Chapter 15

"And 'twas the town rake and beauty--Sir John Oxon"

That night he lay almost till 'twas morning, his eyes open upon the
darkness, since he could not sleep, finding it impossible to control
the thoughts which filled his mind. 'Twas a night whose still long
hours he never could forget in the years that followed, and 'twas not a
memory which was a happy one. He passed through many a curious phase of
thought, and more than once felt a pang of sorrow that he was now alone
as he had never thought of being, and that if suffering came, his
silent endurance of it must be a new thing. To be silent because one
does not wish to speak is a different matter from being silent because
one knows no creature dear and near enough to hear the story of one's
trouble. He realised now that the tender violet eyes which death had
closed would have wooed from his reserve many a thing it might have
been good to utter in words.

"She would always have understood," he thought. "She understood when
she cried out, 'It might have been!'"

He clasped his hands behind his head and lay so, smiling with mingled
bitterness and joy.

"It has begun!" he said. "I have heard them tell of it--of how one
woman's face came back again and again, of how one pair of eyes would
look into a man's and would not leave him, nor let him rest. It has
begun for me, too. For good or evil, it has begun."

Until this night he had told himself, and believed himself in the
telling, that he had been strangely haunted by thoughts of a strange
creature, because the circumstances by which she was encompassed were
so unusual and romantic as would have lingered in the mind of any man
whether old or young; and this he had been led to feel the more
confident of, since he was but one of a dozen men, and indeed each one
who knew of her existence appeared to regard her as the heroine of a
play, though so far it was to them but a rattling comedy. But from this
night he knew a different thing, and realised that he was face to face
with that mystery which all men do not encounter, some only meeting
with the mere fleeting image of it and never knowing what the reality
is--that mystery which may be man's damnation or his heaven, his
torture and heart-sickening, or his life and strength and bliss. What
his would bring to him, or bring him to, he knew not in the least, and
had at times a pang at thought of it, but sometimes such a surge of joy
as made him feel himself twice man instead of once.

When he went forth to ride the next day it was with a purpose clear in
his mind. Hitherto all he had seen or heard had been by chance, but if
he saw aught this morning 'twould be because he had hoped for and gone
to