She only crouched closer to the spot where they had lain, and talked on. Thinking she was speaking to him, the man bent his head to listen.

"It is all my fault," he heard her say, "because I had not the faith--not the right faith--not the faith that Father Benoit meant--the faith that can remove mountains!"

A Pair of Boots.

CHAPTER I.

THE RIFT WITHIN THE LUTE.

"There is nothing but death Our affections can sever, And till life's latest breath, Love shall bind us forever."

The words, as they flowed musically from the throat of the fair singer at the piano, were inflected with a subtle irony, which caused the frown to deepen upon the brow of the tall, scholarly, though somewhat morose-looking man who had entered the parlor soon after the singer had begun, and who, without glancing in her direction, had seated himself on one of the many luxurious chairs which strewed the room.

As he sat and listened to the song, sweet and simple in itself, but made with deft and almost imperceptible intonation on certain words, clearly for his ear, the stern lines about his mouth visibly deepened.

Finally the song ceased, and the singer swung slowly and noiselessly round and looked across at her husband, whose back was turned towards her. From the brilliant look in her eyes, it was evident she was laboring under suppressed excitement. She was a young woman of about twenty-six, singularly beautiful and with a fine intellectual cast of countenance. From her shoulders hung a richly-lined opera cloak, which, being fastened only at the throat, disclosed a figure of more than ordinary grace and symmetry.

As her husband continued silent, she presently arose, and with a peculiar smile playing about her mouth, walked calmly over to him, and laying her hand on the back of his chair, said, in a voice in which the same subtle tone was noticeable: "My lord, you see I have obeyed, and have not gone out without coming here, as commanded by you, to learn your pleasure regarding my coming in and going out."

Harold Townsley arose hastily, and said sternly and angrily, as he faced her: "Was it necessary, Grace, to sing that song in such a manner? Did you wish me to understand through it the state of your present feelings toward me? I dislike to harbor the thought that you chose the song, and began to sing it in the manner you did, the moment you heard me coming."

Had his tone been less angry and stern, her reply might not have been so bitterly cutting.

"Your questions, Harold, I must say, are pointed ones," she answered, as, seating herself, she broke into a seemingly disingenuous smile, and shook her head protestingly; "and it seems to me that they are utterly uncalled for, too. Our life for the past two years should have demonstrated that fact. However, to answer your questions: Your intuitions were correct; I did choose that song purposely for you, and only began to sing it when I heard you coming. As to the question of my sentiments toward you: When you remember that it is scarcely twenty minutes since you, once more, bitterly found fault with me, and that, too, almost before the servants, because I chose to go out again to-night, and angrily informed me that you would like to see me here before I left the house--surely you did not expect to find me trilling a love-song for you in heart-broken accents! Still, I must say that I wish you had not made it necessary for me to be so tryingly frank."

Her reply stung him deeply. With tightening lips he turned away, and muttered under his breath, "I am, indeed, right! She has not the slightest love left for me; it will delight her to be free."

"Grace," he said, a little sadly--but, unfortunately, also again sternly--as he halted by her side, "You and I, like so many others, evidently were not intended for each other."

Her clasped hands tightened, but he did not notice it; he was sure that he thoroughly understood her now.

"It is a pity," he went on, grimly, with his eyes fixed on the carpet, "that human nature is not gifted with the faculty of reading the future; so many mistakes and so much suffering would be prevented."

He was thinking more of the unhappy days she must have spent with him, during the past two years, than of his own disappointment in her. But she did not understand the words in this way, and thinking he wanted her to know what a terrible mistake he had made when he married her, five years ago, her high-strung, nervous temperament was aroused still more, and rising quickly, she said, almost recklessly:

"I never knew before, Harold, that you were such a humanitarian and had such lofty longings to save others suffering; indeed, were you not evidently so much in earnest, I should certainly think that you were indulging in jests." Somehow her low laugh, this time, hardly rang true.

The cynical reply caused her husband's figure to straighten out stiffly--they both were now at dangerous cross purposes.

Meeting his gaze, she went on crisply: "And was it for the sake of expatiating on the general failure of marriage that you commanded me to meet you here before I could go out?" Without waiting for a reply, she drew out her gold watch, and after glancing at it, said carelessly, "I am afraid I shall not be able to listen to all the _pros_ and _cons_ of this vast question to-night, as I have, as you are aware, to be at the opera in a half-hour or so."

His face now lit up angrily, as he rejoined hotly, "Yes, it was to discuss this vast question that I wanted to see you alone; but not to discuss it in the abstract, as you evidently think, but as it concerns you and me, and to try to remedy, as far as possible, the mistake you evidently must have made when you thought you loved and married me."

As he ceased and turned away toward the piano, she almost sank on the chair at her side. "Where are we drifting?" she whispered; "surely it has not come to this between Harold and me!" His back was turned to her, and he was fingering the music restlessly, trying to get command of himself for what he had to say.

Turning, he leaned against the piano, and fixing his eyes on the comely head with its rich brown covering, he said firmly, but not without some emotion, "We have drifted, and drifted so, Grace, that there is nothing else left--we must part."

Her breath came quickly, but there was no other sign that she was agitated.

He paused, in his heart hoping she would give some sign that the words meant something to her, and that he might, even yet, catch some evidence that her love for him was not utterly dead. During the pause which ensued, she turned her face away from him, and so he did not see the look almost of terror which it now wore.

Construing her silence into simple acquiescence, and thus angered the more, he went on in a hard voice: "During the past two years the change in you, Grace, has been incomprehensible to me. For my wishes you have not shown the slightest regard, while your home, as you know, has held no attractions for you--possibly because I am in it. You have persisted in going out alone to the opera, to parties and social attractions of a like nature, until you have almost become talked about." His voice grew more bitter as he continued to recall the past.

"Had you been a plain woman you would likely have found some attractions at your home; but the love of adulation and the greed of excitement and false flattery seem now to be so necessary to you that your true womanliness has been killed."

He was now pacing the floor in deep agitation.

A transformation had crept over his wife's face. Her cheeks were no longer pale, but flushed with anger, while her head was thrown back defiantly and her hands tightly clenched.

"And has my lord finished the list of his wife's accomplishments?" she asked, smothering her anger by a strong effort, and speaking as though in jest.

Quietly walking over to where she was sitting, he said, in a tense voice: "No, not quite. The bitterest memory I have of my wife is her heartless conduct toward the memory of our poor dead boy. When he was alive I really believed that you loved him pa.s.sionately; but scarcely had he been dead a year when this greed for gaiety and excitement took possession of you, and you began to go out everywhere. You knew he was dearer to me than life, and that his memory was with me every hour of the day. How little true sentiment, after all, there must have been in your professed idolization of him. With such a mother it is perhaps well that he is dead!" His voice broke for a moment as memories of the boy he had so idolized crowded back upon him. Looking into her now flashing eyes he continued bitterly: "I am weary of the bitter scenes between us, and of your heartlessness, Grace, and we must part. I shall leave the house to-night and live my life elsewhere. You can stay here and enjoy the frivolity which is dearer to you than your husband, the memory of your dead boy, or--"

"You are a coward, Harold Townsley!" As she faced him, her head thrown back, her opera cloak lying in artistic disorder at her feet, exposing the richly trimmed dress, and the soft outlines of her fine figure, her eyes flashing and her bosom rapidly heaving, she looked, indeed, ready to do and dare anything.

Had he not been so wrought up himself he would have seen that he was goading her beyond endurance. When he mentioned their dead boy she had winced as though in bodily pain, but when he accused her of heartlessness towards his memory, she had grown so unstrung that she could scarcely contain herself. Never before in their differences had he accused her of faithlessness to the memory of their boy. The fear of having her husband leave her had now been swept away by the wave of indignation which possessed her.

He could not have started back in more surprise and dismay had she struck him, than when he heard her call him a coward and saw her intense anger.

With a great effort she mastered the wild rush of words that sprang to her lips, and bowing to him derisively said, as she looked into his face: "Truly a most gallant husband and a gentleman! And so, forsooth, you would desert your wife because she has forgotten the memory of her dead boy--whom she never truly loved--and because she thirsts after pleasure and excitement! What wondrous discernment! What a wise judge of human nature!" Her ironical laugh was now true in intonation.

"Utterly heartless," he whispered, almost wonderingly as he sank down on his chair.

She caught the words and said easily: "Yes, thanks to my husband, utterly heartless." Then calmly drawing a chair near to his, she said in an amused tone: "And let me tell you how this interesting metaphysical transformation was brought about."

His anger had died away and he looked at her pityingly.

"I shall have to go back to two years ago," she continued, "for up to that time you never doubted the existence of my heart--in fact, you will remember you more than once told me that I was too tender-hearted, and that you hoped deep sorrow would never come to me, because I had the capacity to suffer more than most women. The great change came with my boy's death."

For a brief s.p.a.ce the mocking light died out of her face, while her voice grew deeply earnest. A rush of memories made her emotion so keen that she could not keep seated, and walking to and fro she talked rapidly, at times almost wildly.

"Your discernment for once was right; I had the capacity for suffering more than most women, and infinitely more than my husband, with all his worship of our boy. After his death my heart craved love and sympathy as it had never done before, and to whom but you was I to turn for it? And was it given? Let your conscience answer. With his death you shut me out of your heart, as I have said, when I most needed your sympathy. How many times before this pa.s.sion for excitement, which you speak of, took possession of me, did I come to you in your study, in which you isolated yourself so, and tried, in numberless little ways, to show you how sorely I needed you--tried to make our sorrow a common one, tried to make you realize that I needed your company and sympathy to save me from the thoughts which seemed to be wearing away my very life. A dog could not more mutely have shown its craving for pity and companionship than I did; but the more I sought you out the more the desire seemed to grow upon you to nurse your own sorrow alone. At last it got so (you _must_ remember) that I saw you only at our meals, which you ate almost in silence. The continued quiet of the house, and the company of my own sad thoughts and longings for him, finally grew more than I could bear, and so, after a year of suffering and solitude in this house, I broke down and tried to forget by accepting social invitations. I had, of course, to go out alone; you refused to go with me. So now I have humiliated myself to tell you the truth, and you can judge whether I am heartless or not; whether I truly loved my boy or not; and who is to blame if I am now heartless."

She paused suddenly before him and said, in a firm, decisive voice: "Until I heard your words to-night, my heart had not wholly hardened toward you, but now the little affection I had left for you has entirely gone. Never could a woman have been more disappointed in a man than I have been in you; the idol I set up has been broken into a thousand fragments. In adversity, when your manliness should have stood out true and bright, it warped and has grown to be a pitiable thing. Your life is now so narrow and morbid that you have but little sense of justice left, as is shown by your throwing upon me all the blame for the trouble which has been growing up between us, and which has at last separated us. You have said, Harold, that we must part; you have spoken truly. You have said, to-night; again you have spoken truly, for on no consideration shall this roof shelter us again. If you do not leave to-night, I most surely shall."

Her mood again changed, and she said, with a low laugh, as she paced the floor with an amused air: "And so I, Mrs. Townsley, am to be a deserted wife, a 'gra.s.s widow,' and all as a punishment for being heartless, too fond of pleasure, and for not having had any real love for my only boy! What a dire, dire punishment, Harold!" She glanced mockingly down at the bowed head of her husband, which was now pillowed in his hands, and with another burst of musical laughter, swept gracefully over to the piano, seated herself at it, struck a few chords; and then, as if driven by sudden impulse, wheeled quickly round and said: "But the runaway husband shall have something pleasant to remember the poor deserted wife by in his wanderings. Be sure, Harold, and always think of me as singing this love-lorn ditty." Again she laughed, but this time there was a peculiar tremor in her voice which betrayed, better than anything else could have done, the great effort she was making to sustain her pride. "Now listen:

"Oh! leave not your Kathleen, there's no one can cheer her, Alone in this wide world unpitied she'll sigh; And the scenes that were loveliest when thou wert near her Will--"

"Grace! Grace!" His hands trembled with deep emotion, as he laid one on her shoulder, and with the other hushed the words that cut him so keenly.

As he had listened to her, and at last understood her overwhelming love for their boy--and had realized, too, that it was indeed he who was to blame for their estrangement--a look of deep surprise had gradually overspread his face. Twice he had tried to interrupt her, but in vain, until finally, almost convinced by her torrent of anger, contempt and derision, that he had indeed lost all hold upon her affections, he had sunk back bewildered in his chair, and covered his face with his hands. But the mocking refrain of the song was more than he could bear, and so he had sprung to his feet, gone to her side, and putting his hand over her scornful lips had hushed the song.