Page:Walpole--portrait of man with red hair.djvu/297

 you, I love you. Like an uncle you know or at least like a brother. You've taken a match and set fire to this old tinder-box that's been dry and dusty so long, and now it's alight—such a pretty blaze!"

He broke away from them both with a smile that suddenly made him look young as they'd never seen him:

"I've danced the town, I've climbed rocks, I've dared the devil, I've fallen in love, and I know at last that there's such a hunger for beauty in my soul that it must go on and on and on. Why should it be there? My parents hadn't it, my sisters haven't it, no one tried to give it to me. I've done nothing with it until last night, but now when I've needed it, it's come to my help. I've touched life at last. I'm alive. I never can die any more!"

The macaw screamed again and again, beating at the cage with its wings.

"Hesther, never lose courage. Remember that he can't touch you, that no one can touch you. You're your own immortal mistress."

The red-lacquered clock struck the quarter, and at the same moment the sun hit the window. Strange to see how instantly that room with the coloured pagodas, the fantastic temple, the gilt chairs and the purple carpet shivered into tinsel. The dust floated on the ladder of the sun: the blue