Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 2.djvu/286

 ora's beauty, piquancy, and supremacy; related how she made all the women jealous and all the men mad; and hinted at my triumph. I knew that that letter would meet Margaret's eyes, and was vain enough to be pleased.

"At last, one morning, at daybreak, I went on deck, and saw the shores of England. Only a few days before, we had left America behind us, brown and leafless, just emerging from the long gloom of winter; and now the slopes of another world arose green and inviting in the flush of spring. There was a bracing breeze; the dingy waters of the Mersey rolled up in wreaths of beauty; the fleets of ships, steamers, sloops, lighters, pilot-boats, bounding over the waves, meeting, tacking, plunging, swaying gracefully under the full-swelling canvas, presented a picture of wonderful animation; and the mingling hues of sunshine and mist hung over all. I paced the deck, solemnly joyful, swift thoughts pulsing through me of a dim far-off Margaret, of a near radiant Flora, of hope and happiness superior to fate. It was one of those times when the excited soul transfigures the world, and we marvel how we could ever succumb to a transient sorrow while the whole universe blooms, and an infinite future waits to open for us its doors of wonder and joy.

"In this state of mind I was joined by Flora. She laid her hand on my arm, and we walked up and down together. She was serious, almost sad, and she viewed the English hills with a pensiveness which became her better than mirth.

"'So,' she sighed, 'all our little romances come to an end!'

"'Not so,' I said; 'or if one romance ends, it is to give place to another, still truer and sweeter. Our lives may be all a succession of romances, if we will make them so. I think now I will never doubt the future; for I find, that, when I have given up my dearest hopes, my best-beloved friends, and accepted the gloomy belief that all life besides is barren,--then comes some new experience, filling my empty cup with a still more delicious wine.'

"'Don't vex me with your philosophy!' said Flora. 'I don't know anything about it. All I know is this present,--this sky, this earth, this sea, and the joy between, which I can't give up quite so easily as you can, with your beautiful theory, that something better awaits you.'

"'I have told you,' I replied,--for I had been quite frank with her,--'how I left America,--what a blank life was to me then; and did I not turn my back upon all that to meet face to face the greatest happiness which I have ever yet known? Ought not this to give me faith in the divinity that shapes our ends?'

"'And so,' she answered, 'when I have lost you, I shall have the satisfaction of thinking that you are enjoying some still more exquisite consolation for the slight pangs you may have felt at parting from me! Your philosophy will make it easy for you to say, "Good-bye! it was a pretty romance; I go to find prettier ones still"; and then forget me altogether!'

"'And you,' I said, 'will that be easy for you?'

"'Yes,' she cried, with spirit,--'anything is easy to a proud, impetuous woman, who finds that the brief romance of a ten-days' acquaintance has already become tiresome to the second party. I am glad I have enjoyed what I have; that is so much gain, of which you cannot rob me; and now I can say good-bye as coolly as you, or I can die of shame, or I can at once walk over this single rail into the water, and quench this little candle, and so an end!'

"She sprang upon a bench, and, I swear to you, I thought she was going down! I was so exalted by this passionate demonstration, that I should certainly have gone over with her, and felt perfectly content to die in her arms,--at least, until I began to realize what a very disagreeable bath we had chosen to drown in.

"I drew her away; I walked