The Great Amulet | Page 4

incomprehensible to a mere man. "It prevents a
headlong fall into the commonplace: and there is a certain excitement
in looking on, so to speak, at one's own personal drama, without feeling
quite sure of its developments."
Lenox knitted his brows. He could not always keep pace with her more
fantastic moods.
"Quita, are you talking nonsense?" he asked with a touch of irritation.
"No."
"Well, I wish you were. I don't like that sort of attitude towards serious
things; and I don't understand what you mean about looking on at one's
own life. It sounds brutally detached, not to say egotistical."
"That is because you only climb mountains and handle men, mon cher,
instead of trying to paint them, or translate them into verse. You are
spared the artist's complication of a dual personality; of two souls
imprisoned in one body; the one who enjoys, and loves, and suffers;
and the one who looks on, and picks every emotion to pieces. I am
afraid the one you disapprove of has had the upper hand in me so far.
Perhaps it is your mission to develop the other into a healthier state of
activity."
"I hope to Heaven it may be," her husband answered fervently. "The
present state of things strikes me as a trifle inhuman."
"But indeed I am not inhuman! Only . . . we have still a good deal to
learn about one another, Eldred, although we are man and wife. You
confess to an amazing ignorance of women; while my own varied

experience of men has lain chiefly among 'the sayers of words'; and one
can hardly class you under that heading!"
"Good Lord, no! I should hope not."
Quita threw up her head and laughed outright.
"Really, Eldred, you are delightful!"
"Glad to hear it," Lenox replied, a shade of sarcasm in his tone. "It's the
first time I have been accused of such a thing."
He quickened his pace; and she, divining a slight jar in the atmosphere,
said no more. The supreme art in human intercourse is the art of
punctuation, and in the long pause that ensued, silence accomplished
her perfect work.
Higher up they emerged on an open space of roadway, where the pines
came abruptly to an end; and the path shelved sheer from its broken
railing to the Visp Valley below. Instinctively Quita drew rein and
drank in every detail of the vision before her with the wordless
satisfaction that is the hall-mark of the true Nature-worshipper. Lenox
stood quietly at her side, his gaze riveted on her face. He had seen
many mountains, giants among their kind; but never till now had he
beheld the glory of them reflected in a woman's eyes. At that moment
they seemed the only sentient things in a world of rock, and snow, and
sunshine. It was as if the round earth, and the pillars thereof, had been
made for them, and them alone.
Above the road a weather-beaten hut struck an isolated note of life, and
across the valley Matterhorn towered,--solitary, superb,--his rugged
head and shoulders thrust heavenward through a diaphanous scarf of
cloud. Suddenly Quita Lenox fronted her husband, and his face
softened to a smile that hovered in the eyes an appreciable time before
it reached his lips.
"À la bonheur!" she said, smiling back at him. "We will break our
journey here. You can tether 'Modestina' to that stump. I must do a

rough sketch of this, and put in notes for colouring, while you sit beside
me and smoke, and talk. When it's complete, I'll present it to you as a
memento of to-day. Will that suit you?"
"Rather!"
He lifted her from the saddle, in defiance of her laughing protest, and,
holding her at arm's length, looked long and steadily into her eyes, as
though he would reach and capture, by force of will, the elusive spirit
that lived in their depths.
It was in these rare moments of revelation that Quita was troubled by a
disconcerting sense of exchanging false coin for gold. She tried to free
herself from his grasp; and the colour deepened in her cheeks.
"Eldred,--let me go!" she said, with something less than her wonted
assurance. "It frightens me when you look right into me like that."
"Frightens you? Dearest, . . . what nonsense!" But for once he
disregarded her behest.
"It's not nonsense. It makes me see too clearly the chained-up forces
hidden under that surface quietness of yours. I think you might be
rather terrible if they ever broke loose."
He laughed abruptly, and let her go.
"I keep them chained up, I promise you: and they are never likely to do
you any harm. Now, begin upon your picture, and don't alarm yourself
about nothing."
She watched him thoughtfully