Beyond the Rocks

It was now several years since he had been in love even slightly. His

position, his appearance, his personal charm, had all combined to spoil

a nature capable of great things. Life had always been too smooth. His

mother adored him. He had an ample fortune. Every marriageable girl in

his world almost had been flung at his head. Women of all classes with

one consent had done their best to turn him into a coxcomb and a beast.

But he continued to be a man for all that, and went his own way; only as

no one can remain stationary, the crust of selfishness and cynicism was

perhaps thickening with years, and his soul was growing hidden still

deeper beneath it all. From the beginning something in Theodora had

spoken to the best in him. He was conscious of feelings of

dissatisfaction with himself when he left her, of disgust with the days

of unmeaning aims.

He had begun out of idle admiration; he had continued from inclination;

but to-night it was plus fort que lui, and he knew he was in love.

The habit of indulging any emotion which gave him pleasure was still

strong upon him; it was not yet he would begin to analyze where this

passion might lead him--might lead them both.

It was too deliciously sweet to sit there and whisper to her sophistries

and reasonings, to take her sensitive fancy into new worlds, to play

upon her feelings--those feelings which he realized were as fine and as

full of tone as the sounds which could be drawn from a Stradivarius

violin.

It was a night of new worlds for them both, for if Theodora had never

looked into any world at all, he also had never even imagined one which

could be so quite divine as this--this shared with her in the moonlight,

with the magic of the Tzigane music and the soft spring night.

He had just sufficient mastery over himself left not to overstep the

bounds of respectful and deep interest in her. He did not speak a word

of love. There was no actual sentence which Theodora felt obliged to

resent--and yet through it all was the subtle insinuation that they were

more than friends--or would be more than friends.

And when it was all over, and Theodora's pulses were calmer as she lay

alone on her pillow, she had a sudden thrill of fear. But she put it

aside--it was not her nature to think herself the object of passions. "I

would be a very silly woman to flatter myself so," she said to herself,

and then she went to sleep.