brought its half-playful reproach
for forgetfulness.... "Ah! Jenny, I'm afraid you're a fickle little
person, after all."

How strange it seemed to hear Jenny talked to like that--now.... Yes, of
course, Jenny was dead. Jenny was dead ... and Isabel was calling.

Was Jenny losing her power in this intoxicating fragrance of Isabel's
words--as though for once the cross should lose its virtue in some
subtle air of hellish sweetness?

O lilies from Jenny's white coffin, O little chrysanthemum that lay in
her bosom, O violets from Jenny's tomb, pierce with your faithful breath
this cloud of incense that is enwrapping Jenny's lover.

Alas! the power of the dead is but the power of the ideal, at once the
strongest and the weakest force in the world,--a power, indeed, that
prevails, but which may in some moments be shattered by the frailest
whisper of the real.

Isabel was calling, and Theophil was mad to go. Come back he might, but
go he must, he would. Yes! he was going.

There was only one possible way of spending that fevered night--in the
train; and it was in the train, speeding on to London and to Isabel, his
heart on fire, his eager eyes wasting themselves on the flying darkness,
that Theophil spent it. Purposes he had none, only a desire,--just to
see Isabel again. That immediate future was too effulgent for him to
think of anything beyond it.

He would see Isabel again!

From a distant starry name, withdrawn into the abysses of heaven, she
would turn again to woman and a wonderful nearness.

The thought of being once again in a little room together enveloped him
in a cloud of sweetness, as though the train were passing through
hidden orchards.

Isabel! Isabel! don't you hear love's wings beating towards you across
the night? Have you not just awakened suddenly from your first sleep in
the rosebush where you lie, and said: "Surely out there across the
silent woods and meadows, where the night swallows London like a
camp-fire, a train, a moving street of lighted windows, is speeding
through the darkness and the dew, and in one of those little travelling
rooms sits Theophil with his eyes fixed on me"?

Was it Jenny's name that Theophil was thus taking to Isabel?

No, not Jenny's name. Never Jenny's name!

He was going to look on Isabel again--that was all. Perhaps he would die
with the mere joy of seeing her again--and then he would not need to
think of the future. Yes! the deeps of his soul had wanted he