whatever she finds now in life it will not be peace. You understand me? Not even in a convent.”
“She was supremely lovable,” said the wounded man, speaking of her as if she were lying dead already on his oppressed heart.
“And elusive,” struck in Mills in a low voice. “Some of them are like that. She will never change. Amid all the shames and shadows of that life there will always lie the ray of her perfect honesty. I don’t know about your honesty, but yours will be the easier lot. You will always have your . . . other love—you pig-headed enthusiast of the sea.”
“Then let me go to it,” cried the enthusiast. “Let me go to it.”
He went to it as soon as he had strength enough to feel the crushing weight of his loss (or his gain) fully, and discovered that he could bear it without flinching. After this discovery he was fit to face anything. He tells his correspondent that if he had been more romantic he would never have looked at any other woman. But on the contrary. No face worthy of attention escaped him. He looked at them all; and each reminded him of Dona Rita, either by some profound resemblance or by the startling force of contrast.
The faithful austerity of the sea protected him from the rumours that fly on the tongues of men. He never heard of her. Even the echoes of the sale of the great Allegre collection failed to reach him. And that event must have made noise enough in the world. But he never heard. He does not know. Then, years later, he was deprived even of the arrow. It was lost to him in a stormy catastrophe; and he confesses that next day he stood on a rocky, wind-assaulted shore, looking at the seas raging over the very spot of his loss and thought that it was well. It was not a thing that one could leave behind one for strange hands—for the cold eyes of ignorance. Like the old King of Thule with the gold goblet of his mistress he would have had to cast it into the sea, before he died. He says he smiled at the romantic notion. But what else could he have done with it?
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