Page:The Yellow Book - 04.djvu/35

Rh and a radiantly, perhaps even a dangerously handsome woman. I saw suddenly that she was not merely an attribute, an aspect of another, not merely Alfred Childe's daughter; she was a personage in herself, a personage to be reckoned with.

This sufficiently obvious perception came upon me with such force, and brought me such emotion, that I dare say for a little while I sat vacantly staring at her, with an air of preoccupation. Anyhow, all at once she laughed, and cried out, "Well, when you get back ?" and, "Perhaps," she questioned, "perhaps you think it polite to go off wool-gathering like that?" Whereupon I recovered myself with a start, and laughed too.

"But say that you are surprised, say that you are glad, at least," she went on.

Surprised! glad! But what did it mean? What was it all about?

"I couldn't stand it any longer, that's all. I have come home. Oh, que c'est bon, que c'est bon, que c'est bon!"

"And—England?—Yorkshire?—your people?" "Don't speak of it. It was a bad dream. It is over. It brings bad luck to speak of bad dreams. I have forgotten it. I am here—in Paris—at home. Oh, que c'est bon!" And she smiled blissfully through eyes filled with tears.

Don't tell me that happiness is an illusion. It is her habit, if you will, to flee before us and elude us; but sometimes, sometimes we catch up with her, and can hold her for long moments warm against our hearts.

"Oh, mon père! It is enough—to be here, where he lived, where he worked, where he was happy," Nina murmured afterwards.

She had arrived the night before; she had taken a room in the Hotel d Espagne, in the Rue de Medicis, opposite the Luxembourg Garden. I was as yet the only member of the old set she had