you choose – you deliberately choose – to give up your hopes of heaven for me, as I gave up mine for you?"
"I decline," I said, "to give up my hope of heaven on any terms. Tell me what I must do, that you and I may make our heaven here – as now, my dear love."
"I will tell you to-morrow," she said. "Be alone here to-morrow night – twelve is ghost's time, isn't it? – and then I will come out of the picture and never go back to it. I shall live with you, and die, and be buried, and there will be an end of me. But we shall live first, my heart's heart."
I laid my head on her knee. A strange drowsiness overcame me. Holding her hand against my cheek, I lost consciousness. When I awoke the grey November dawn was glimmering, ghost-like, through the uncurtained window. My head was pillowed on my arm, which rested – I raised my head quickly – ah! not on my lady's knee, but on the needle-worked cushion of the straight-backed chair. I sprang to my feet. I was stiff with cold, and dazed with dreams, but I turned my eyes on the picture. There she sat, my lady, my dear love. I held out my arms, but the passionate cry I would have uttered died on my lips. She had said twelve o'clock. Her lightest word was my law. So I only stood in front of the picture and gazed into those grey-green eyes till tears of passionate happiness filled my own.
"Oh, my dear, my dear, how shall I pass the hours till I hold you again?"
No thought, then, of my whole life's completion and consummation being a dream.
I staggered up to my room, fell across my bed, and slept heavily and dreamlessly. When I awoke it was high noon. Mildred and her mother were coming to lunch.
I remembered, at one shock, Mildred's coming and her existence.
Now, indeed, the dream began.
With a penetrating sense of the futility of any action apart from her, I gave the necessary orders for the reception of my guests. When Mildred and her mother came I received them with cordiality; but my genial phrases all seemed to be some one else's. My voice sounded like an echo; my heart was other where.
Still, the situation was not intolerable until the hour when afternoon tea was served in the drawing-room. Mildred and her mother kept the conversational pot boiling with a profusion of genteel commonplaces, and I bore it, as one can bear mild purgatories when one is in sight of heaven. I looked up at my sweetheart in the ebony frame, and I felt that anything that might happen, any irresponsible imbecility, any bathos of boredom, was nothing, if, after it all, she came to me again.
And yet, when Mildred, too, looked at the portrait, and said, "What a fine lady! One of your flames, Mr. Devigne?" I had a sickening sense of impotent irritation, which became absolute torture when Mildred – how could I ever have admired that chocolate-box barmaid style of prettiness? – threw herself into the high-backed chair, covering the needlework with her ridiculous flounces, and added, "Silence gives consent! Who is it, Mr. Devigne? Tell us all about her: I am sure she has a story."
Poor little Mildred, sitting there smiling, serene in her confidence that her every word charmed me – sitting there with her rather pinched waist, her rather tight boots, her rather vulgar voice – sitting in the chair where my dear lady had sat when she told me her story! I could not bear it.
"Don't sit there," I said; "it's not comfortable!"
But the girl would not be warned. With a laugh that set every nerve in my body vibrating with annoyance, she said, "Oh, dear! mustn't I even sit in the same chair as your black-velvet woman?"
I looked at the chair in the picture. It was the same; and in her chair Mildred was sitting. Then a horrible sense of the reality of Mildred came upon me. Was all this a reality after all? But for fortunate chance might Mildred have occupied, not only her chair, but her place in my life? I rose.
"I hope you won't think me very rude," I said; "but I am obliged to go out."
I forget what appointment I alleged. The lie came readily enough.
I faced Mildred's pouts with the hope that she and her mother would not wait dinner for me. I fled. In another minute I was safe, alone, under the chill, cloudy autumn sky – free to think, think, think of my dear lady.
I walked for hours along streets and squares; I lived over again and again every look, word, and hand-touch – every kiss; I was completely, unspeakably happy.
Mildred was utterly forgotten: my lady of the ebony frame filled my heart and soul and spirit.
As I heard eleven boom through the fog, I turned, and went home.
When I got to my street, I found a crowd surging through it, a strong red light filling the air.
A house was on fire. Mine.
I elbowed my way through the crowd.
The picture of my lady – that, at least, I could save!
As I sprang up the steps, I saw, as in a dream – yes, all this was really dream-like – I saw Mildred leaning out of the first-floor window, wringing her hands.
"Come back, sir," cried a fireman; "we'll get the young lady out right enough."
But my lady? I went on up the stairs, cracking, smoking, and as hot as hell, to the room where her picture was. Strange to say, I only felt that the picture was a thing we should like to look on through the long glad wedded life that was to be ours. I never thought of it as being one with her.
As I reached the first floor I felt arms round my neck. The smoke was too thick for me to distinguish features.
"Save me!" a voice whispered. I clasped a figure in my arms, and, with a strange dis-ease, bore it down the shaking stairs and out into safety. It was Mildred. I knew that directly I clasped her.
"Stand back," cried the crowd.
"Every one's safe," cried a fireman.
The flames leaped from every window. The sky grew redder and redder. I sprang from the hands that would have held me. I leaped up the steps. I crawled up the stairs. Suddenly the whole horror of the situation came on me. "As long as my picture remains in the ebony frame." What if picture and frame perished together?
I fought with the fire, and with my own choking inability to fight with it. I pushed on. I must save my picture. I reached the drawing-room.
As I sprang in I saw my lady – I swear it – through the smoke and the flames, hold out her arms to me – to me – who came too late to save her, and to save my own life's joy. I never saw her again.
Before I could reach her, or cry out to her, I felt the floor yield beneath my feet, and I fell into the fiery hell below.
How did they save me? What does that matter? They saved me somehow – curse them. Every stick of my aunt's furniture was destroyed. My friends pointed out that, as the furniture was heavily insured, the carelessness of a nightly-studious housemaid had done me no harm.
No harm!
That was how I won and lost my only love.
I deny, with all my soul in the denial, that it was a dream. There are no such dreams. Dreams of longing and pain there are in plenty, but dreams of complete, of unspeakable happiness – ah, no – it is the rest of life that is the dream.
But if I think that, why have I married Mildred,
