ference in my love. As it is, I have stolen you from yourself. But
now I have stolen you I will keep you. I cannot--cannot give you back
again to anything or anybody."

He spoke with that almost mocking tenderness which dissembles its
passion. At the practical difficulty which now confronted him, all that
was merely romantic and speculative in his soul took flight, as birds
that are frightened from a quiet orchard by the yelp of dogs. He became
aware that he was bitterly independent of the joys he had once found in
the mere spectacle of the exterior world--the play of light and shade,
the changing visions of the sky, the charm of the earth. His own
thoughts were now the sole realities, and the dulness which suddenly
came over his vision for outward things seemed to render it the more
acute and concentrated for the things of the mind. As distant hills and
tree tops show most distinctly before a storm, so every possibility
which can arise from a conflict of duties stood out with a decisive
clearness for his consideration. He had married in haste a child-bride.
There was no blinking the fact. She had the strenuous religious fibre,
and with it real Bohemian blood. She was also at the yielding age, when
a dominant influence could do much to divert or modify every natural
trait. He could not doubt that he had this power over her then. How far,
and to what purpose, should he exert it? For himself he wished to
discourage any hankering on her part for public life, and, most of all,
public life behind the footlights, under an artificial sky. No one knew
better than he that there are certain things of love, of nobility, of
temperament, of pride, in certain lives which the world at large would
rather calumniate than comprehend. People in general clung to their
opinions not because they were true, but because they were their own,
and among pretty general opinions--particularly in the year 1869--there
was a strong prejudice against handsome young women who went on the
stage. It was not in him to consider--even as an egoistic reflection to
be put aside--how far Brigit's project, carried into action, could
effect his own political career. His apprehensions were all for her and
her own content.

"Promise me," he said, "that you will always tell me when the acting
mood comes over you. Never fight it, never try to resist it, give it the
liberty to die, but also the right to live. There is an old Hindoo
proverb: 'Find the flower which can