Chapter 4 - Page 2

for a well-brought-up
dutiful young lady to begin married life upon. This view hurt and
tormented the pride of General D'Hubert. And yet, he asked himself with
a sort of sweet despair, What more could he expect? She had a quiet and
luminous forehead; her violet eyes laughed while the lines of her lips
and chin remained composed in an admirable gravity. All this was set off
by such a glorious mass of fair hair, by a complexion so marvellous, by
such a grace of expression, that General D'Hubert really never found the
opportunity to examine, with sufficient detachment, the lofty exigencies
of his pride. In fact, he became shy of that line of inquiry, since it
had led once or twice to a crisis of solitary passion in which it was
borne upon him that he loved her enough to kill her rather than lose
her. From such passages, not unknown to men of forty, he would come out
broken, exhausted, remorseful, a little dismayed. He derived, however,
considerable comfort from the quietist practice of sitting up now and
then half the night by an open window, and meditating upon the wonder of
her existence, like a believer lost in the mystic contemplation of his
faith.

It must not be supposed that all these variations of his inward state
were made manifest to the world. General D'Hubert found no difficulty
in appearing wreathed in smiles: because, in fact, he was very happy.
He followed the established rules of his condition, sending over flowers
(from his sister's garden and hothouses) early every morning, and a
little later following himself to have lunch with his intended, her
mother, and her _émigré_ uncle. The middle of the day was spent in
strolling or sitting in the shade. A watchful deferential gallantry
trembling on the verge of tenderness, was the note of their intercourse
on his side--with a playful turn of the phrase concealing the profound
trouble of his whole being caused by her inaccessible nearness. Late in
the afternoon General D'Hubert walked home between the fields of vines,
sometimes intensely miserable, sometimes supremely happy, sometimes
pensively sad, but always feeling a special intensity of existence: that
elation common to artists, poets, and lovers, to men haunted by a great
passion, by a noble thought or a new vision of plastic beauty.

The outward world at that time did not exist with any special
distinctness for General D'Hubert. One evening, however, crossing a
ridge from which he could see both houses, General D'Hubert became aware
of two figures far down the road. The day had been divine. The festal
decoration of the inflamed sky cast a gentle glow on the sober tints
of the southern land. The gray rocks, the brown fields, the purple
undulating distances harmonised in