  Margaret stood before the cheval-glass in Lydia’s gown, smiling at the quaint reflection. It showed a figure with slim, pointed waist between billowy paniers, flounced with Spanish frill after the fashion of a decade before. The neck was square-cut and the tight sleeves reached to the elbow, ending in a fall of lace. It was not unbecoming to her. Her brown eyes had borrowed from the pearl tint a misty violet and the springing growth of her hair had taken on the shade of wet broom-straw. A faint glow rose in her cheeks as she surveyed her own stirring image. She clasped the close necklace of pearls about her throat. Poor Lydia! Something as fair she must have looked in that old time so rudely ended! Poor Melwin! Melwin stood leaning against the polished rosewood sideboard, his unseeing gaze fixed on a glass-prismed candelabra of antique workmanship, whose pendants vibrated ceaselessly. His lifted stare, which went beyond, suddenly caught and fastened itself upon her in a look of startled fascination. His lean fingers gripped the edge of the wood and he stiffened all over like a wild animal couched to spring. His shrunken features were marked with a convulsion of fearful anguish. Margaret shrank back dismayed at the lambent fire that had leaped into his colorless eyes. “Why, Melwin!” she gasped, “what is the matter?” The table was between them, but she could see that he was shaking. His eyes turned from her to the opposite wall, then back again. Her gaze followed his and rested upon a splendid full-length portrait. She knew at once that it was Lydia. But she saw in that one instant more than this; she saw her own face, radiant, sparkling, the same lightened, straw-tinted hair, the same shadowy violet eyes, the same gown, pearl gray, quaintly cut, that had faced her in the depths of the cheval-glass. “Melwin, don’t you know me? Why, it’s I—Margaret!” His lips lifted from his teeth. Even through the strained agony of his face, she could have imagined him about to laugh. It seemed a minute before his voice came, and when it did it “How dare you? How dare you come to me like that? Do you think a man is a stone? Do you think he has no feeling, that you can torture him like this? Do you think he never remembers or suffers? Is there nothing in his past that’s too sacred to lay hands upon?” “It was Lydia, Melwin,” cried Margaret, her fingers wandering stumblingly along the low neck of the gown; “she asked me to do it. She thought it would please you. She thought it would remind you of the way she used to look.” “She told you?” A softer expression came to his face. The hard lines fell away; the weary ghost of an unborn smile hovered on his lips, trembling and pathetic. “Don’t care! Please, please don’t look so! I didn’t think! I will go away at once and take the dress off.” He laid his arms upon the back of a chair and “I am so sorry!” Margaret breathed, warm gushes of pity sweeping over her. “You could never guess how sorry I am!” “I suppose,” he said more calmly, “that I have been a puzzle to you. You were too young to know me when I lived. I am only half alive now. Life has gone by and left me stranded. Look at that picture, child. That was Lydia—the Lydia of the best years of my life—the Lydia that I loved and won and married! Twelve years! How long ago it seems!” Margaret had seated herself opposite him and leaned forward, her bare elbows on the table and “You will know what that is some time—to feel one nearer than all the world—to tremble when her arm presses yours, to listen for the swish of her skirt, to turn hot and cold at the smell of her hair or the touch of her lips! She was beautiful—more beautiful to me than any woman I had ever seen, or ever shall see. She filled every corner of me! Life was complete. It had nothing left to give me. Can you think what that means? You know what happened then. It came crashing in upon my youth like a falling tower. Since then the years have gone by, but they stopped for me that day.” An intenser look was in Margaret’s eyes. “But you have Lydia—you love her!” He breathed sharply. “Have her!” he repeated. “I have her mind, her soul, the intellect that answered mine, the soul that leaned to my soul, but her—her—the body I held, the woman “I suppose people pity me and think how hard it was that Lydia’s accident couldn’t have happened before we were married instead of afterward. Fools! Fools! As though that would make it different! If it must have been, I wouldn’t have it otherwise. Not to possess wholly the woman one loves is the cruelty of Love; the pain of knowing that no other love can possess you is the mercy of Love. Such misery is dearer than all other joys. She is mine, and with every breath that I curse Fate with I thank God for her!” “Isn’t that happiness?” He laughed, a short, jarring, mirthless laugh that hurt her. “Do you think,” he said, “that Margaret felt as if she were being wafted through some intangible inferno of suffering. She felt smothered, as by the dust of some dead thing into whose open grave she had unwittingly stumbled. The real Melwin that she had waked terrified her. The glimpse through the torn mask, into the distorted face, with its marks of branding, shook the depths of her nature. She had always thought of Melwin abstractly, as of a beautiful personality, crowned with spiritual stars and haloed with pain; now she saw him as That was a meal which Margaret never afterward remembered without a recoil. A chilling self-consciousness had fallen upon her and clogged her tongue. Melwin ate hastily and almost fiercely, saying nothing, and once half rising, it seemed in utter forgetfulness of her presence, and then sitting down again. She excused herself before the coffee and slipped away, running hastily up the stair to her room, her feet catching in the unaccustomed tightness of the old-fashioned skirt. As she turned the key in the lock, she fancied She pushed open the heavy blinds and leaned across the window ledge, questioning. Melwin was a man—but Lydia? Had she also this inner buried side, which in him had been shocked into betrayal? Were men and women alike? Were their longings and cravings the same? Was there something in the one which felt and answered the every need of the other? Was spiritual attraction forever dependent for its completion upon physical love? The thought came to her that in the long years Melwin had become less himself; that his brooding mind had perhaps lost Her spiritual side reached out groping hands for comfort and sustenance. Drawing down the window, she turned into the room. A ponderous Bible in huge blocked leathern covers lay on the low table, its antiquated silver clasps winking in the light from the pronged candlestick. With a sudden impulse, she threw it open, leaning forward, her fingers nervously ruffling its edges. This was the soul-comforter of the ages. It must help her.
The musty chronicle meant nothing. She turned again, parting the leaves near to the end.
She almost laughed at the banality of her haphazard choice. She knew the pages full of condemnation for the unworthy thought. Now they mocked her. Impatiently she opened the huge volume wide in the middle. A new and intense eagerness illumed her face as her eyes rested on the page:
She looked up startled, her breath struggling in her breast; a deep, vivid blush spread over her face and neck, glowing crimson against the whiteness of her apparel. The room seemed suddenly dense with a dank, spicy smell of roses mixed with salty wind. It spread from the pages of the book and hung wreathing about her till the air was filled with fiery flowers. She felt herself burning hot, as if a flame were scorching her flesh. In the emptiness of the room, she caught her hands to her cheeks shamedly, lest the world could see that |
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