Still playing with the roses near her, she relapsed into silence. Her breath came and went quickly; I saw her long eyelashes quiver against the pale rose-leaf tint of her cheeks,--the pure outline of her delicate profile suggested to my mind one of Fra Angelico's meditative saints or angels. All at once, while I yet watched her admiringly, she suddenly sprang erect, crushing a rose in her hand,--her head thrown back, her eyes flashing, her whole frame trembling.

"Oh, I cannot bear it!" she cried wildly--"I cannot bear it!"

I started up astonished, and confronted her.

"Sibyl!"

"Oh, why don't you speak, and fill up the measure of my degradation!"

she went on pa.s.sionately--"Why don't you tell _me_, as you tell my father, your purpose in coming here?--why don't you say to _me_, as you say to him, that your sovereign choice has fastened upon me,--that I am the woman out of all the world you have elected to marry! Look at me!"

and she raised her arms with a tragic gesture; "Is there any flaw in the piece of goods you wish to purchase? This face is deemed worthy of the fashionable photographer's pains; worthy of being sold for a shilling as one of England's 'beauties,'--this figure has served as a model for the showing-off of many a modiste's costume, purchased at half-cost on the understanding that I must state to my circle of acquaintance the name of the maker or designer,--these eyes, these lips, these arms are all yours for the buying! Why do you expose me to the shame of dallying over your bargain?--by hesitating and considering as to whether, after all, I am worthy of your gold!"

She seemed seized by some hysterical pa.s.sion that convulsed her, and in mingled amazement, alarm and distress, I sprang to her and caught her hands in my own.

"Sibyl, Sibyl!" I said--"Hush--hush! You are overwrought with fatigue and excitement,--you cannot know what you are saying. My darling, what do you take me for?--what is all this nonsense in your mind about buying and selling? You know I love you,--I have made no secret of it,--you must have seen it in my face,--and if I have hesitated to speak, it is because I feared your rejection of me. You are too good for me, Sibyl,--too good for any man,--I am not worthy to win your beauty and innocence. My love, my love--do not give way in this manner"--for as I spoke she clung to me like a wild bird suddenly caged--"What can I say to you, but that I worship you with all the strength of my life,--I love you so deeply that I am afraid to think of it; it is a pa.s.sion I dare not dwell upon, Sibyl,--I love you too well,--too madly for my own peace----"

I trembled, and was silent,--her soft arms clinging to me robbed me of a portion of my self-control. I kissed the rippling waves of her hair; she lifted her head and looked up at me, her eyes alit with some strange l.u.s.tre that was not love as much as fear,--and the sight of her beauty thus yielded as it were to my possession, broke down the barriers of restraint I had hitherto imposed upon myself. I kissed her on the lips,--a long pa.s.sionate kiss that, to my excited fancy, seemed to mingle our very beings into one,--but while I yet held her in my arms, she suddenly released herself and pushed me back. Standing apart from me she trembled so violently that I feared she would fail,--and I took her hand and made her sit down. She smiled,--a very wan smile.

"What did you feel then?" she asked.

"When, Sibyl?"

"Just now,--when you kissed me?"

"All the joys of heaven and fires of h.e.l.l in a moment!" I said.

She regarded me with a curious musing frown.

"Strange! Do you know what _I_ felt?"

I shook my head smiling, and pressed my lips on the soft small hand I held.

"Nothing!" she said, with a kind of hopeless gesture--"I a.s.sure you, absolutely nothing! I cannot feel. I am one of your modern women,--I can only think,--and a.n.a.lyse."

"Think and a.n.a.lyse as much as you will, my queen,"--I answered playfully--"if you will only think you can be happy with me. That is all I desire."

"Can you be happy with _me_?" she asked--"Wait--do not answer for a moment, till I tell you what I am. You are altogether mistaken in me."

She was silent for some minutes, and I watched her anxiously. "I was always intended for this"--she said slowly at last,--"this, to which I have now come,--to be the property of a rich man. Many men have looked at me with a view to purchase, but they could not pay the price my father demanded. Pray do not look so distressed!--what I say is quite true and quite commonplace,--all the women of the upper cla.s.ses,--the unmarried ones,--are for sale now in England as utterly as the Circa.s.sian girls in a barbarian slave-market. I see you wish to protest, and a.s.sure me of your devotion,--but there is no need of this,--I am quite sure you love me,--as much as any man can love,--and I am content.

But you do not know me really,--you are attracted by my face and form,--and you admire my youth and innocence, which you think I possess.

But I am not young--I am old in heart and feeling. I was young for a little while at Willowsmere, when I lived among flowers and birds and all the trustful honest creatures of the woods and fields,--but one season in town was sufficient to kill my youth in me,--one season of dinners and b.a.l.l.s, and--fashionable novel-reading. Now _you_ have written a book, and therefore you must know something about the duties of authorship,--of the serious and even terrible responsibility writers incur when they send out to the world books full of pernicious and poisonous suggestion to contaminate the minds that have hitherto been clean and undiseased. Your book has a n.o.ble motive; and for this I admire it in many parts, though to me it is not as convincing as it might have been. It is well written too; but I gained the impression while reading it, that you were not altogether sincere yourself in the thoughts you strove to inculcate,--and that therefore you just missed what you should have gained."

"I am sure you are right,"--I said, with a wholesome pang of humiliation--"The book is worthless as literature,--it is only the 'boom' of a season!"

"At any rate,"--she went on, her eyes darkening with the intensity of her feeling--"you have not polluted your pen with the vileness common to many of the authors of the day. I ask you, do you think a girl can read the books that are now freely published, and that her silly society friends tell her to read,--'because it is so dreadfully _queer_!'--and yet remain unspoilt and innocent? Books that go into the details of the lives of outcasts?--that explain and a.n.a.lyse the secret vices of men?--that advocate almost as a sacred duty 'free love' and universal polygamy?--that see no shame in introducing into the circles of good wives and pure-minded girls, a heroine who boldly seeks out a man, _any_ man, in order that she may have a child by him, without the 'degradation' of marrying him? I have read all those books,--and what can you expect of me? Not innocence, surely! I despise men,--I despise my own s.e.x,--I loathe myself for being a woman! You wonder at my fanaticism for Mavis Clare,--it is only because for a time her books give me back my self-respect, and make me see humanity in a n.o.bler light,--because she restores to me, if only for an hour, a kind of glimmering belief in G.o.d, so that my mind feels refreshed and cleansed.

All the same, you must not look upon me as an innocent young girl Geoffrey,--a girl such as the great poets idealized and sang of,--I am a contaminated creature, trained to perfection in the lax morals and prurient literature of my day."

I looked at her in silence, pained, startled, and with a sense of shock, as though something indefinably pure and precious had crumbled into dust at my feet. She rose and began pacing the room restlessly, moving to and fro with a slow yet fierce grace that reminded me against my wish and will of the movement of some imprisoned and savage beast of prey.

"You shall not be deceived in me,"--she said, pausing a moment and eyeing me sombrely--"If you marry me, you must do so with a full realization of the choice you make. For with such wealth as yours, you can of course wed any woman you fancy. I do not say you could find a girl better than I am; I do not think you could in _my_ 'set,' because we are all alike,--all tarred with the same brush, and filled with the same merely sensual and materialistic views of life and its responsibilities as the admired heroines of the 'society' novels we read. Away in the provinces, among the middle cla.s.ses it is possible you might discover a really good girl of the purest blush-rose innocence,--but then you might also find her stupid and unentertaining, and you would not care for that. My chief recommendation is that I am beautiful,--you can see that; everybody can see that,--and I am not so affected as to pretend to be unconscious of the fact. There is no sham about my external appearance; my hair is not a wig,--my complexion is natural,--my figure is not the result of the corset-maker's art,--my eyebrows and eyelashes are undyed. Oh yes,--you can be sure that the beauty of my body is quite genuine!--but it is not the outward expression of an equally beautiful soul. And this is what I want you to understand. I am pa.s.sionate, resentful, impetuous,--frequently unsympathetic, and inclined to morbidness and melancholy, and I confess I have imbibed, consciously or unconsciously, that complete contempt of life and disbelief in a G.o.d, which is the chief theme of nearly all the social teachings of the time."

She ceased,--and I gazed at her with an odd sense of mingled worship and disillusion, even as a barbarian might gaze at an idol whom he still loved, but whom he could no longer believe in as divine. Yet what she said was in no way contrary to my own theories,--how then could I complain? I did not believe in a G.o.d; why should I inconsistently feel regret that she shared my unbelief? I had involuntarily clung to the old-fashioned idea that religious faith was a sacred duty in womanhood; I was not able to offer any reason for this notion, unless it was the romantic fancy of having a good woman to pray for one, if one had no time and less inclination to pray for one's self. However, it was evident Sibyl was 'advanced' enough to do without superst.i.tious observances; _she_ would never pray for me;--and if we had children, she would never teach them to make their first tender appeals to Heaven for my sake or hers. I smothered a slight sigh, and was about to speak, when she came up to me and laid her two hands on my shoulders. "You look unhappy, Geoffrey,"--she said in gentler accents--"Be consoled!--it is not too late for you to change your mind!"

I met the questioning glance of her eyes,--beautiful, l.u.s.trous eyes as clear and pure as light itself.

"I shall never change, Sibyl," I answered--"I love you,--I shall always love you. But I wish you would not a.n.a.lyse yourself so pitilessly,--you have such strange ideas--"

"You think them strange?" she said--"You should not,--in these 'new women' days! I believe that, thanks to newspapers, magazines and 'decadent' novels, I am in all respects eminently fitted to be a wife!"

and she laughed bitterly--"There is nothing in the role of marriage that I do not know, though I am not yet twenty. I have been prepared for a long time to be sold to the highest bidder, and what few silly notions I had about love,--the love of the poets and idealists,--when I was a dreamy child at Willowsmere, are all dispersed and ended. Ideal love is dead,--and worse than dead, being out of fashion. Carefully instructed as I have been in the worthlessness of everything but money, you can scarcely be surprised at my speaking of myself as an object of sale.

Marriage for me _is_ a sale, as far as my father is concerned,--for you know well enough that however much you loved me or I loved you, he would never allow me to marry you if you were not rich, and richer than most men. I want you to feel that I fully recognize the nature of the bargain struck; and I ask you not to expect a girl's fresh, confiding love from a woman as warped in heart and mind as I am!"

"Sibyl,"--I said earnestly--"You wrong yourself; I am sure you wrong yourself! You are one of those who can be in the world yet not of it; your mind is too open and pure to be sullied, even by contact with evil things. I will believe nothing you say against your own sweet and n.o.ble character,--and, Sibyl, let me again ask you not to distress me by this constant harping on the subject of my wealth, or I shall be inclined to look upon it as a curse,--I should love you as much if I were poor----"

"Oh, you might love me"--she interrupted me, with a strange smile--"but you would not dare to say so!"

I was silent. Suddenly she laughed, and linked her arms caressingly round my neck.

"There, Geoffrey!" she said--"I have finished my discourse,--my bit of Ibsenism, or whatever other ism affects me,--and we need not be miserable about it. I have said what was in my mind; I have told you the truth, that in heart I am neither young nor innocent. But I am no worse than all my 'set' so perhaps you had better make the best of me. I please your fancy, do I not?"

"My love for you cannot be so lightly expressed, Sibyl!" I answered in rather a pained tone.

"Never mind,--it is my humour so to express it"--she went on--"I please your fancy, and you wish to marry me. Well now, all I ask is, go to my father and buy me at once! Conclude the bargain! And when you have bought me,--don't look so tragic!" and she laughed again--"and when you have paid the clergyman, and paid the bridesmaids (with monogram lockets or brooches) and paid the guests (with wedding-cake and champagne) and cleared up all scores with everybody, even to the last man who shuts the door of the nuptial brougham,--will you take me away,--far away from this place--this house, where my mother's face haunts me like a ghost in the darkness; where I am tortured by terrors night and day,--where I hear such strange sounds, and dream of such ghastly things,--" here her voice suddenly broke, and she hid her face against my breast--"Oh yes, Geoffrey, take me away as quickly as possible! Let us never live in hateful London, but at Willowsmere; I may find some of the old joys there,--and some of the happy bygone days."

Touched by the appealing pathos of her accents, I pressed her to my heart, feeling that she was scarcely accountable for the strange things she said in her evidently overwrought and excitable condition.

"It shall be as you wish, my darling," I said--"The sooner I have you all to myself the better. This is the end of March,--will you be ready to marry me in June?"

"Yes," she answered, still hiding her face.

"And now Sibyl," I went on--"remember,--there must be no more talk of money and bargaining. Tell me what you have not yet told me,--that you love me,--and would love me even if I were poor."

She looked up, straightly and unflinchingly full into my eyes.

"I cannot tell you that,"--she said,--"I have told you I do not believe in love; and if you were poor I certainly should not marry you. It would be no use!"

"You are frank, Sibyl!"

"It is best to be frank, is it not?" and she drew a flower from the knot at her bosom, and began fastening it in my coat--"Geoffrey what is the good of pretence? You would hate to be poor, and so should I. I do not understand the verb 'to love,'--now and then when I read a book by Mavis Clare, I believe love may exist, but when I close the book my belief is shut up with it. So do not ask for what is not in me. I am willing--even glad to marry you; that is all you must expect."

"All!" I exclaimed, with a sudden mingling of love and wrath in my blood, as I closed my arms about her and kissed her pa.s.sionately--"All!--you impa.s.sive ice-flower, it is not all!--you shall melt to my touch and learn what love _is_,--do not think you can escape its influence, you dear, foolish, beautiful child! Your pa.s.sions are asleep,--they must wake!"

"For you?" she queried, resting her head back against my shoulder, and gazing up at me with a dreamy radiance in her lovely eyes.

"For me!"

She laughed.

"'Oh bid me love, and I will love!'"--she hummed softly under her breath.

"You will, you must, you shall!" I said ardently. "I will be your master in the art of loving!"