The Touchstone | Page 9

back to the table and one by one
fitted the pages into their envelopes; then he tied up the letters and put
them back into the locked drawer.

III
It was one of the laws of Glennard's intercourse with Miss Trent that he
always went to see her the day after he had resolved to give her up.
There was a special charm about the moments thus snatched from the
jaws of renunciation; and his sense of their significance was on this
occasion so keen that he hardly noticed the added gravity of her
welcome.
His feeling for her had become so vital a part of him that her nearness
had the quality of imperceptibly readjusting his point of view, so that
the jumbled phenomena of experience fell at once into a rational
perspective. In this redistribution of values the sombre retrospect of the
previous evening shrank to a mere cloud on the edge of consciousness.
Perhaps the only service an unloved woman can render the man she
loves is to enhance and prolong his illusions about her rival. It was the
fate of Margaret Aubyn's memory to serve as a foil to Miss Trent's
presence, and never had the poor lady thrown her successor into more
vivid relief.
Miss Trent had the charm of still waters that are felt to be renewed by
rapid currents. Her attention spread a tranquil surface to the
demonstrations of others, and it was only in days of storm that one felt
the pressure of the tides. This inscrutable composure was perhaps her
chief grace in Glennard's eyes. Reserve, in some natures, implies

merely the locking of empty rooms or the dissimulation of awkward
encumbrances; but Miss Trent's reticence was to Glennard like the
closed door to the sanctuary, and his certainty of divining the hidden
treasure made him content to remain outside in the happy expectancy of
the neophyte.
"You didn't come to the opera last night," she began, in the tone that
seemed always rather to record a fact than to offer a reflection on it.
He answered with a discouraged gesture. "What was the use? We
couldn't have talked."
"Not as well as here," she assented; adding, after a meditative pause,
"As you didn't come I talked to Aunt Virginia instead."
"Ah!" he returned, the fact being hardly striking enough to detach him
from the contemplation of her hands, which had fallen, as was their
wont, into an attitude full of plastic possibilities. One felt them to be
hands that, moving only to some purpose, were capable of intervals of
serene inaction.
"We had a long talk," Miss Trent went on; and she waited again before
adding, with the increased absence of stress that marked her graver
communications, "Aunt Virginia wants me to go abroad with her."
Glennard looked up with a start. "Abroad? When?"
"Now--next month. To be gone two years."
He permitted himself a movement of tender derision. "Does she really?
Well, I want you to go abroad with ME--for any number of years.
Which offer do you accept?"
"Only one of them seems to require immediate consideration," she
returned, with a smile.
Glennard looked at her again. "You're not thinking of it?"
Her gaze dropped and she unclasped her hands. Her movements were
so rare that they might have been said to italicize her words. "Aunt
Virginia talked to me very seriously. It will be a great relief to mother
and the others to have me provided for in that way for two years. I must
think of that, you know." She glanced down at her gown which, under a
renovated surface, dated back to the first days of Glennard's wooing. "I
try not to cost much--but I do."
"Good Lord!" Glennard groaned.
They sat silent till at length she gently took up the argument. "As the
eldest, you know, I'm bound to consider these things. Women are such

a burden. Jim does what he can for mother, but with his own children to
provide for it isn't very much. You see, we're all poor together."
"Your aunt isn't. She might help your mother."
"She does--in her own way."
"Exactly--that's the rich relation all over! You may be miserable in any
way you like, but if you're to be happy you've got to be so in her
way--and in her old gowns."
"I could be very happy in Aunt Virginia's old gowns," Miss Trent
interposed.
"Abroad, you mean?"
"I mean wherever I felt that I was helping. And my going abroad will
help."
"Of course--I see that. And I see your considerateness in putting its
advantages negatively."
"Negatively?"
"In dwelling simply on what the going will take you from, not on what
it will bring you to. It means a lot to a woman, of course, to get away