The Great Amulet | Page 2

man's deepest feelings were concerned: and now, as he stood battling
with his impatience to be gone, he was suffering acute discomfiture
from the demonstrative leave-taking in progress between Maurice and
his sister. For their sakes, at least, he would fain have effaced himself:
while they, as a matter of fact, were momentarily oblivious 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.

"Voilà, 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