The Great Amulet | Page 2

of his existence.
Artists both, of no mean quality, they had lived and worked together for five years, since the day when Michael had rented his first modest studio in the King's Road, Chelsea: and, setting aside Art, his feeling for Quita was the one serious element in a nature light and variable as a summer cloud. From his French mother he derived an elastic spirit that yielded itself to the emotion of the passing moment; and Lenox, watching him, marvelled at the sharp dividing-lines drawn between the different races of earth.
He half resented such facility of self-expression. Possibly he envied it: though no doubt he would have denied the impeachment with an oath.
Eventually it occurred to Maurice that he could not well stand in the roadway till sunset, taking leave of the sister he was so loth to lose, and, with a sigh of exasperation, he pushed her gently towards her husband.
"Voil��, cherie, . . . enough of my endless adieux, or ce bon Lenox may be tempted to break the sixth commandment on my account, in addition to the eighth."
Lenox smiled tolerantly down from six feet of height upon his slim, fair brother-in-law.
"That temptation should be your own prerogative, my dear fellow, since I am taking her from you for good."
Maurice laughed.
"Mon Dieu, yes. You have certainly given me a fair excuse to hate you. And I have wondered more than once, in the last three months, why one could not manage it."
"Too fatiguing for a man of your calibre!" the other answered with good-humoured bluntness. "You could never be bothered to keep it up."
"Ah, mon ami, you men who speak little speak to the point! You are altogether too discerning. But for Quita's sake, at least, we could never be otherwise than firm friends. With all my heart I wish good fortune to you both, and count the days to your return."
The two men shook hands cordially: and Lenox, beckoning the muleteer, lifted his wife into the saddle; thus averting a final demonstration. She waved her hand to a blurred vision of her brother, smiling resolutely, till his back was turned: and he departed townward;--a lonely brown figure, to which a slight stoop of the shoulders lent an added air of pathos.
Quita sat looking after him, her stillness belying the clash of emotions at her heart.
That vanishing figure on the sunlit road stood for all that she knew and loved best in the world: for Art, independence, good comradeship: for the happy, irresponsible, hand-to-mouth life of Bohemia: for the Past, dear and familiar, as a well-loved voice: while the quiet man at her side,--whose mere presence suggested latent force, and gave her a sense of protection wholly new to her,--stood for the Future; the undiscovered country, peopled with possibilities, dark and bright. And Quita Lenox, being blest, or curst, with the insight and detached spirit of the artist, saw clearly that the Great Experiment held, for her, a large element of hazard; that she had staked her all upon a turn of the wheel, with what resulting Time alone could show.
Her husband's hand on her arm brought reflection abruptly to an end.
"He is almost out of sight now," Lenox said quietly. "And I think it's time we made a start. Will you come?"
She turned to him at once, with a smile whose April quality heightened its charm.
"Of course I will; and gladly. Don't think me horrid, Eldred. I have always been frank with you, haven't I? And . . . it is a wrench leaving Michael to live and work alone."
"I quite understand that: and I value your devotion to him for selfish reasons. It proves what you may be capable of feeling . . . for me, one of these days."
The mingled dignity and humility of his tone so moved her that her only answer was an impulsive pressure of the hand resting on her arm: and they went forward for a long while without further speech, the muleteer having set off for the summit by a series of short cuts known to his kind.
Before long massed pines were above and below them; their jagged stems and branches sharply imprinted on stretches of sunlit glacier, and on the pathway in mottled patches of shadow.
Eldred Lenox walked close to his wife, one hand resting on the crupper behind her. The man's intensity of feeling did not rise readily to the surface; and a certain proud sensitiveness, the cardinal weakness of big natures, withheld him from the full expression of an emotion to which she could not adequately respond. He was content to wait, and hope; and in the meanwhile, he walked at her side wrapt in the mere joy of possession; one of the strongest, yet least recognised passions of a man's heart. From time to time he