deed, and conveying
messages to John--letters full of what John called Reyburn's
transcendental twaddle, but which were meat and drink to Lilian,
living half alone in her world of fancy; when he was in town again he
took her through galleries of pictures and statues where John had not
an entree; he placed his opera-box at her disposal; and when John, who
insisted on her acceptance of Reyburn's courtesies, heard them talk
together about the mysteries of the music or the ballet there, he
could have found it possible to question the justice of Fate that had
mated such spirit with such clod in giving Lilian to himself--for he
felt that she was already given, and they were mated by their long
affection beyond all divorce but death's--could have found it possible
to question the justice of Fate if he had not remembered, with a sort
of pain, that, charming and brilliant as Reyburn was, having a sweet
and reckless gayety and generosity, winning friends who loved him
almost as men love women, he was nevertheless as inconstant as the
breeze that rifles a rose.

"Yes," said he one day, in speaking of Reyburn to Lilian as they
looked at him through the open door of the drawing-room--"yes, we men
may love Reyburn safely enough, as we ask for no devotion in return,
but woe be to the woman who builds her house on that sand!"

"Will it slide away?" asked Lilian, not glancing from her needle.

"Well--Look at him now. Possession palls on him, they say. Half an
hour ago he plucked that bud. If it had hung as high as heaven, he
would have climbed for it, having once set his heart on it, and have
been tireless till he got it. On the whole, the thing is lucky that he
did not tear it to pieces in his dissecting love of laying bare its
heart. He has been inhaling its delicious soul this half hour: let us
see what he does with it." And as they looked they saw Reyburn lift
the half-forgotten flower, whose pale bloom had begun to tarnish ever
so little, glance at it lightly and give it a careless fillip to the
marble floor of the hall where he was walking up and down, and where,
as he came back, he set his heel upon it without knowing that he did
so.

It was just after Helen went home that Lilian's health began to
fail--to fail gently and slowly, but surely. She shut herself up at
first, and lay all day listless and melancholy. She did not come down
in the morning before John went out, but he usually found her on the
sofa when he came in. An