II

THE CUP OF TANTALUS

Queer world. Can you be sure the next pair you meet walking together of
a summer eve are as starry as they look? Lo, Constance and Miranda. Did
the bride herself realize what a hunger of loneliness was hers? Or Anna
and Irby, with Madame between them. Could you, maybe, have guessed the
veritable tempest beneath the maiden's serenity, or his inward gnashings
against whatever it was that had blighted his hour with the elusive
Flora?

Or can any one say, in these lives of a thousand concealments and
restraints, _when_ things _are_ happening and when not, within us or
without, or how near we are _now_ to the unexpected--to fate? See, Flora
and Hilary. He gave no outward show that he was burning to flee the spot
and swing his fists and howl and tear the ground.

Yet Flora knew; knew by herself; by a cold rage in her own fair bosom,
where every faculty stood gayly alert for each least turn of incident,
to foil or use it, while they talked lightly of Virginia's great step,
or of the night's loveliness, counting the stars. "How small they look,"
she said, "how calm how still."

"Yes, and then to think what they really are! so fearfully far from
small--or cold--or still!"

"Like ourselves," she prompted.

"Yes!" cried the transparent soldier. "At our smallest the smallest
thing in us is that we should feel small. And how deep down are we calm
or cold? Miss Flora, I once knew a girl--fine outside, inside. Lovers
-she had to keep a turnstile. I knew a pair of them. To hear those two
fellows separately tell what she was like, you couldn't have believed
them speaking of the same person. The second one thought the first
had--sort o'--charted her harbor for him; but when he came to sail in,
'pon my soul, if every shoal on the chart wasn't deep water, and every
deep water a fortified shore--ha, ha, ha!"

Flora's smile was lambent. "Yes," she said, "that sweet Anna she's very
intric-ate." Hilary flamed and caught his breath, but she met his eyes
with the placidity of the sky above them.

Suddenly he laughed: "Now I know what I am! Miss Flora, I--I wish you'd
be my pilot."

She gave one resenting sparkle, but then shook her averted head
tenderly, murmured "Impossible," and smiled.

"You think there's no harbor there?"

"Listen," she said.

"Yes, I hear it, a horse."

"Captain Kincaid?"

"Miss Flora?"

"For dear Anna's sake _and_ yours, shall I be that little bit your
pilot, to say--?"