Beyond the Rocks

But Theodora had not this view of honeymoons. To her a honeymoon meant a

nightmare, now happily a thing of the past, and almost forgotten.

"Do not speak of it," she said, and she put out her hands as if to ward

off an ugly sight, and Hector bent over the table and touched her

fingers gently as he said: "Forgive me," and he raged within himself. How could he have been so

gauche, so clumsy and unlike himself. He had punished them both, and

destroyed an illusion. He meant that she should picture herself and him

as married lovers, and she had only seen--Josiah Brown. They both fell

into silence and so finished their repast.

"I want you to walk now," Hector said, "through some delicious allées

where I will show you Enceladus after he was struck by the

thunders of Zeus. You will like him, I think, and there is fine

greensward around him where we can sit awhile."

"I was always sorry for him," said Theodora; "and oh, how I would like

to go to Sicily and see Ætna and his fiery breath coming forth, and to

know when the island quakes it is the poor giant turning his weary

side!"

To go to Sicily--and with her! The picture conjured up in Hector's

imagination made him thrill again.

Then he told her about it all, he charmed her fancy and excited her

imagination, and by the time they came to their goal the feeling of jar

had departed, and the dangerous sense of attraction--of nearness--had

returned.

It was nearly seven o'clock, and here among the trees all was in a soft

gloom of evening light.

"Is not this still and far away?" he said, as they sat on an old stone

bench. "I often stay the whole morning here when I spend a week at

Versailles."

"How peaceful and beautiful! Oh, I would like a week here, too!" and

Theodora sighed.

"You must not sigh, beautiful princess," he implored, "on this our happy

day."

The slender lines of her figure seemed all drooping. She reminded him

more than ever of the fragment of Psyche in the Naples Museum.

"No, I must not sigh," she said. "But it seems suddenly to have grown

sad--the air--what does it mean? Tell me, you who know so many things?"

There was a pathos in her voice like a child in distress.

It communicated itself to him, it touched some chords in his nature

hitherto silent. His whole being rushed out to her in tenderness.