Athalie

For a little while she sat on the big lounge, her dreamy eyes fixed on

the spot where Clive's father had stood and she remembered Jacques

Renouf, too, and the lost city of Yhdunez.... And, somehow her

memories receded still further toward earlier years; and she thought

of the sunny office where Mr. Wahlbaum used to sit; and she seemed to

see the curtains stirring in the wind.

After a while she rose and walked slowly along the hall to her own

room.

Everything was there as she had left it; the toilet silver, evidently

kept clean and bright by Michael, the little Dresden cupids on the

mantel, the dainty clock, still running--further confirmation of

Michael's ministrations--the fresh linen on the bed. Nothing had been

changed through all these changing years. She softly opened the

clothes-press door; there hung her gowns--silent witnesses of her

youth, strangely and daintily grotesque in fashion. One by one she

examined them, a smile edging her lips, and, in her eyes, tears.

All revery is tinged with melancholy; and it was so with her when she

stood among the forgotten gowns of years ago.

It was so, too, when, one by one she unlocked and opened the drawers

of dresser and bureau. From soft, ordered heaps of silk and lace and

sheerest linen a faint perfume mounted; and it was as though she

subtly renewed an exquisite and secret intimacy with a youth and

innocence half-forgotten in the sadder wisdom of later days.

* * * * *

From the still and scented twilight of a vanished year, to her own

apartment perched high above the sun-smitten city she went, merely to

find herself again, and look around upon what fortune had brought to

her through her own endeavour.

But, somehow, the old prejudices had gone; the old instincts of pride

and independence had been obliterated, merged in a serene and tranquil

unity of mind and will and spirit with the man in whom every atom of

her belief and faith was now centred.

It mattered no longer to her what material portion of her possessions

and environment was due to her own efforts, or to his. Nothing that

might be called hers could remain conceivable as hers unless he shared

it. Their rights in each other included everything temporal and

spiritual; everything of mind and matter alike. Of what consequence,

then, might be the origin of possessions that could not exist for her

unless possession were mutual?

Nothing would be real to her, nothing of value, unless so marked by

his interest and his approval. And now she knew that even the world

itself must become but a shadow, were he not living to make it real.