Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1887 | Page 3

not Liberty, but Myrtle Hazard.
It was too nearly like the story of the ancient sculptor: his own work
was an over-match for its artist. Clement had made a mistake in
supposing that by giving his dream a material form he should drive it
from the possession of his mind. The image in which he had fixed his
recollection of its original served only to keep her living presence
before him. He thought of her as she clasped her arms around him, and
they were swallowed up in the rushing waters, coming so near to
passing into the unknown world together. He thought of her as he
stretched her lifeless form upon the bank, and looked for one brief
moment on her unsunned loveliness,--"a sight to dream of, not to tell."
He thought of her as his last fleeting glimpse had shown her, beautiful,
not with the blossomy prettiness that passes away with the spring
sunshine, but with a rich vitality of which noble outlines and winning
expression were only the natural accidents. And that singular
impression which the sight of him had produced upon her,--how
strange! How could she but have listened to him,--to him, who was, as
it were, a second creator to her, for he had brought her back from the
gates of the unseen realm,--if he had recalled to her the dread moments
they had passed in each other's arms, with death, not love, in all their
thoughts. And if then he had told her how her image had remained with
him, how it had colored all his visions, and mingled with all his
conceptions, would not those dark eyes have melted as they were

turned upon him? Nay, how could he keep the thought away, that she
would not have been insensible to his passion, if he could have suffered
its flame to kindle in his heart? Did it not seem as if Death had spared
them for Love, and that Love should lead them together through life's
long journey to the gates of Death?
Never! never! never! Their fates were fixed. For him, poor insect as he
was, a solitary flight by day, and a return at evening to his wingless
mate! For her--he thought he saw her doom.
Could he give her up to the cold embraces of that passionless egotist,
who, as he perceived plainly enough, was casting his shining net all
around her? Clement read Murray Bradshaw correctly. He could not
perhaps have spread his character out in set words, as we must do for
him, for it takes a long apprenticeship to learn to describe analytically
what we know as soon as we see it; but he felt in his inner
consciousness all that we must tell for him. Fascinating, agreeable,
artful, knowing, capable of winning a woman infinitely above himself,
incapable of understanding her,--O, if he could but touch him with the
angel's spear, and bid him take his true shape before her whom he was
gradually enveloping in the silken meshes of his subtle web! He would
make a place for her in the world,--O yes, doubtless. He would be
proud of her in company, would dress her handsomely, and show her
off in the best lights. But from the very hour that he felt his power over
her firmly established, he would begin to remodel her after his own
worldly pattern. He would dismantle her of her womanly ideals, and
give her in their place his table of market-values. He would teach her to
submit her sensibilities to her selfish interest, and her tastes to the
fashion of the moment, no matter which world or half-world it came
from. "As the husband is, the wife is,"--he would subdue her to what he
worked in.
All this Clement saw, as in apocalyptic vision, stored up for the wife of
Murray Bradshaw, if he read him rightly, as he felt sure he did, from
the few times he had seen him. He would be rich by and by, very
probably. He looked like one of those young men who are sharp and
hard enough to come to fortune. Then she would have to take her place

in the great social exhibition where the gilded cages are daily opened
that the animals may be seen, feeding on the sight of stereotyped toilets
and the sound of impoverished tattle. O misery of semi-provincial
fashionable life, where wealth is at its wit's end to avoid being tired of
an existence which has all the labor of keeping up appearances, without
the piquant profligacy which saves it at least from being utterly vapid!
How many fashionable women at the end of a long season would be
ready to welcome heaven itself as a relief from the desperate monotony
of dressing, dawdling, and driving!
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