East of the Shadows

She put her empty cup on a table beside her, and folding her hands behind her head leaned back in her chair as thought after thought came crowding into her mind.

Her surroundings affected her--the ancient house with its atmosphere of the past--of people dead and gone--of joy and sorrow ever blending in lives lived out for good or ill. The weapons on the walls--the faded banners, relics of warfare, now hanging limp and tattered beneath the weight of years in this hall of peace--the peace of an English home. Home! The word had held no meaning for her of late. While her father had been alive, home to her had been with him, but even then it had no abiding-place; and since then, the charming apartment in Paris or the villa at Cannes with all their comfort and luxury seemed but to mock the word.

"No," she mused, "home for me should be England."

England and home, surely synonymous terms. And then, suddenly, a feeling of intense loneliness broke over her like a wave. She felt like a bit of driftwood, cast up upon a summer shore where flowers and verdure smiled on every side and all was peace; but at the next tide, once more the waters would engulf her and drag her back to the sparkling, restless ocean. She smiled to herself at the foolish simile even as she thought of it. It was absurd to compare the gay life to which she had been accustomed to an engulfing ocean; but never mind, for once she would give her thoughts a free rein and be honest with herself, and acknowledge that the life she had lived was utterly unsatisfying to her.

Was it merely the boredom of a blasée woman? Surely it was something deeper than that which she felt. Now, to state her case fairly--to balance the pros and cons--what had she to complain of? Was it reasonless discontent? She hoped not. Why, she had all, or nearly all that counts as the world reckons for happiness--youth, looks, intelligence to enjoy, money--surely a goodly array of pros; and also entire freedom to please herself and arrange her own comings and goings. Ah! she wasn't sure that this last item in the tale of her possessions did not go far to invalidate the rest. And yet only this morning she had rejoiced in her freedom, and now she had discovered, or thought she had, that here was the very root of her discontent. She did not want this boasted freedom now that she had got it, for, put into plain words, it meant that no one, not one human being, really minded whether she came or went, no one claimed the service she would so willingly have rendered to any one in a position to demand it.