Beyond the Rocks

To see her surrounded by others--who were men and would desire her,

too--drove him mad.

Josiah was difficult enough to bear. The thought that he was her

husband, and had the rights of this position, always turned him sick

with raging disgust; but that was the law, and a law accepted since the

beginning of time. These others were not of the law--they were the same

as himself--and would all try to win her.

He had no fear of their succeeding, but, to watch them trying, and he

himself unable to prevent them, was a thought he could not tolerate.

He had no settled plan. He did not deliberately say to himself: "I will

possess her at all costs. I will be her lover, and take her by force

from the bonds of this world." His whole mind was in a ferment and

chaos. There was no time to think of the position in cold blood. His

passion hurried him on from hour to hour.

This day after the opera, when the hideous impossibility of the

situation had come upon him with full force, he felt as Lancelot--

"His mood was often like a fiend, and rose and

drove him into wastes and solitudes for agony,

Who was yet a living soul."

There are all sorts of loves in life, but when it is the real great

passion, nor fear of hell nor hope of heaven can stem the tide--for

long!

He had gone out in his automobile, and was racing ahead considerably

above the speed limit. He felt he must do something. Had it been winter

and hunting-time, he would have taken any fences--any risks. He returned

and got to Ranelagh, and played a game of polo as hard as he could, and

then he felt a little calmer. The idea came to him as it had done to

Anne. Lady Harrowfield was Florence Devlyn's cousin; she would probably

have squeezed an invitation for her protégées for the royal ball

to-night. He would go--he must see Theodora. He must hold her in his

arms, if only in the mazes of the waltz.

And the thought of that sent the blood whirling madly once more in his

veins.

Everything he had looked upon so lightly up to now had taken a new

significance in reference to Theodora. Florence Devlyn, for instance,

was no fit companion for her--Florence Devlyn, whom he met at every

decent house and had never before disapproved of, except as a bore and a

sycophant.