Dr Heidenhoffs Process | Page 6

with so
fine and delicate an atmosphere of unspoken devotion that words of
flattery sounded almost gross.
They paused before a gate. Pushing it open and passing within, she said,
"Good-night."
"One word more. I have a favour to ask," he said. "May I take you to

the picnic?"
"Why, I think no escort will be necessary," she replied; "we go in broad
daylight; and there are no bears or Indians at Hemlock Hollow."
"But your basket. You'll need somebody to carry your basket."
"Oh yes, to be sure, my basket," she exclaimed, with an ironical accent.
"It will weigh at least two pounds, and I couldn't possibly carry it
myself, of course. By all means come, and much obliged for your
thoughtfulness."
But as she turned to go in she gave him a glance which had just enough
sweetness in it to neutralize the irony of her words. In the treatment of
her lovers, Madeline always punctured the skin before applying a drop
of sweetness, and perhaps this accounted for the potent effect it had to
inflame the blood, compared with more profuse but superficial
applications of less sharp-tongued maidens.
Henry waited until the graceful figure had a moment revealed its
charming outline against the lamp-lit interior, as she half turned to
close the door. Love has occasional metaphysical turns, and it was an
odd feeling that came over him as he walked away, being nothing less
than a rush of thankfulness and self-congratulation that he was not
Madeline. For, if he had been she, he would have lost the ecstasy of
loving her, of worshipping her. Ah, how much she lost, how much all
those lose, who, fated to be the incarnations of beauty, goodness, and
grace, are precluded from being their own worshippers! Well, it was a
consolation that she didn't know it, that she actually thought that, with
her little coquetries and exactions, she was enjoying the chief usufruct
of her beauty. God make up to the haughty, wilful darling in some
other way for missing the passing sweetness of the thrall she held her
lovers in!
When Burr reached home, he found his sister Laura standing at the gate
in a patch of moonlight.
"How pretty you look to-night!" he said, pinching her round cheek.

The young lady merely shrugged her shoulders, and replied dryly--
"So she let you go home with her."
"How do you know that?" he asked, laughing at her shrewd guess.
"Because you're so sweet, you goosey, of course."
But, in truth, any such mode of accounting for Henry's favourable
comment on her appearance was quite unnecessary. Laura, with her
petite, plump figure, sloe-black eyes, quick in moving, curly head, and
dark, clear cheeks, carnation-tinted, would have been thought by many
quite as charming a specimen of American girlhood as the stately pale
brunette who swayed her brother's affections.
"Come for a walk, chicken! It is much too pretty a night to go indoors,"
he said.
"Yes, and furnish ears for Madeline's praises, with a few more reflected
compliments for pay, perhaps," she replied, contemptuously. "Besides,"
she added, "I must go into the house and keep father company. I only
came out to cool off after baking the cake. You'd better come in too.
These moonlight nights always make him specially sad, you know."
The brother and sister had been left motherless not long before, and
Laura, in trying to fill her mother's place in the household, so far as she
might, was always looking out that her father should have as little
opportunity as possible to brood alone over his companionless
condition.

CHAPTER II.
That same night toward morning Henry suddenly awoke from a sound
sleep. Drowsiness, by some strange influence, had been completely
banished from his eyes, and in its stead he became sensible of a
profound depression of spirits. Physically, he was entirely comfortable,
nor could he trace to any sensation from without either this sudden

awakening or the mental condition in which he found himself. It was
not that he thought of anything in particular that was gloomy or
discouraging, but that all the ends and aims, not only of his own
individual life, but of life in general, had assumed an aspect so empty,
vain, and colourless, that he felt he would not rise from his bed for
anything existence had to offer. He recalled his usual frame of mind, in
which these things seemed attractive, with a dull wonderment that so
baseless a delusion should be so strong and so general. He wondered if
it were possible that it should ever again come over him.
The cold, grey light of earliest morning, that light which is rather the
fading of night than the coming of day, filled the room with a faint hue,
more cheerless than pitchiest