320 The Real Charlotte. 



the margin of the water, and as he felt the heat of the sun 

 and the half-forgotten largeness of summer in the air, he 

 could have believed himself back in the August of last year, 

 and he turned his eyes to the trees of Rosemount as if the 

 sight of them would bring disillusionment. It was some 

 time now since he had first been made ashamed of the dis- 

 covery that disillusionment also meant relief For some 

 months he had clung to his dream ; at first helplessly, with 

 a sore heart, afterwards with a more conscious taking hold, 

 as of something gained, that made life darker, but for ever 

 richer. It had been torture of the most simple, unbear- 

 able kind, to drive away from Tally Ho, with the knowledge 

 that Hawkins was preferred to him ; but sentiment had 

 deftly usurped the place of his blind suffering, and that stage 

 came that is almost inevitable with poetic natures, when the 

 artistic sense can analyse sorrow, and sees the beauty of de- 

 feat. Then he had heard that Francie was going to marry 

 Lambert, and the news had done more in one moment to 

 disillusion him than common sense could do in years. The 

 thought stung him with a kind of horror for her that she 

 could tolerate such a fate as marrying Roddy Lambert. He 

 knew nothing of the tyrannies of circumstance. To pros- 

 perous young men like Christopher, poverty, except bare- 

 footed and in rags, is a name, and unpaid bills a joke. 

 That Albatross Villa could have driven her to the tremen- 

 dous surrender of marriage was a thing incredible. All 

 that was left for him to believe was that he had been mis- 

 taken, and that the lucent quality that he thought he had 

 found in her soul had existed only in his imagination. Now 

 when he thought of her face it was with a curious half re- 

 gret that so beautiful a thing should no longer have any 

 power to move him. Some sense of loss remained, but it 

 was charged with self pity for the loss of an ideal. Another 

 man in Christopher's position would not probably have 

 troubled himself about ideals, but Christopher, fortunately, 

 or unfortunately for him, was not like other men. 



The fact must even be faced that he had probably never 

 been in love with her, according to the common acceptation 

 of the term. His intellect exhausted his emotions and killed 

 them with solicitude, as a child digs up a flower to see if it 

 is growing, and his emotions themselves had a feminine re- 



