Page:The Yellow Book - 13.djvu/57

Rh to be sure; but the meteorological influences were, for that, only the more potent. He remembered her shining eyes now as not merely whimsical and ardent, but as pensive, appealing, tender; he remembered her face as a face seen in starlight, ethereal and mystic; and her voice as low music, far away. He recalled their last meeting as a treasure he had possessed and lost; he blamed himself for the frivolity of his talk and manner, and for the ineffectual impression of him this must have left upon her. Perpetually thinking of her, he was perpetually sighing, perpetually suffering strange, sudden, half painful, half delicious commotions in the tissues of his heart. Every morning he rose with a replenished fund of hope: this day at last would produce her. Every night he went to bed pitying himself as bankrupt of hope. And all the while, though he pined to talk of her, a curious bashfulness withheld him; so that, between him and Hilary, for quite a fortnight she was not mentioned. It was Hilary who broke the silence.

"Why so pale and wan?" Hilary asked him. "Will, when looking well won’t move her, looking ill prevail?"

"Oh, I am seriously love-sick," cried Ferdinand Augustus, welcoming the subject. "I went in for a sensation, and I’ve got a real emotion."

"Poor youth! And she won't look at you, I suppose?" was Hilary s method of commiseration.

"I have not seen her for a mortal fortnight. She has completely vanished. And for the first time in my life I'm seriously in love."

"You're incapable of being seriously in love," said Hilary.

"I had always thought so myself," admitted Ferdinand Augustus. "The most I had ever felt for any woman was a sort of mere lukewarm desire, a sort of mere meaningless titillation. Rh