MOTHS.
53
he thought she did not know it; he went yearly
to hear the lark sing on the head of the cliff
where he had gathered her rose, but he thought
she knew nothing of that either. Yet the
sense of these things was between them; and
he dared not look at her as he went on down
the mountain-road.
She was thinking always of his bidding to
her, when she had been a child, to keep un-
spotted from the world. She longed to tell him
that she had not stooped to the guilt of base van-
ities when she had given herself to Sergius
Zouroff; but her lips were shut.
" I must not blame my mother, nor my hus-
hand," she thought. Her cheeks burned as she
felt, since he had saved her from the outrage of
the Kermesse, that he must know the daily in-
sults of her life. She was troubled, confused, op-
pressed; yet the charm of his presence held her
like an incantation. She went slowly through
the grand old wood, as Spenser's heroines
through enchanted forests.
" You said that you like Madame de Sonnaz?"
he asked again, abruptly.
"She is very agreeable," she said, hesitating-
ly; "and she is very good natured to me; she
reminds me of many things that I displease
Prince Zouroff in,—mere trifles of ceremonies
and observances that I forget, for I am very for-
getful, you know."
" Of little things, perhaps; thoughtful peo-
ple often are. Big brains do not easily hold
trifles. So Madame de Sonnaz plays the part of
Mentor to you about these little packets of
starch that the beau monde thinks are the staff
of life? That is kind of her, for I think no oue
ever more completely managed to throw the
starch over their left shoulder than she has
done!"
"You do not like her?"
" Oh, one always likes great ladies and pretty
women. Not that she is pretty, but she has du
charme, which is perhaps more. All I intended
to say was, that she is not invariably sincere,
and it might be as well that you should remem-
ber that if she be intimate enough with you to
give you counsels------"
" My husband told me to alwayslisten to and
follow what she said. He has, I believe, a great
esteem for her."
Corrèze swore an oath, that only a foxglove
heard, as he stooped to gather it. There was a
great disgust on his mobile face, that she did
not see, as he was bending down among the
blossoms.
" No doubt," he said, briefly; "esteem is not
exactly what the Duchesse Jeanne has inspired
or sought to inspire; but M._ Zouroff possibly
knows her better than I can do------"
" But is she not a good woman?" Vere asked,
with a little sternness coming on her delicate
face.
Corrèze laughed a little; yet there was a great
compassion in his eyes as he glanced at her.
"Good? Madame Jeanne? 1 am afraid she
would laugh very much if she heard you. Yes,
she is very good for five minutes after she has
left the confessional,—for she does go to confess,
though I cannot imagine her telling truth there.
It would be trop bourgeoise."
'¦' You speak as if sl'e were indeed not good!"
" Good? bad? If there were only good and
bad in this world it would not matter so much,"
said Corrèze, a little recklessly and at random.
" Life would not be such a disheartening affair
as it is. Unfortunately, the majority of people
are neither one nor the other, and have little in-
clination for either crime or virtue. It would
be almost as absurd to condemn them as to ad-
mire them. They are like the tracts of shift-
ing sand, in which nothing good or bad can
take root. To me they are more despairing to
contemplate than the darkest depth of evil: out
ofthat may come such hope as comes of re-
demption and remorse, but in the vast, frivo-
lous, featureless mass of society there is no
hope. It is like a feather bed, in which the
finest steel must lose point and power."
"But is the Duchesse de Sonnaz character-
less? Frivolous, perhaps, but surely not. char-
acterless?" said Vere, with that adherence to the
simple point of argument and rejection of all
discursiveness which had once made her the
despair of her mother.
" See for yourself, princess," said Corrèze,
suggestively. "What she has or h.-s not of
character may well become your study. When
w« are intimate with any person it is very need-
ful to know them well; what one's mere ac-
quaintances are matters little, one can no more
rount them than count the gnats on a summer
day ; but about our friends we cannot be too
careful."
" She is not my friend; I have not any
friend."
There was a loneliness and a melancholy in
the simplicity of the words that was in pathetic
contrast with that position which so many other
women had envied her.
Tender words, that once said could never
have been withdrawn, and would have divided
him from her forever, rose to the lips of Corrèze,
but he did not utter them: he answered her,
with equally simple seriousness.—
" I can believe that you have not. You would
find them, perhaps, in a world you are not al-
lowed to know anything of,—a world of narrow
means but of wide thoughts and high ideals. In
our world—I may say ours, for if you are one
of its great ladies I am one of its pets and play-
things, and so may claim a place in it—there is
very little thought, and there is certainly no
kind of ideal beyond winning tbe Grand Prix
for one sex and being better dressed than every-
body for the other. It is scarcely possible that
you should find much sympathy in it; and with-
out sympathy there is no friendship. There-are
noble people in it still here and there, it is true,
but the pity of modern life in society is that all
its habits, its excitements, and its high pressure
make as effectual a disguise morally as our
domino in Carnival ball does physically. Every-
body looks just like everybody else. Perhaps,
as under the domiuo, so under the appearance,
there may be great nobility as great deformity ;
but all look alike. Were Socrates among us,
he would only look like a club-bore: and were
there Messalina, she would only look—well—
look much like our Duchesse Jeanne."
Vere glanced at him quickly, then reddened
slightly.
" What a baseness I am committing to speak
ill of a woman who gave me her smiles and her
strawberries!" thought Corrèze. "Neverthe-
less, warned against Madame Jeanne she must
be, even if she think me ever so treacherous to
give the warning. She knows nothing; it
would be as well she should know nothing;
only, if she be not on her guard, Jeanne will
hurt her,—some way. The mistress of Zouroff
will never forgive his wife, and Casse-une-
Croûte would pardon her more readily than
would the wife of Duc Paul. Oh, God!
what a world to throw her into! The white
doe of Rylstone cast into a vivisector's torture-
trough!"
And what could he say to her of it all?
Nothing.
Midway in this dale of Weissbach there is a
memorial cross with a rude painting; the trees
are majestic and gigantic there; there is a
wooden bench; and a little way down, under
the trees, there is the river, broken up by
rocks and stones into eddies and freshets of
white foam.
"Rest here, princess," said Corrèze. "You
have walked several miles by this, and that
stick parasol of vours is no alpenstock to help
you much. Look at those hills through the
trees: one sees here, if nowhere else, what the
poet's ' blue air ' means. Soon the sun will set
and the sapphire blue will be cold gray. But
rest a few moments, and I will gather you some
of that yellow gentian. You keep your old love
of flowers, I am sure?"
Vere smiled a little sadly.
" Indeed, yes; but it is with flowers as with
everything else, I think, in the world: one can-
not enjoy "them for the profusion and the waste
of them everywhere. When one thinks of the
millions that die at one ball !—and no one hardly
looks at them. The most you hear any one say
is, 'The rooms look very well to-night.' And
the flowers die for that."
"That comes of the pretentious prodigality
we call civilization," said Corrèze. ' ' More pro
saically, it is just the same with food: at every
o-reat dinuer enough food is wasted to feed a
whole street, and ihe number of dishes is so ex-
aggerated that half of them go away untasted,
and even the other half is too much for any
mortal appetite. I do not know why we do it;
no one enjoys it; Lazarus out of the alleys
might, perhaps, by way of change, but then he
is never invited."
"Everything in our life is so exaggerated,
said Vere. with a sigh of fatigue, 'is she recalled
the endless weariness of the state banquets, the
court balls. Ihe perpetual succession of enter-
tainments, whieh in her world represented
pleasure. " There is nothing but exaggeration
everywhere; to me it always seems vulgarity.
Our dress is overloaded like our dinners; our
days are over-filled like our houses. Who is to>
blame?    The leaders of society, I suppose."
" Ladies like Madame Jeanne," said Corrèze,.
quickly.
She smiled a little.
"You are very angry with her!"
" Princess, frankly, "I do not think she is a fit
companion for you."
" My husband thinks that she is so."
" Then there is no more to be said, no doubt,"
said Corrèze, with his teelh shut.    "For me to
correct the judgment of M. Zouroff would be-
too great presumption."
" You may be quite right," said Vere. " But,,
you see, it is not for me to question : I have only
lo obey."
Corrèze choked an oath into silence, and wan-
dered a little way towards the water to gather
another foxglove.
Vere sat on the low bench under the crucifix
on thegreat tree; she had taken off her hat; she
I had the flowers in her lap; her dress was white;.
she had no ornament of any sort; she looked
very like the child who had sat with him by the*
! sweet brier hedge on Calvados. Taller, lovelier,
j with a different, expression on her grave, proud
; face, and all the questioning eagerness gone for-
: ever from her eyes; yet, for the moment, very
I Hke,—so  like that,  but for the gleam of the
dimond circlet that was her marriage-ring, he
would have forgotten.
He came and leaned against one of the great
trees, and watched the shadows of the  leaves
flutter on her white skirts.    He realized that he
loved her more than he had ever loved anything-
: on earth: and she was the wife of Sergius Zou-
i xoff.    She was no more Vere, but the Princess-
' Vera, and her world thought her so cold that it
had called her the edelweiss.
He forced himself to speak of idle things.
" After all," he said aloud, " when all is said
and done, I do believe the artistic life to be the
| happiest the earth holds.    To be sure, there is a
general feeling   still  that we do  not deserve
Christian burial; but that need not much trouble-
a living man.    I think, despite all the shadows
that envy and obtuseness, and the malevolence
of the unsuccessful rival, and the absurdities of
the-incapable critic, cast upon its path, the artis
tic life is the finest, the truest, the most Greek,.
and so the really happiest.   Artists see and hear
and feel more than other people,—when they
i are ariists really, and not mere manufacturers,
i as too many are or become.    My own art has a
little too much smell of ihe footlights; I have
too few hours alone with Beethoven and Mozart,
and too many with the gas lit crowds before
me.    Yet it has many beautiful things in it; it.
is always picturesque, never mediocre.    Think
of my life beside a banker's in his parlor, beside
| a lawyer's in the courts, they are like spiders,.
| shut up in their own dust. 1 am Hke a swallow,
| who always sees the sun because he goes where-
! it is summer."
" It is always summer with you." There was
a tinge of regret and of wistfulness in her voice
\ of which she was not conscious.
" It will be winter henceforward." he thought,
as he answeied, "Yes, it has been so. I have
been singularly fortunate,—perhaps as much in
the temperament 1 was born with as in other
things; for, if we escape any very great calam-
ity, it is our own nature that makes it summer
or makes it winter with us."
" But if you were in Siberia," said Vere, with
a faint smile, "could you make it summer
there?"
"I would try," said Corrèze.    "I suppose
Nature would look grand there sometimes, and
there would be one's fellow-creatures. But then,
you know, it has been my good fortune always
to be in the sun ; I am no judge of darkness.    I
dread it.    Sometimes I wake in the night and
think if I lost my voice all suddenly, as I may
any day, how should I bear it?—to be living and
only a memory to the public, as if I were dead,
—scarcely a memory even; there is no written
j record of song, and its mere echo soon goes off
| the ear.    How should I bear it—to be dumb? to
I be dethroned?    lam afraid I should bear it ill.
After all, one may be a coward without know-
ing it."
¦"Do  not speak of it!" said Vere, quickly,.
! with a sense of pain.   Mute'>That voice which
: she thought had all the melody that poets dream
of when they write of augels!    It hurt her even
to imagine it.
"It could not be worse than Siberia, and
men live through that," said Corrèze. - " Have
you not seen. Drincess, at a great ball, some one