Blind Love

Not many English tourists go out of their way to visit Louvain, even

though it has a Hotel de Ville surpassing even that of Brussels itself,

and though one can get there in an hour from that city of youth and

pleasure. And there are no English residents at all in the place--at

least, none in evidence, though perhaps there may be some who have gone

there for the same reasons which led Mr. William Linville and his wife

to choose this spot--in order to be private and secluded. There are

many more people than we know of who desire, above all things,

seclusion and retirement, and dread nothing so much as a chance meeting

with an old friend.

Mr. William Linville took a small house, furnished, like the cottage at

Passy, and, also like that little villa, standing in its own garden.

Here, with a cook and a maid, Iris set up her modest menage. To ask

whether she was happy would be absurd. At no time since her marriage

had she been happy; to live under the condition of perpetual

concealment is not in itself likely to make a woman any the happier.

Fortunately she had no time to experience the full bitterness of the

plan proposed by her husband.

Consider. Had their scheme actually been carried out quite

successfully, this pair, still young, would have found themselves

condemned to transportation for life. That was the first thing. Next,

they could never make any friends among their own countrymen or

countrywomen for fear of discovery. Iris could never again speak to an

English lady. If they had children the risk would appear ten times more

terrible, the consequences ten times more awful. The children

themselves would have to grow up without family and without friends.

The husband, cut off from intercourse with other men, would be thrown

back upon himself. Husband and wife, with this horrible load laid upon

them, would inevitably grow to loathe and hate the sight of each other.

The man would almost certainly take to drink: the woman--but we must

not follow this line any further. The situation lasted only so long as

to give the wife a glimpse of what it might become in the future.

They took their house, and sat down in it. They were very silent. Lord

Harry, his great coup successfully carried so far, sat taciturn and

glum. He stayed indoors all day, only venturing out after dark. For a

man whose whole idea of life was motion, society, and action, this

promised ill.

The monotony was first broken by the arrival of Hugh's letter, which

was sent in with other documents from Passy. Iris read it; she read it

again, trying to understand exactly what it meant. Then she tore it up.

"If he only knew," she said, "he would not have taken the trouble even

to write this letter. There is no answer, Hugh. There can be none--now.

Act by your advice? Henceforth, I must act by order. I am a

conspirator."