y thoughts flashed a little further afield. It was so always when I
thought of Feurgeres, but it was to the joyous and wonderful memory of
those earlier days, to Isobel the child I drank. Isobel of Waldenburg
had passed away into the world of shadows. I courted no heartaches by
vain thoughts of her. I pored over no papers to find mention of her
name. I was content with what had gone before.

I morbid! Lady Delahaye had judged me wrongly indeed. I, before whom two
great worlds stretched themselves continually, full of countless
treasures, always changing, yet always beautiful. Only yesterday I had
seen the sun rise. I had seen the still slumbering world break into
quivering life. I had seen the curtain roll up on a new act of this most
wonderful of all plays to the music of an orchestra hidden indeed in my
grove of chestnuts, but sweeter, more joyous, more full of the promise
of perfect things than ever a violin touched by human fingers. Then the
thrushes had hopped out on to my dew-spangled lawn, where before the hot
sun the grey, gossamer-like mist was vanishing like breath from a
mirror; my roses raised their heads, and the breeze from the west--a
lazy, fluttering breeze--borrowed their sweetness; my peaches cracked
through their full skins upon the wall, and the bees commenced their
eternal lullaby of murmuring sounds. Then at night--such a night as
this, too, promised to be--I had watched the shadows come creeping over
the land when the sun had set and the moon had barely risen; a new order
of things had come. The fire of the day was replaced by the infinite
peace of night. Beyond the confines of my little domain the whole world
lay hushed and hidden. There were few stars as yet to mock with their
passionless serenity the toilers of the earth, worn out with the long
day's struggle. Only a great quiet--a great, peaceful quiet--and the
shadows of dim things!

I morbid, with eyes to see these things, with a whole room full of
waiting friends, ready at a touch of my fingers, the turning of a page,
to take me by the hand and lead into even other worlds as beautiful as
this, to scale with me the mountains, or to wander along the
flower-strewn valleys. Lady Delahaye was a very foolish woman. She had
seen nothing of my well-ordered household, of the ease, the
luxury--simple, yet almost Sybaritic--with which I had surrounded
myself. She did not understand life from my point of view--life as
Feurgeres had lived it. The life