Page:Frank Owen - Woman Without Love (1949 reprint).djvu/118

 occasionally. But these diversions meant nothing to her. She liked to read, to study, especially things mystical and fantastic.

She was charmed by the sky and loved to lie on the beach at Rye or Southampton gazing at the stars. She had learned that there was nothing more restful than to behold the sky, the vast immensity of blue, a blue sea that dissolves all petty troubles. She believed that it was the most stupendous sight in the world, millions of stars, millions of suns, a universe more than two hundred thousand light years in extent, and man a puny creature on a small planet gazing into the night, awed by the wonder of it.

Dorothy had been educated at the Spence School. Her greatest education had unconsciously been given to her by her father. She studied him. She liked his clear-thinking, his abrupt decisions, his tolerance, his fairness.

When she was fifteen she had gone to Europe with her parents. Her father had promised her mother such a trip ever since their marriage. They had planned to go in 1917. Then the War intervened.

In a way it was a literary tour, for Dorothy's mother loved books and her dad had permitted his wife to plan the trip. They loitered for weeks in Dickens' London. They visited "The Old Curiosity Shop." To Helen it was a thrilling experience, for she adored Charles Dickens.

One day they ate at the Cheshire Cheese where the immortal Dr. Johnson used to sup and give voice to his theories and opinions. And where James Boswell, who worshipped him, listened and remembered every word and later wrote it into a life of his master that has made him even more renowned than Dr. Johnson.

They loitered in the Latin quarter of Paris about which Murger wrote his famous, "Bohemians." They tried to find the dismal hovels where Paul Verlaine had lived.

For Helen it was indeed a honeymoon, a delayed honeymoon, but one of exceptional beauty nevertheless. It acted upon her like a tonic. Her usually pale face took on some traces of color. And the years seemed to fall from her like old autumn leaves until she appeared to be a girl again.