Page:Anthony Hope - The Kings Mirror.djvu/347

 pictures, which the Municipality of Forstadt presented to Elsa in remembrance of the auspicious event. It lies now under a class [sic] case, and, I understand, excites much interest among ladies who come to see my house.

Elsa was a puzzle no longer; I should have welcomed more complexity of feeling. The month which had passed since we parted had brought to her many reflections, no doubt, and as a presumable result of them a fixed attitude of mind. William Adolphus would have said (and very likely did say to Victoria) that she had got used to me; but this mode of putting the matter suffers from my brother-in-law's bluntness. She had not defied Clotho, but neither had she altogether given herself up to Clotho. She had compromised with the Formidable Lady, and, although by no means enraptured, seemed to be conscious that she might have come off worse. What was distasteful in Clotho's terms Elsa attempted to reduce to insignificance by a disciplined arrangement of her thoughts and emotions. Much can be done if one will be firm with would-be vagrants of the mind. The pleasant may be given prominence; the disagreeable relegated to obscurity; the attractive installed in the living apartments; the repellant [sic] locked in a distant cellar, whence their ill-conditioned cries are audible occasionally only and in the distance. What might have been is sternly transformed from a beautiful vision into a revolting peril, and in this new shape is invoked to applaud the actual and vilify what is impossible. This attitude of mind is thought so commendable as to have won for itself in popular speech the name of philosophy so even with words Clotho works her will. Elsa, then, in this peculiar sense of the term was