call Godfrey fish-like. But ardours were not really in his line; too soon the rapturous lover subsided into the affectionate husband. Bernadette had shown no signs of noticing the change; perhaps she did not wish to check it. It may be that it coincided with a modification of her own feelings. At any rate, thus acquiesced in, it had gone further. Little of affection survived now, though they treated one another with the considerate politeness of an extinct passion. He gave her everything that she desired even to the straining of his income; he was the only person for whom she ever "put herself out." Here were reciprocal, if tacit, apologies for a state of affairs which neither of them really regretted.
She had loved him, though, once. She did not claim it as a merit; there it was, a curious fact in her past life at which, in her rare moments of introspection, she would smile. She had loved not only all that he brought ease, wealth, escape from sordidness; she had also loved him for bringing them. Even now sometimes she would love the memory of him as he had seemed in those days; then the considerate politeness would be coloured by a pretty tenderness, a sort of compassionate affection as for a man who had fallen from high estate, inevitably fallen but blamelessly. However these recrudescences on the whole embarrassed Godfrey Lisle, and Bernadette, laughing at herself, withdrew to a safe distance and to her real interests. Godfrey was not one of the interests of her life; he was only one of its conditions.
Into this household though not, of course, below the surface of it Arthur Lisle now made joyful and tremulous entry. His eyes were in no state to see clearly or to see far; they were glued to the central light, and for him the light burned bright to dazzling. Behold the vision that he saw the vision of a Reigning Beauty!
It is a large party. There is no getting near her at least no staying near. The crush forces a man away, however politely. But perhaps a far-off corner may afford a view, for a dexterous servant keeps clear a space just in front of her, and the onlooker is tall. They all come and speak to her, by ones and twos ex-beauties, would-be beauties, rival beauties; for the last she has a specially cordial greeting sometimes, if she knows them well, a word of praise for their gowns, always a quick approving glance at them. The great ladies come; for them a touch of deference, a pretty humility, a "Who am I that you should come to my house?" air, which gracefully masks her triumphant sense of personal power. The men come all the young men who would adore if they might, and are very grateful for their invitations; they pass quickly, each with his reward of an indolent smile of welcome. The choice young men come; them she greets with a touch of distance lest they should grow proud in their hearts. No favour in them to come far from it! Then an old man, a friend. Mark now the change; she is daughter-like in her affection and simplicity. Then perhaps a little stir runs through the company, a whisper, a craning of necks. A great man is coming for beauty can draw greatness. There comes a massive white head a ribbon and star perhaps, or the plain black that gives, not wears, such ornaments. He stays with her longer: there is no jostling now; the dexterous servant delays the oncoming stream of guests. Royal compliments are exchanged. It is a meeting between Potentates.
In some such dazzling colours may the ardent imagination of youth paint the quite ordinary spectacle of a pretty woman's evening party, while an old lady on one side of him complains that "everybody" is there, and an old man on the other says that it is a beastly crush, or damns the draught from a window behind him lucky, perhaps, if he does not damn the Potentates too, the one for keeping him from his bed, the other for marching through rapine to dismemberment, or some such act of policy plainly reprehensible.
Strange to think it is Youth that holds the brush again strange and intoxicating that this is the woman with whom he drives in the Park, of whose family luncheon he partakes, with whom he had tea yesterday, who makes a friend of him. She talked to him an hour yesterday, told him all about that hard childhood and girlhood of hers, how she had scanty food and coarse, had to make her own frocks and wash her own handkerchiefs; she said that she feared the hard training had made her hard, yet hoped with a sigh that it was not so, and seemed to leave the question to his sovereign arbitrament. She had made the little narrow home she came from real to him with cunning touches; she had made her leap of escape from it so natural, so touching. Of what the leap had brought her she had made light, had spoken with a gentle depreciation of the place her beauty had won "Such looks as
I have helped, I suppose, besides Godfrey's position" and let him see how much more to her taste was a quiet talk with a friend than all the functions of society. How much better than the receiving of Beauties and Potentates was a quiet hour in the twilight of her little den with Cousin Arthur!