Rosa Mundi | Page 7

there. They strewed her path with
roses. They almost worshipped her. She tried to think she was happy,
but she was not--even then. They came around her in crowds. They
made love to her. She was young, and their homage was like a coloured
ball to her. She tossed it to and fro, and played with it. But she made
game of it all. They were nothing to her--nothing, till one day there
came to her a boy--no, he was past his boyhood--a young man--rich,
well-born, and honourable. And he--he loved her, and offered
her--marriage. No one had ever offered her that before. Can you
realize--but no, you are a man!--what it meant to her? It meant shelter
and peace and freedom. It meant honour and kindness, and the chance
to be good. Perhaps you think she would not care for that. But you do
not know her. Rosa Mundi was meant to be good. She hungered for

goodness. She was tired--so tired of the gaudy vanities of life,
so--so--what is the word--so nauseated with the cheap and the bad. Are
you sorry for her, I wonder? Can you picture her, longing--oh,
longing--for what she calls respectability? And then--this chance, this
offer of deliverance! It meant giving up her career, of course. It meant
changing her whole life. It meant sacrifice--the sort of sacrifice that you
ought to be able to understand--for she loved her dancing and her
triumphs, just as you love your public--the people who read your books
and love you for their sake. That is different, isn't it, from the people
who follow you about and want to stare at you just because you are
prosperous and popular? The people who really appreciate your
art--those are the people you would not disappoint for all the world.
They make up a vast friendship that is very precious, and it would be a
sacrifice--a big--sacrifice--to give it up. That is the sort of sacrifice that
marriage meant to Rosa Mundi. And though she wanted marriage--and
she wanted to be good--she hesitated."
There was a little pause. Randal Courteney was no longer dissembling
his interest. He had laid his pipe aside, and was watching with
unvarying intentness the downcast childish face. He asked no questions.
There was something in the low-spoken words that held him silent.
Perhaps he feared to probe too deep.
In a few moments she went on, gathering up a little handful of the
shining shingle, and slowly sifting it through her fingers as though in
search of something precious.
"I think if she had really loved the man, it wouldn't have mattered.
Nothing counts like love, does it? But--you see--she didn't. She wanted
to. She knew that he was clean and honourable, worthy of a good
woman. He loved her, too, loved her so that he was willing to put away
all her past. For she did not deceive him about that. He was willing to
give her all--all she wanted. But she did not love him. She honoured
him, and she felt for a time at least that love might come. He guessed
that, and he did his best--all that he could think of--to get her to consent.
In the end--in the end"--Rosemary paused, a tiny stone in her hand that
shone like polished crystal--"she was very near to the verge of yielding,

the young man had almost won, when--when something happened that
altered--everything. The young man had a friend, a writer, a great man
even then; he is greater now. The friend came, and he threw his whole
weight into the scale against her. She felt him--the force of him--before
she so much as saw him. She had broken with her lover some time
before. She was free. And she determined to marry the young man who
loved her--in spite of his friend. That very day it happened. The young
man sent her a book written by his friend. She had begun to hate the
writer, but out of curiosity she opened it and read. First a bit here, then
a bit there, and at last she sat down and read it--all through."
The little shining crystal lay alone in the soft pink palm. Rosemary
dwelt upon it, faintly smiling.
"She read far into the night," she said, speaking almost dreamily, as if
recounting a vision conjured up in the glittering surface of the stone. "It
was a free night for her. And she read on and on and on. The book
gripped her; it fascinated her. It was--a great book. It was
called--Remembrance." She drew a quick breath and went on somewhat
hurriedly. "It moved her in a fashion that perhaps you would hardly
realize. I have read it, and I--understand. The writing was wonderful. It
brought home to her--vividly, oh, vividly--how the past may