"But I've learned a good deal since those days, I fancy. There's the sun, and the wind, and the open road, you know—and other things as well. It's been a sort of key to music and poetry and things like that, in a way; there's a meaning in things now that was missing before. I suppose' it's just that one has to go down into the very depths before one can really see things in the daylight. It either makes one or mars one—I understand that now."
"And you—just didn't let go," said Zella, instinctively falling into his own phraseology. "I can't tell you how splendid I think it. Do you remember those lines:
'"I thank whatever gods there be
For my unconquerable soul'?"
"I know," sard Stephen briefly; "I mean, I know the quotation. Of course one held on, and somehow it was the only thing to do. And it's over now. One doesn't suffer like that twice. I sometimes wonder if she ever knew one-tenth of what I suffered, or of how much I cared; but of course she didn't." He laughed. "So that's that."
"Do you mean you don't care for her any longer?"
"Not in the same sort of way. You see, it was never her real self that I loved—only my own ideal that I called by her name. She wasn't capable of being all that the woman of my imagination was. But I don't suppose I shall ever care for anyone else in that way. One's as one's made, and I'm somehow the sort that doesn't forget or change, I fancy."
'I know. So am I," said Zella firmly, furious that a pang of mortification should shoot through her.
"There's a thing I've applied to myself, in a way—I don't know if you know it," said Stephen, still absorbed in retrospect. "Lawrence Hope wrote it:
"' This passion is but an ember
Of a sun, of a fire long set.
I could not live and remember,
And so I love and forget. . . .'"
There was a silence, differing in quality from any of those which had preceded it. Stephen's voice had faltered on the last line of his quotation, as though it had occurred to him that the selection was hardly a happy one.
Not that it applies, you know," he remarked lamely; "but you understand what I mean. If you care for Lawrence Hope, I want you to let me give you a volume I have. It's one I care about a good deal."
"I should love it," said Zella softly and deliberately.
Voices on the terrace sounded above them.
"Here are the others, to tell us it is time to go and dress for dinner."
Stephen rose, squaring his broad shoulders.
"That's it. One may be in hell—or heaven—and the gong rings, and one—dresses for dinner."
He laughed a little.
"It's life, isn't it?" said Zella, shrugging her shoulders.
She rose, obliged to look up at him even when she was poised on the steps of the terrace.
"Have I bored you?" he asked softly.
"You know," answered Zella very low and rapidly, and then sprang up the steps to meet the advancing forms of James Lloyd-Evans and his inconspicuous friend, whose perfectly ordinary one-syllabled name no one could ever succeed in remembering.
"Lloyd-Evans, if you tell me that the dressing gong has sounded ten minutes ago, and that we're going to be late, I shall take you out in the punt to-morrow and drown you!" cried Stephen, forestalling with some presence of mind any possible allusion to the length of time during which he had monopolized his hostess.
"It would be a case of the pot calling the kettle black, wouldn't it?" said James coolly.
"Very happily put. Miss de Kervoyou, I trust you have no objection to having the title of 'kettle ' thrust upon you?"
But Zella fled up the last flight of steps with a laughing gesture of dismay, crying that she should be late.
There was a pause, and after a suitable interval Stephen said carelessly, "Well, so long," and strolled towards the house.
"Good-looking beggar," said the friend, with simple envy in his tones.
"That man," said James instructively, "is the best walking dictionary of catchwords, cant phrases, and stock sentiments, that I've ever come across. It's all derivative—his whole ego. It's like a mirror lying on a table; it can't help reflecting all the things within range, on to its own perfectly hard, flat surface. Pick it up and smash it, and there's nothing left of the reflections, and nothing behind."
"Rather a good simile."
"It's got him all right," said James, with calm assurance.
XXVII
WITH the singular and unabashed fatuity of the adult Latin, Alison's friend St. Algers suggested that one evening they should all appear at dinner in fancy dress.
Alison might shrug her shoulders, but the idea appealed irresistibly to Zella's vanity, and St. Algers contrived to enlist Stéphanie de Kervoyou's sympathy.
"There are costumes in plenty in one of the attics," she smilingly observed. "In the old days here, charades were played frequently."
Mrs. Lloyd-Evans looked at her with sorrowful repression over a silk tie she was knitting.
"One would not like to awaken memories that would grieve poor Louis," she said in a low voice. "Dear Esmée used to be very fond of dressing up, I know, and I dare say some of the old stage costumes are still carefully put away in camphor, just as I left them myself when I went through her things afterwards."
"But perfect!" exclaimed the Comte de St. Algers, with what Mrs. Lloyd-Evans disgustedly, and not altogether unjustly, qualified in her own mind as a foreign caper. "Delightful! To have an assortment from which to select—what amusement! And what joy for an artist's eye! Miss St. Oraye as Iphigenia, for example! Perfect! The very type—majestic, tragic. Or Lucrezia Borgia—her hands are Italian. . . ."
He lost himself in a mental review of the characters fitted to Miss St. Craye.
"What of my niece as a Dresden china shepherdess?" asked Stéphanie de Kervoyou, amused. He bowed politely.
"Exquisite indeed! Or as a Juliet or Marguerite, or the painted figure on a Watteau fan come to life." "And yourself, Comte?"
"Oh, I!" he shrugged himself away with a Frenchman's ineffable gesture of dismissal. "Pierrot—Pantaloon— what you will."
"It is much more difficult to find a good fancy dress for a man than for a woman," firmly enunciated Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, feeling that the conversation had ignored her quite long enough. "They are so much less easily suited."
"But why?" demanded St. Algers, suddenly skipping round and facing her. "There are as many masculine types as feminine. Your son, for instance—the
