Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 2).djvu/452

 before her; she heard his voice again, telling her the simple tragedy of his life. How graphically he had told it, though not with many words! She could fill in the details for herself. It was a story of true and patient love, and of shameful faithlessness and falsehood; a story in which the wrongdoer pitied herself and fancied herself a victim, while she accepted her husband's sacrifice and spoilt his life. She had been cruel to him with the cruelty which demands everything, and gives less than nothing in return.

"And yet," said Ralph, when he told the story—he had never repeated it to any before—"I never ceased to love her while she lived; and when she died the world seemed empty to me. I suppose it was only this, that I could never take back what I had once given."

There was not much in the story itself, but it held Eleanor's thoughts fast, and would not let them go; because the love that had been so scorned and wasted would have made the happiness of her life. She must write her tale, but how? She could not cast into its foolish incidents the burning thoughts that possessed her; these were all woven about another thread. And while she still thought, her child cried, and she had to leave her work to soothe it.

She lay down on the bed beside it, and fell asleep. She awoke in the dead of the night. The anxious thought which watches ever beside the pillow of the unhappy leaped at once to its place in her mind, giving her no respite. "You must write your story," it said. She got up with the resolution of despair, and went back to the table. "I will write this," she said, "and have done with it."

There was no difficulty now.

The facts in her mind ranged themselves instantly into dramatic shape; living words, words that throbbed with her own love, and pain, and regret, and longing, shaped themselves into eager thought.

That was the burden of the writing, and it was a very old one; but it seemed new now, because she wrote it with all her heart. When dawn broke she had eased herself of the phantom that had haunted her, and was free. How strange it is, this relief that comes to some of us after we have put into words the thoughts that torment us! She was free now, and she wrote the other story—her tale for the magazine; but she knew that it was a miserable affair.

Lorna was worse that morning. Her mother took her into her arms and looked into her suffering face. "If I keep her here she will leave me too," she said to herself. "I shall have nothing left."

She wrapped up her manuscript and took it herself to the editor. She wanted to bring his answer back. He was, in fact, waiting for the story to go on printing, and he was willing to look at it at once. She sat and watched him as he did so, with very little hope in her face. He read it carefully at first, then he turned over the pages rapidly, and finally put the manuscript down.

"I am very sorry," he said, "but it won't do. It isn't up to your usual level. I would make it do if I could, but—it isn't possible."

"I knew," she said, "it wouldn't."

He looked at her in surprise, for she was unfolding another roll of manuscript.