An Ambitious Man

She had been playing for perhaps an hour, when a sudden exhaustion

seized upon her, and her hands fell nerveless and inert upon her lap;

she dropped her chin upon her breast and closed her eyes. She was

drunken with her own music.

When she opened them again a few moments later, they fell upon the

face of Arthur Stuart, who stood a few feet distant regarding her

with haggard eyes. Unexpected and strange as his presence was, Joy

felt neither surprise nor wonder. She had been thinking of him so

intensely, he had been so interwoven with the music she had been

playing, that his bodily presence appeared to her as a natural

result. He was the first to speak; and when he spoke she noticed

that his voice sounded hoarse and broken, and that his face was drawn

and pale.

"I came to Beryngford this morning expressly to see you, Joy," he

said. "I have many things to say to you. I went to your residence

and was told by the maid that I would find you here. I followed, as

you see. We have had many meetings in church edifices, in organ

lofts. It seems natural to find you in such a place, but I fear it

will be unnatural and unfitting to say to you here, what I came to

say. Shall we return to your home?"

His eyes shone strangely from dusky caverns, and there were deep

lines about his mouth.

"He, too, has suffered," thought Joy; "I have not borne it all

alone." Then she said aloud: "We are quite undisturbed here; I know of nothing I could listen to

in my room which I could not hear you say in this place. Go on."

He looked at her silently for a moment, his cheeks pale, his breast

heaving. Before he came to Beryngford, he had fought his battle

between religion and human passion, and passion had won. He had cast

under his feet every principle and tradition in which he had been

reared, and resolved to live alone henceforth for the love and

companionship of one human being, could he obtain her consent to go

with him.

Yet for the moment, he hesitated to speak the words he had resolved

to utter, under the roof of a house of God, so strong were the

influences of his early training and his habits of thought. But as

his eyes feasted upon the face before him, his hesitation vanished,

and he leaned toward her and spoke. "Joy," he said, "three years ago

I went away and left you in sorrow, alone, because I was afraid to

brave public opinion, afraid to displease my mother and ask you to be

my wife. The story your mother told me of your birth, a story she

left in manuscript for you to read, made a social coward of me. I

was afraid to take a girl born out of wedlock to be my life

companion, the mother of my children. Well, I married a girl born in

wedlock; and where is my companion?" He paused and laughed

recklessly. Then he went on hurriedly: "She is in an asylum for the

insane. I am chained to a corpse for life. I had not enough moral

courage three-years ago to make you my wife. But I have moral

courage enough now to come here and ask you to go with me to

Australia, and begin a new life together. My mother died a year ago.

I donned the surplice at her bidding. I will abandon it at the

bidding of Love. I sinned against heaven in marrying a woman I did

not love. I am willing to sin against the laws of man by living with

the woman I do love; will you go with me, Joy?" There was silence

save for the beating of the rain against the stained window, and the

wailing of the wind.