiles of silver and the kisses of gold!” Zai looks up hastily at her lover, and her eyes meet his. It is not only at the touching of the lips that spirits rush together, as many believe. Who has not seen the soul leap up into the eyes, and utter there its immortal language far plainer than mortal speech can interpret it—when pride, or honour, or duty, or interestedness has laid an iron hand across the mouth. At such a moment we seem to realise with startling force the existence of the divine spark prisoned in its house of clay. The power of spirit over matter, the subtle imagination which, without words, can lay bare “All thoughts, all passions, all delights, Whatever stirs this mortal frame.” Before Carl can utter a sentence, he half forgets everything in the sweetness of the grey eyes, in the fairness of his young love’s face. “My darling—my own darling,” he whispers, straining her again to his heart, which, to do him justice, he verily believes is devoted to her. “Why have you forgotten me for—Delaval, Zai?” Zai starts and flushes. “But I ought not to blame you,” he goes Her heart flutters like a bird at this, and her eyes glisten through unshed but irrepressible tears. “Worse of you than you deserve, Carl!” she falters, while her arm clings closer to his neck, and she feels that this man is a king among his kind, and that she may well be forgiven if she worships him. “Why should you imagine that I think any ill of you?” “Because I merit it after the brutal way I treated you at the Meredyths’, and even in the beginning of this evening, my Zai. I doubted you, you see, and when one suffers one is apt to be unreasonable, and wounded But in his heart he does not for a moment believe that she or any other woman could pause between any other man and him. “Nothing more natural, I suppose,” Zai answers, nestling her hand into his, and feeling her spirits rise and her courage rear its crest aloft as she thinks Carl has only acted thus out of jealousy. “But natural things do not always come to pass, do they? There are exceptions to all rules, you know. I told you before, Carl, that I was the exception “I thought you had forgotten it!” Carlton Conway murmurs in his most melodious and reproachful accents. “Why should you have thought so?” she asks wistfully. “It would be wiser to ask why I should have thought otherwise,” he returns, a little drily. “Your sweet face has bewitched me until I have had no sense left I think, but still I am not quite mad. I know my superiors, and am not surprised when fate and fortune compel me to bow to them.” “But Lord Delaval is not your superior, Carl!” she cries earnestly, “not in any respect—except that he is a little richer, perhaps.” “I did not mean to imply that he is my superior because he is a swell,” he observes rather haughtily, “but the very point of which you speak is the very one that makes his superiority, probably, in your eyes.” “In my eyes!” she answers in amazement. “Oh, Carl, I am sorry you should give me credit for such things. I don’t think that kind of superiority worth anything—anything!” she goes on scornfully. “I don’t think that money and position and all that sort of thing makes people really happy!” “Everyone in Town thinks you mean to make the experiment, anyhow!” he replies. “But you didn’t. Surely you didn’t, Carl! You know I don’t care for Lord Delaval—and that I love you!” she whispers, les larmes au voix. He looks down at her sweet downcast “Zai! do you really love me so very much?” He asks the question from sheer selfishness and a desire for incense to his overweening vanity. He knows he has sought this opportunity to tell her something which will break her heart. But no—hearts are tough things, and do not break easily. But something which will surely wreck her implicit child-like faith in the fidelity and sincerity of all men. Never after to-night will Zai Beranger perhaps feel that loving words and honest words are twins. Rather Now she believes in Carlton Conway with her whole soul. And when he asks: “Zai! do you really love me so very much?” She lets both white arms form a circle for his neck, and woos him to touch her red lips. For one moment she forgets her maidenly reserve, and only remembers that in her own eyes she is his wife—in heart, if not in name. “Oh Carl! Carl! let us marry at once—dear! and then no one can come between us two!” “We cannot!” he says hastily. Zai starts as if she were shot, and covers her face with her two little hands, while a burning blush surges over it. It comes to her suddenly, the terrible, terrible shame, of her having asked—of his rejection—and then the colour leaves her cheek. She leans against the balustrade, with the moonlight falling on a face white as undriven snow. Her eyes have a dumb misery in their depths, and her mouth quivers like a child’s. “Oh Zai! forgive me if I hurt you by saying we cannot marry!” he whispers brokenly, for her white face and trembling lips move him strangely, worldling as he is. “You know very well how I am placed! I have nothing but my salary, and that is dependent on health; and if I don’t marry some girl with money, I don’t know what will become of me, Zai!” A deep silence ensues for a minute or two. Up above the glorious moon sails These two are alone, entirely alone, on this isolated balcony, and they have for many months played at making love. Listen then in what passionate words Belgravians and worldlings say farewell, if farewell must be said by them. We all know that Romeo and Juliet would not have said it, but they were foolish inconsequent young people, who fortunately did not live to test the agreeabilities of a narrow income. “Then I suppose you are going to marry Miss Meredyth?” Zai asks in a low voice, that has a hardness in it which no one has heard before. “Zai! can you blame me? Can you think it possible for me to act otherwise?” “No! I don’t blame you!” and again bitterness mars the sweet voice. “Of course you cannot blame me!” he answers, “for you know you are forbidden fruit, Zai. You have been reared in certain social conditions, which of course it would be sheer wickedness on my part to ask you to resign!” This is a very different sentiment to what he has expressed before; and even she, much as she loves him, feels indignant. There is a sudden flash in her grey eyes as she lifts them to his. “You know that you ought not to say this, Carl! It is not my interests you are thinking of, but you have made up your mind not to marry anyone who has no money!” “Granted!” he replies quietly, though a crimson flush dyes his face, and he bites his lip hard. “But though you seem to reproach me, you know why it is so! You know that people in your world cannot subsist on sentiment, or on a few paltry hundreds a year. I am, I avow, one of those miserable devils to whom the bitter irony of fate has given the tastes and habits of a gentleman, without the means of supporting them. You are the corresponding woman. Common sense—the commonest sense—will tell you whether or not it would be sheer madness for us two to marry, although we love each other so passionately, Zai!” Zai does not answer. There cannot be the least doubt, she knows, but that common sense does tell her that marriage with her would not suit Carl Conway; but it is none And Zai, born and bred in Belgravia, is as desperately and honestly in love with this man, who has played fast and loose with her, as a milk-maid could be. She longs—how she longs—for just one crumb of comfort, just one little word of sweetness from his lips. Only a quarter of an hour ago he held her to him and kissed her with apparently the old, old passion in his soul, and now he stands a little apart, calm and cold as a statue. Conway is a wonderfully handsome man, and Zai worships his beauty. The more “Yes, I know all that,” she says very wearily, with a dreadfully heart-sick feeling of disappointment, “it was hardly worth while you telling me. I have heard papa and mamma, and Gabrielle, and all the others talk of ‘common sense,’ but one grows tired sometimes of hearing the same thing.” The tone of her voice tells more than her words; there is a betraying quiver in it that makes him turn quickly and look at her. The eyes that meet his own have great glittering tears in them. Never in her life has Zai looked more lovely or more lovable “Forgive me for having repeated anything then that wearies you,” he says softly, clasping her cold white hand in his own, and Zai lets him. Even now—even now! in spite of his falsity—his avariciousness—the touch of his hand thrills her through and through, and her white lissom fingers linger in his grasp. “Zai, my darling! you must feel that it is as hard—much more hard indeed—for me to utter than for you to hear. Good Heavens! do you imagine I am thinking of myself? (For a moment, perhaps, he really fancies he is not.) It is of you, my dearest, that I think. How can I be so cruel—so selfish as to ask you to give up for me everything that you have been taught all your life to consider worth possessing? But if you Brave words these are and bravely spoken, with not a single falter in the tone—not a sign of what they cost, but a swift pallor sweeping across his face. Let us do this worldling credit—let us confess that it is very well done for a man to whom nothing could be more ruinous than to be taken at his word. But frankly, Carlton Conway has not reckoned without his host. It is a curious rather than an absurd sense of honour that forces him to risk this declaration; but he knows the girl beside him too well not to be almost certain of her reply. The event justifies the expectation. Zai loves him to distraction, and the loss of Carl’s handsome captivating face tempts her—the most genuine love that a woman can feel tempts her to keep him at any cost. But it is only for a moment she wavers. She knows that Mammon and Cupid have run a race in Carl’s heart and that the former has beat by several lengths. Young, ignorant of guile, and innocent, a sort of instinct teaches her this. “It is impossible!” she falters, with the sharp thrill in her soul echoing in her voice. “You are perfectly right, Carl, in all you have said, and I—I know it as well as you do. I have been reared under certain conditions and for certain ends, and Another dead pause. Madam Diana sails along more brilliantly than before, this time with an enormous court of glittering stars around her. The cool night air passes quietly by, lifting up the chesnut tendrils of hair that stray on to Zai’s “And you will of course let Lady Beranger persuade you into marrying Delaval?” he asks, jealously—angrily. Like the dog in the manger, he does not want the girl himself but he grudges her to another man. Jealousy is a passion that is often wonderfully independent of the passion of true love. Carl is very loth indeed that Lord Delaval, whom he has always hated, shall have this lovely piece of nature’s handiwork for his. “I don’t know,” Zai murmurs wearily. Then she calls up all the high spirit she “But you care nothing for him, Zai! You care for me!” he exclaims passionately, with almost a mind to claim her sooner than she should pass out of his life in this manner. “I know—and yet—— ” “And yet you may become Countess of Delaval?” “I may.” Upon this Carl releases her hand pettishly and subsides into silence. He is not of a nature to ponder deeply on social or any other kind of evils, but just now the sordidness of this strikes him very forcibly, and he wonders how such girls as the Berangers hold themselves even a “Zai, tell me the honest truth. Do you care for Delaval the least bit in the world?” he asks earnestly, longing for her to deny the existence of any liking for his rival, to protest the enormous height and depth and width of her love for himself. “Not yet—but,” Zai adds slowly and meditatively, “if I marry him I shall do my best to care for him, and even if I didn’t—what of it? Do people in our world deem it necessary to care for the man or the woman whom they marry?” And Carl Conway cannot honestly affirm that they do. |