What Dreams May Come | Page 4

there instead. As he took his seat the Austrian
Ambassador leaned forward and inquired politely about the state of
Lady Sionèd's health.
"She is sleeping quietly," said Sir Dafyd.

PART I.
THE MELODY.
I.
The Hon. Harold Dartmouth was bored. He had been in Paris three
months and it was his third winter. He was young. He possessed a
liberal allowance of good looks, money, and family prestige.
Combining these three conditions, he had managed to pretty thoroughly
exhaust the pleasures of the capital. At all events he believed he had
exhausted them, and he wanted a new sensation. He had "done" his
London until it was more flavorless than Paris, and he had dawdled
more or less in the various Courts of Europe. While in St. Petersburg he
had inserted a too curious finger into the Terrorist pie, and had come
very near making a prolonged acquaintance with the House of
Preventative Detention; but after being whisked safely out of the
country under cover of a friend's passport, he had announced himself

cured of further interest in revolutionary politics. The affair had made
him quite famous for a time, however; Krapotkin had sought him out
and warmly thanked him for his interest in the Russian Geysers, and
begged him to induce his father to abjure his peace policy and lend his
hand to the laudable breaking of Czarism's back. But Lord Cardingham,
who was not altogether ruled by his younger son, had declined to
expend his seductions upon Mr. Gladstone in the cause of a possible
laying of too heavy a rod upon England's back, and had recommended
his erratic son to let the barbarism of absolutism alone in the future, and
try his genius upon that of democracy. Dartmouth, accordingly, had
spent a winter in Washington as Secretary of Legation, and had
entertained himself by doling out such allowance of diplomatic love to
the fair American dames as had won him much biographical honor in
the press of the great republic. Upon his father's private admonition,
that it would be as well to generously resign his position in favor of
some more needy applicant, with a less complex heart-line and a slight
acquaintance with international law, he had, after a summer at Newport,
returned to Europe and again devoted himself to winning a fame not
altogether political. And now there was nothing left, and he felt that
fate had used him scurrilously. He was twenty-eight, and had exhausted
life. He had nothing left but to yawn through weary years and wish he
had never been born.
He clasped his hands behind his head and looked out on the brilliant
crowd from his chair in the Café de la Cascade in the Bois. He was
handsome, this blasé young Englishman, with a shapely head, poised
strongly upon a muscular throat. Neither beard nor moustache hid the
strong lines of the face. A high type, in spite of his career, his face was
a good deal more suggestive of passion than of sensuality. He was tall,
slight, and sinewy, and carried himself with the indolent hauteur of a
man of many grandfathers. And indeed, unless, perhaps, that this
plaything, the world, was too small, he had little to complain of.
Although a younger son, he had a large fortune in his own right, left
him by an adoring grandmother who had died shortly before he had
come of age, and with whom he had lived from infancy as adopted son
and heir. This grandmother was the one woman who had ever shone
upon his horizon whose disappearance he regretted; and he was wont to

remark that he never again expected to find anything beneath a coiffure
at once so brilliant, so fascinating, so clever, so altogether "filling" as
his lamented relative. If he ever did he would marry and settle down as
a highly respectable member of society, and become an M.P. and the
owner of a winner of the Derby; but until then he would sigh away his
tired life at the feet of beauty, Bacchus, or chance.
"What is the matter, Hal?" asked Bective Hollington, coming up behind
him. "Yawning so early in the day?"
"Bored," replied Dartmouth, briefly. "Don't expect me to talk to you. I
haven't an idea left."
"My dear Harold, do not flatter yourself that I came to you in search of
ideas. I venture to break upon your sulky meditations in the cause of
friendship alone. If you will rouse yourself and walk to the window you
may enrich your sterile mind with an idea, possibly with ideas. Miss
Penrhyn will pass in a moment."
"The devil!"
"No, not the devil; Miss Penrhyn."
"And who the devil is Miss Penrhyn?"
"The new English, or rather, Welsh beauty, Weir Penrhyn," replied
Hollington. "She came out