CHAPTER XXXIX.

THE REALIZATION OF IDEALS.

She stood motionless for a few moments, then went up-stairs. As she crossed the hall she saw that the front-door was open, but she was too listless to close it. She went to her boudoir and sank into a chair. In the next room was a bottle of potassium cyanide which she had brought up from the butler’s pantry. It had been purchased to scour John Suydam’s silver, which had the rust of generations on it. She would get it in a few moments. She had a fancy to review her life before she ended it. All those years before the last two—had they ever really existed? Had there been a time when life had been before her? when circumstances had not combined to push her steadily to her destruction? No temptations had come to the plain, unattractive girl in the little Brooklyn flat. Though every desire had been ungratified, still her life had been unspoiled, and she had possessed a realm in which she had found perfect joy. Was it possible that she and that girl were the same? She was twenty years older and her life was over; that girl’s had not then begun. If she could be back in that past for a few moments! If, for a little time, she could blot out the present before she went into the future! She lifted her head. In a drawer of her wardrobe was an old brown-serge dress. She had kept it to look at occasionally, and with it assure, and reassure, herself that the present was not a dream. She had a fancy to look for a moment as she had looked in those days when all things were yet to be.

She went into her bedroom and took out the dress. It was worn at the seams and dowdy of cut. She put it on. She dipped her hair into a basin of water, wrung it out, and twisted it in a tight knot at the back of her head, leaving her forehead bare. Then she went back to the boudoir and looked at herself in the glass. Yes, she was almost the same. The gown did not meet, but it hung about her in clumsy folds; the water made her hair lifeless and dull; and her skin was gray. Only her eyes were not those of a girl who had never looked upon the realities of life. Yes, she could easily be ugly again; but with ugliness would not come two years’ annihilation.

She threw herself into a chair, and, covering her eyes with her hand, cried a little. To the hopes, the ambitions, the dreams, the longings, which had been her faithful companions throughout her life, she owed those tears. She would shed none for her mistakes. She dropped her hand and let her head fall back with a little sigh of content. At least there was one solution for all misery, and nothing could take it from her. Death was so easy to find; it dwelt in a little bottle in the next room. In an hour she would be beyond the reach of memories. What mattered this little hour of pain? There was an eternity of forgetfulness beyond. Another hour, and she would be like a bubble that had burst on the surface of a lake. Then an ugly thought flashed into her brain, and she pressed her hands against her eyes. Suppose there were a spiritual existence and she should meet Cryder in it! Suppose he were waiting for her at the threshold, and with malignant glee should link her to him for all eternity! His egoism would demand just such revenge for her failure to love him!

She sprang to her feet. With difficulty she kept from screaming aloud. Was she mad?

Then the fear left her eyes and her face relaxed. If the soul were immortal, and if each soul had its mate, hers was Quintard, and Cryder could not claim her. She felt a sudden fierce desire to meet Cryder again and pour out upon him the scorn and hatred which for the moment forced love from her heart.

She dropped her hands to her sides and gazed at the floor for a while, forgetting Cryder. Then she walked toward her bedroom. As she reached the pillars she stopped and pressed her handkerchief to her mouth with a shudder of distaste. Cyanide of potassium was bitter, she had heard. She had always hated bitter things—quinine and camphor and barks; her mother used to give her a horrible tea when she was a child. * * * The taste seemed to come into her mouth and warp it. * * *

She flung her handkerchief to the floor with an impatient gesture and went into the next room.

A moment later she raised her head and listened. Then she drew a long, shuddering breath. Some one was springing up the stairs.

She thrust her hands into her hair and ruffled it about her face; it was half dry, and the gold glinted through the damp.

Quintard threw open the door of the boudoir and was at her side in an instant. His face was white and his lips were blue, but the fierceness was gone from his eyes.

“You were going to kill yourself,” he said.

“Yes,” she replied, “I shall kill myself.”

“I knew it! Sit down and listen to me.”

He pushed her on to a divan and sat in front of her.

“I find by my watch that it is but an hour since I left you,” he went on. “I had thought the world had rolled out of its teens. For most of that hour I was mad. Then came back that terrible hunger of heart and soul, a moment of awful, prophetic solitude. Let your past go. I cannot live without you.”

Hermia bent her body until her forehead touched her knees. “I cannot,” she said; “I never could forget, nor could you.”

“I _would_ forget, and so will you. I will make you forget.”

She shook her head. “Life—nothing would ever be the same to me; nor to you—now that I have told you.”

He hesitated a moment. “You did right to tell me,” he said, “for your soul’s peace. And I—I love you the better for what you have suffered. And, my God! think of life without you! Let it go; we will make our past out of our future.”

He sat down beside her and took her in his arms, then drew her across his lap and laid her head against his shoulder.

“We are the creatures of opportunity, of circumstance,” he said; “we must bow to the Doctrine of the Inevitable. Inexorable circumstance waited too long to rivet our links; that is all. Circumstance is rarely kind save to the commonplace, for it is only the commonplace who never make mistakes. But no circumstance shall stand between us now. I love you, and you are mine.”

He drew her arms about his neck and kissed her softly on her eyes, her face, her mouth.

“You have suffered,” he whispered, “but let it be over and forgotten. Poor girl! how fate all your life has stranded you in the desert, and how you have beaten your wings against the ground and fought to get out. Come to me and forget—forget—”

She tightened her arm about his neck and pressed his face against her shoulder. Then she took the cork from the phial hidden in her sleeve. With a sudden instinct Quintard threw back his head, and the movement knocked the phial from her hand. It fell to the floor and broke.

For a moment he looked at her without speaking. Under the reproach in his eyes her lids fell.

He spoke at last. “Have you not thought of me once, Hermia? Are you so utterly absorbed in yourself, in your desire to bury your misery in oblivion, that you have not a thought left for my suffering, for my loneliness, and for my remorse? Do you suppose I could ever forget that you killed yourself for me? You are afraid to live; you can find no courage to carry through life the gnawing at your soul. You have pictured every horror of such an existence. And yet, by your own act, you willingly abandon one whom you profess to love, to a life full of the torments which you so terribly and elaborately comprehend.”

Hermia lay still a moment, then slipped from his arms and rose to her feet. For a few moments she walked slowly up and down the room, then stood before him. The mask of her face was the same, but through it a new spirit shone. It was the supreme moment of Hermia’s life. She might not again touch the depths of her old selfishness, but as surely would she never a second time brush her wings against the peaks of self’s emancipation.

“You are right,” she said; “I had not thought of you. I have sulked in the lap of my own egoism all my life. That a human soul might get outside of itself has never occurred to me—until now. I will live and rejoice in my own abnegation, for the sacrifice will give me something the better to offer you. I have suffered, and I shall suffer as long as I live—but I believe you will be the happier for it.”

He stood up and grasped her hands. “Hermia!” he exclaimed beneath his breath, “Hermia, promise it! Promise me that you will live, that you will never kill yourself. There might be wild moments of remorse—promise.”

“I promise,” she said.

“Ah! you are true to yourself at last.” Suddenly he shook from head to foot, and leaned heavily against her.

She put her arms about him. “What is the matter?” she asked through white lips.

“There is a trouble of the heart,” he murmured unsteadily, “it is not dangerous. The tension has been very strong to-night—but—to-morrow”—and then he fell to the floor.

She was beside him still when Miss Starbruck entered the room. The old lady’s eyes were angry and defiant, and her mouth was set in a hard line. For the first time in her life she was not afraid of Hermia.

“I heard his voice some time ago,” she said, hoarsely, “and at first I did not dare face you and come in. But you are my dead sister’s child, and I will do my duty by you. You shall not disgrace your mother’s blood—why is he lying there like that?”

Hermia rose and confronted her, and involuntarily Miss Starbruck lowered her eyes.

“He is dead,” said Hermia, “and I——have promised to live.”

THE END.

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=Transcriber’s Notes:=

Spellings and hyphenation have been retained as in the original. Punctuation has been corrected without note.