Page:Neith Boyce--The bond.djvu/124

 ERESA'S life was full, and, on the whole, free and happy. She desired nothing more for herself, except that it should not change. Her occasional clouded moods were due, if not to some temporary and slight disagreement with Basil, in which she usually by insistence got the best of him, then to a vague perception of forces within and without that menaced her happiness of careless youth and love. She saw that she herself changed, that her love and need of Basil deepened. She saw that he changed—that he became more tranquil toward her, and more interested in the play of life outside than he had been during his year of absorption in her. And this shifting of the balance frightened her. If she should come to need him more than he needed her, it would destroy their first relation, in which he had given to her out of a free abundance of life and joy, and she to him calmly, tenderly, and with a smile on her lips, and in her heart. And this change, too, would destroy her own poise, and leave her at the mercy of chance or fate, in a dependence on Basil which she obscurely dreaded when she thought of it.

The tragedy of life she felt all about her, like the great humming city; only so far it had not