Within the Tides | Page 8

on with the remark that
to be sure neither he (Renouard) nor yet Willie were much used to meet
girls of that remarkable superiority. Willie when learning business with
a firm in London, years before, had seen none but boarding-house
society, he guessed. As to himself in the good old days, when he trod
the glorious flags of Fleet Street, he neither had access to, nor yet
would have cared for the swells. Nothing interested him then but
parliamentary politics and the oratory of the House of Commons.
He paid to this not very distant past the tribute of a tender, reminiscent

smile, and returned to his first idea that for a society girl her action was
rather fine. All the same the professor could not be very pleased. The
fellow if he was as pure as a lily now was just about as devoid of the
goods of the earth. And there were misfortunes, however undeserved,
which damaged a man's standing permanently. On the other hand, it
was difficult to oppose cynically a noble impulse--not to speak of the
great love at the root of it. Ah! Love! And then the lady was quite
capable of going off by herself. She was of age, she had money of her
own, plenty of pluck too. Moorsom must have concluded that it was
more truly paternal, more prudent too, and generally safer all round to
let himself be dragged into this chase. The aunt came along for the
same reasons. It was given out at home as a trip round the world of the
usual kind.
Renouard had risen and remained standing with his heart beating, and
strangely affected by this tale, robbed as it was of all glamour by the
prosaic personality of the narrator. The Editor added: "I've been asked
to help in the search--you know."
Renouard muttered something about an appointment and went out into
the street. His inborn sanity could not defend him from a misty
creeping jealousy. He thought that obviously no man of that sort could
be worthy of such a woman's devoted fidelity. Renouard, however, had
lived long enough to reflect that a man's activities, his views, and even
his ideas may be very inferior to his character; and moved by a delicate
consideration for that splendid girl he tried to think out for the man a
character of inward excellence and outward gifts--some extraordinary
seduction. But in vain. Fresh from months of solitude and from days at
sea, her splendour presented itself to him absolutely unconquerable in
its perfection, unless by her own folly. It was easier to suspect her of
this than to imagine in the man qualities which would be worthy of her.
Easier and less degrading. Because folly may be generous- -could be
nothing else but generosity in her; whereas to imagine her subjugated
by something common was intolerable.
Because of the force of the physical impression he had received from
her personality (and such impressions are the real origins of the deepest

movements of our soul) this conception of her was even inconceivable.
But no Prince Charming has ever lived out of a fairy tale. He doesn't
walk the worlds of Fashion and Finance--and with a stumbling gait at
that. Generosity. Yes. It was her generosity. But this generosity was
altogether regal in its splendour, almost absurd in its lavishness--or,
perhaps, divine.
In the evening, on board his schooner, sitting on the rail, his arms
folded on his breast and his eyes fixed on the deck, he let the darkness
catch him unawares in the midst of a meditation on the mechanism of
sentiment and the springs of passion. And all the time he had an
abiding consciousness of her bodily presence. The effect on his senses
had been so penetrating that in the middle of the night, rousing up
suddenly, wide-eyed in the darkness of his cabin, he did not create a
faint mental vision of her person for himself, but, more intimately
affected, he scented distinctly the faint perfume she used, and could
almost have sworn that he had been awakened by the soft rustle of her
dress. He even sat up listening in the dark for a time, then sighed and
lay down again, not agitated but, on the contrary, oppressed by the
sensation of something that had happened to him and could not be
undone.
CHAPTER III

In the afternoon he lounged into the editorial office, carrying with
affected nonchalance that weight of the irremediable he had felt laid on
him suddenly in the small hours of the night--that consciousness of
something that could no longer be helped. His patronising friend
informed him at once that he had made the acquaintance of the
Moorsom party last night. At the Dunsters, of course. Dinner.
"Very quiet. Nobody