The Return of the Soul | Page 7

my pulses almost ceased to beat. I would have avoided her; an
instinct within me seemed suddenly to cry out against her. But it was
too late: the introduction was effected; her hand rested on my arm.
I was actually trembling. She did not appear to notice it. The band
played a valse, and the inexplicable horror that had seized me lost itself
in the gay music. It never returned until lately.
I seldom enjoyed a valse more. Our steps suited so perfectly, and her
obvious childish pleasure communicated itself to me. The spirit of
youth in her knocked on my rather jaded heart, and I opened to it. That
was beautiful and strange. I talked with her, and I felt myself younger,
ingenuous rather than cynical, inclined even to a radiant, though foolish,
optimism. She was very natural, very imperfect in worldly education,
full of fragmentary but decisive views on life, quite unabashed in
giving them forth, quite inconsiderate in summoning my adherence to
them.
And then, presently, as we sat in a dim corridor under a rosy hanging

lamp, in saying something she looked, with her great blue eyes, right
into my face. Some very faint recollection awoke and stirred in my
mind.
"Surely," I said hesitatingly--"surely I have seen you before? It seems
to me that I remember your eyes."
As I spoke I was thinking hard, chasing the vagrant recollection that
eluded me.
She smiled.
"You don't remember my face?"
"No, not at all."
"Nor I yours. If we had seen each other, surely we should recollect it."
Then she blushed, suddenly realizing that her words implied, perhaps,
more than she had meant. I did not pay the obvious compliment. Those
blue eyes and something in their expression moved me strangely; but I
could not tell why. When I said good-bye to her that night, I asked to
be allowed to call.
She assented.
That was the beginning of a very beautiful courtship, which gave a
colour to life, a music to existence, a meaning to every slightest
sensation.
And was it love that laid to sleep recollection, that sang a lullaby to
awakening horror, and strewed poppies over it till it sighed itself into
slumber? Was it love that drowned my mind in deep and charmed
waters, binding the strange powers that every mind possesses in
flowery garlands stronger than any fetters of iron? Was it love that,
calling up dreams, alienated my thoughts from their search after
reality?
I hardly know. I only know that I grew to love Margot, and only looked

for love in her blue eyes, not for any deed of the past that might be
mirrored there.
And I made her love me.
She gave her child's heart to my keeping with a perfect confidence that
only a perfect affection could engender. She did love me then. No
circumstances of to-day can break that fact under their hammers. She
did love me, and it is the knowledge that she did which gives so much
of fear to me now.
For great changes in the human mind are terrible. As we realize them
we realize the limitless possibilities of sinister deeds that lie hidden in
every human being. A little child that loves a doll can become an old,
crafty, secret murderer. How horrible!
And perhaps it is still more horrible to think that, while the human
envelope remains totally unchanged, every word of the letter within
may become altered, and a message of peace fade into a sentence of
death.
Margot's face is the same face now as it was when I married
her--scarcely older, certainly not less beautiful. Only the expression of
the eyes has changed.
For we were married. After a year of love-making, which never tired
either of us, we elected to bind ourselves, to fuse the two into one.
We went abroad for the honeymoon, and, instead of shortening it to the
fashionable fortnight, we travelled for nearly six months, and were
happy all the time.
Boredom never set in. Margot had a beautiful mind as well as a
beautiful face. She softened me through my affection. The current of
my life began to set in a different direction. I turned the pages of a book
of pity and of death more beautiful than that of Pierre Loti. I could hear
at last the great cry for sympathy, which is the music of this strange
suffering world, and, listening to it, in my heart there rang an echo. The

cruelty in my nature seemed to shrivel up. I was more gentle than I had
been, more gentle than I had thought I could ever be.
At last, in the late spring, we started for home. We stayed for a week in
London, and then we travelled north. Margot had