s
Falconer's resolve not to tell this girl that he loved her until he
had won fame and position, but a secret, unconscious setting of himself
above her? For surely, if love is supreme, it does not need to wait for
anything else to lend it worth and dignity. The very sweetness and power
of it lie in the confession of one life as dependent upon another for
its fulfilment. It is made strong in its very weakness. It is the only
thing, after all, that can break the prison bars and set the heart free
from itself. The pride that hinders it, enslaves it. Love's first duty
is to be true to itself, in word and deed. Then, having spoken truth and
acted verity, it may call on honour to keep it pure and steadfast.

If Falconer had trusted Claire, and showed her his heart without
reserve, would she not have understood him and helped him? It was the
pride of independence, the passion of self-reliance that drew him
away from her and divided his heart from hers in a dumb isolation. But
Claire,--was not she also in fault? Might she not have known, should not
she have taken for granted, the truth which must have been so easy to
read in Falconer's face, though he never put it into words? And yet
with her there was something very different from the pride that kept him
silent. The virgin reserve of a young girl's heart is more sacred than
any pride of self. It is the maiden instinct which makes the woman
always the shrine, and never the pilgrim. She is not the seeker, but the
one sought. She dares not take anything for granted. She has the right
to wait for the voice, the word, the avowal. Then, and not till then, if
the pilgrim be the chosen one, the shrine may open to receive him.

Not all women believe this; but those who do are the ones best worth
seeking and winning. And Claire was one of them. It seemed to me, as I
mused, half dreaming, on the unfinished story of these two lives that
had missed each other in the darkness, that I could see her figure
moving through the garden, beyond where the pallid bloom of the tall
cosmos-flower bent to the fitful breeze. Her robe was like the waving of
the mist. Her face was fair, and very fair, for all its sadness: a blue
flower, faint as a shadow on the snow, trembled at her waist, as she
paced to and fro along the path.

I murmured to myself, "Yet he loved her: and she loved him. Can pride be
stronger than love?"

Perhaps, after all, the lingering and belated confession which Falconer
had wri