One Day | Page 2

in a seclusion he had long
sought and had finally managed to secure, behind a hedge of hawthorn
where none but lovers, and men and women troubled as he was
troubled, cared to conceal themselves.

The letter, long-expected and dreaded, had finally crossed the continent
to his hand. It was only the written confirmation of the sentence Fate
had pronounced upon him, even as it had pronounced similar sentences
upon princes and potentates since the beginning of thrones and
kingdoms.
While the Prince--or Paul Zalenska, as I will now call him--sat in his
brooding brown study, clutching the imperial letter tightly in his young
hand, his attention was arrested by the sound of voices on the other side
of the hawthorn hedge.
He listened idly, at first, to what seemed to be a one-sided conversation,
in a dull, emotionless feminine voice--a discourse on fashion, society
chit-chat, and hopeless nonentities, interspersed with bits of gossip.
Could women never talk about anything else? he thought impatiently.
But his displeasure did not seem to affect the course of things at all.
The voice, completely unconscious of the aversion it aroused in the
invisible listener, continued its dreary, expressionless monotone.
"What makes you so silent, Opal? You haven't said a word to-day that
you didn't absolutely have to say. If all American girls are as dreamy as
you, I wonder why our English lords are so irresistibly attracted across
the water when in search of brides!"
And then the Boy on the other side of the hedge felt his sluggish pulse
quicken, and almost started to his feet, impelled by a sudden thrill of
delight; for another voice had spoken--a voice of such infinite charm
and sweetness and vitality, yet with languorous suggestion of emotional
heights and depths, that he felt a vague sense of disappointment when
the magnetic notes finally died away.
"Brides?" the voice echoed, with a lilt of girlish laughter running
through the words. "You mean 'bribes,' don't you? For I assure you,
dear cousin, it is the metallic clink of American gold, and nothing else,
that lures your great men over the sea. As for my silence, ma belle, I
have been uncommunicative because there really seemed nothing at all
worth saying. I can't accustom myself to small-talk--I can't even listen

to it patiently. I always feel a wild impulse to fly far, far away, where I
can close my ears to it all and listen to my own thoughts. I'm sorry if I
disappoint you, Alice--I seem to disappoint everybody that I would like
to please--but I assure you, laugh at my dreams as you may, to me my
dream-life is far more attractive and beautiful than what you term Life.
Forgive me if I hurt you, cousin. I'm peculiarly constituted, perhaps,
but I don't like this twaddle, and I can't help it! Everything in England
is so beautiful, and yet its society seems so--so hopelessly
unsatisfactory to one who longs to _live!_"
"To live, Opal? We are not dead, surely! What do you mean by life?"
And so her name was Opal! How curiously the name suited the voice!
The Boy, as he listened, felt that no other name could possibly have
matched that voice--the opal, that glorious gem in which all the fires of
the sun, the iridescent glories of the rainbow, and the cold brilliance of
ice and frost and snow seemed to blend and crystallize. All this, and
more, was in that mysteriously fascinating voice.
"To live, Alice?" echoed the voice again. "To live? Why, to live is to
_feel!_--to feel every emotion of which the human soul is capable, to
rise to the heights of love, and knowledge, and power; to sink--if need
be--to the deepest depths of despair, but, at all costs, at all hazards, to
_live!_--to experience in one's own nature all the reality and fullness of
the deathless emotions of life!"
The voice sank almost to the softness of a whisper, yet even then was
vibrant, alive, intense.
"Ah, Alice, from my childhood up, I have dreamed of life and longed
for it. What life really is, each must decide for himself, must he not?
Some, they say, sleep their way through a dreamless existence, and
never, never wake to realities. Alice, I have sometimes wondered if that
was to be my fate, have wondered and wondered until I have cried out
in real terror at the hideous prospect! Surely Fate could not be so cruel
as to implant such a desperate desire in a soul that never was to know
its fulfilment. Could it, Alice? Tell me, could it?"

The Boy held his breath now.
Who was this girl, anyhow, who seemed to express his own thoughts as
accurately as he himself could have done? He was bored no longer. He
was roused,