“THIS life—good as it can be—is horribly difficult and complicated. I feel as though I were walking in the dark, just stumbling along and groping my way—there seems to be no light to guide me—you are so far away, and there is ever that wall between us,—no higher than before, but quite as impenetrable—I wonder,—I wonder,—I wonder what the future will bring to you,—to me.”

“I think of you up there, among the soft white clouds, watching the sun setting into the sea, while the great blue hills are melting through twilight into night. Oh! there’s nothing like that beauty here,—in the West,—and I am sick for the East and all her hot, passionate loveliness; all her colour and light; all her breadth and grandeur; for her magnificent storms and life,—life on a big scale. Here everything is so small, so petty, so trivial. I want,—I want,—I want,—that’s how I feel; I am lovesick and heartsick and sick for the sun. Well, this life is nearly done, and in the next I shall at least be worshipped.”

That is well, and if you are worshipped you should not say “at least.” What more can you want? Especially since, having all other things and lacking worship, you would have nothing. They were not meant for this application, but these old Monkish lines are worth remembering:—

I hardly like to suggest it, but are you afraid of the “worship,” of its quality, or its lasting properties? Or, assured on these points, do you think worship alone will prove unsatisfying? I wonder.

It is an attractive subject, and women disagree as to how it should be treated. The fact is, that they are seldom able to generalise; they do not take any great interest in generalities, and the answer to an impersonal question must have a personal application before it can be given. And not that alone, for where, as in this case, and, indeed, all those of greatest human interest, another person, a special person, is concerned, then the answer depends largely on that other person as well. You can, perhaps, in your own mind, think of some one or more from whom you would rather have a little worship, than become an object of lifelong adoration to many others who have seemed anxious to offer it. And that is not because their all was less than the little of those with a larger capacity for the worship of human beings, nor even because their appreciation of your personal worth is in any degree limited, or smaller by comparison with that of others. Probably it is exactly the reverse. But I will ask you, of your sweetness and light, to give me knowledge. Would you rather have the absolute, unsought worship of a man, or would you win, perchance even from his unwillingness, a devotion that, if it was not thrown at you, was probably, when gained, not likely to burn itself out in a blaze of ardent protestations? You will, of course, say that it depends on the attitude assumed by the man, and I reply that it does not, because the same man would never be found ready to render his service in either of these—well—disguises, if you will. It would be in one or in the other. Therefore my question will admit of the personal application, and you can go through your acquaintances, admirers, friends (I dare not say the other word), and tell me whether you would be most attracted by the man who fell at your feet and worshipped, giving of his ample store without effort and without stint, or by the man who, if he were a woman, would be called difficile. This problem will give you no trouble if, as I said before, you can work it out as a personal equation, and it is therefore only necessary that you should have amongst your friends two men of the required types.

In return for your anticipated answer, I will give you this. There are many men who pay their court to women, if not all in one breath, or at one sitting, at least the phase is limited by a definite period. That period is usually shorter or longer in the inverse ratio of the violence of the attack. The operations result in a decisive action, where the man is either worsted or victorious. If he gains his end, and persuades the lady to take him for whatever he is worth, the ordinary type of Englishman will very often consider that his obligation towards her as an idolater, a lover,—whatever name you call the part by,—is over when the curtain comes down on the procession to the altar or to the office of the Registrar, or, at any rate, when the honeymoon has set and the duty-moon rises to wax and wane for evermore. That is the man to avoid; and if the womanly instinct, which is so useful and so little understanded of men (until they learn to fear its unerring accuracy), is only called upon in time, it will not mislead its owner.

You know all this, you will say; very likely, but it is extraordinary how many thousands of women, especially English women, there are who are now eating out their hearts, because they neglected either to ask this question of their instincts or disregarded the answer. Probably it is very seldom asked; for a girl is hardly likely to suppose that, after feeding her on love for a few weeks, or months, the man will starve her of the one thing needful, until death does at last part them. He says he has not time for love-making, and he acts as though he had not the inclination either, though probably, somewhere in his system he keeps the forces that once stirred him to expressions of affection that now seem as needless as it would be to ask his servants for permission to eat the dinner which he has paid for, and which he can take or neglect, praise or find fault with, at his own will and pleasure.

That is a very long homily, but it has grown out of the point of the pen, possibly because I am sitting here alone, “up in the soft white clouds,” as you say, or rather in the softer moonlight; and some of the littlenesses of life loom large, but not over-large, considering their bearing on the lifelong happiness, or misery, of men and women.

Yes, I am sitting exactly where you imagined. It was on that sofa that you used to lie in the evenings, when you were too feeble to sit up, and I read to you out of a book of knowledge. But that was years and years ago, and now you wonder. Well, I too wonder, and—there, it has just struck 1 A.M.—I will wonder no more, but look out at the surpassing loveliness of this white night, and then—rest.

It is so strange, I have come back to tell you. The soft white clouds are actually there—motionless—they cover everything, sea and plain and valley, everything but the loftiest ridges of this mountain. The moon rides high, turning to silver the tops of the great billowy clouds, while it shines full on this house and garden, casting deep shadows from the fern-trees across the gravel, and, from the eaves and pillars of the house, across the verandah. The air is perfectly still now, though, some hours ago, it was blowing a gale and the wind wailed as though mourning its own lost soul.

It seemed then, as it tore round the corner of the house, to be crying, “I come from the rice swamps which have no dividing banks, from the waters which contain no fish, where the apes cry by night and the baboons drink as they hang from the boughs; a place where the chinchÎli resorts to bathe, and where man’s food is the kemahang fern.” Some day I will tell you more about that place.

And the spirits of the storm that have passed and left this death-like stillness, where are they now? They went seaward, westward, to you-ward, but they will never reach you, and you will not hear their message.