The Truth About Tristrem Varick

t of their speech: it was about a woman. Beyond, another group was listening to that story of the eternal feminine which is everlastingly the same. Within, the a

ghing conspicuously together, were joined by some clerks, with whom they paired off and disappeared. At the corner, through the intersecting thoroughfares came couple after couple, silent for the most part, as though oppressed by the invitations of the night. Beyond, in the shadows of the Square, the benches were filled with youths and maidens, who sat hand-in-ha

a street-car which had stayed his passage he saw the conductor blow a kiss to a hurrying form, and through an open window of Delmonico's h

tnesses a festival in which there is no part for him. The town reeked with love as a brewery reeks with b

assing 'bus. It was inexplicable to him that the night before she should have let him go without a word as to her movements. It seemed to be understood that he was to come again to wish her a pleasant journey. And when was he to come if not that very evening? Surely at the time she had forgotten this engagement with the Wainwarings, and some note had been left for him at t

e house. On the stoop a serva

eh, d

ered, promptly. "Miss Ra

t had been mistaken. Miss Raritan was not at her accustomed place, and he stood at the door-way gazing about in uncertainty. But in an instant, echoing from the room b

but not Tristrem. He felt vaguely alarmed: there came to him that premonition without which no misfortune ever occurs; and suddenly the alarm changed to bewilderment. The man had turned: it was Royal Weldon. Tristrem could not credit his senses. He raised his hand to his head: it did not seem possible that a felon could have told a more wanton lie than he had been told but little over an hour before; and yet the teller of that lie was h

under the influence of a mesmerist; and when the curtain fell ag

e dead than to feel it at the mercy of the living? We may prate as we will, but there are many things less endurable than the funeral of the best-beloved. Death is by no means the worst that can come. Whoso discovers that affection reposed has been given to an illusory representation; to one not as he is

that morning, but in the afternoon the weather had moderated, and they had both gone to skate. And then the day he first came. He remembered his good looks, his patronizing, precocious ways; everything, even to the shirt he wore-blue, striped with white-and the watch with

trance to Weldon's departure, was compassed in less than a minute, yet during that fragment of time there had been enacted a drama

in search of sympathy, he turned to Miss Raritan. The girl had thrown herself in a chair, and sat

don't see," he added, after a moment-"I don't understand why

ar what he

response shook hi

ks from white h

id, and raising her arm to her face, she made a gestu

he done? Wha

m to me." She buried her face a

time to the dining-room and then back to the parlor which he had first entered. And after a while Miss Raritan stood up from her seat and as though impelled by the nervousness of her comp

ay to me last n

d-you asked me-I said

think so

way

I will be

one. His hopes had scattered before him like last year's leaves. He had groped in shadows and had been conscious only of a blind alley, with a dead wall, somewhere, near at hand. But now, abruptly, the shadows had gone, the blind alley had changed

h which he roamed that, for the first time that eveni

say anything ridiculo

trem caught the finger, and kissed

happiness to a girl to know that she fills a heart to fulfilment itself, that she dwells in thought as the substance of thought, that she animates each fibre of a

de, and it was delivered with a seriousness that befitted

rem." That was all. But she l

et it lie unrebellious in his own. And in this fashion they sat and mapped the chartless future. Had Tristrem been

er," she said, wit

is five m

are short,

nd besides," he added, with the cogent egotism of an acce

k edelweiss and myosotis, as all engaged people do." She said th

Tristrem was obl

fterward we wi

d stripes fluttering in her voice, and in a tone which one migh

reat city, at least not to my thinking. Collectively it is great, I admit, but individually not, and that is to me t

e once that Par

le ages over again. In London we can get the flush of the nineteenth century. There is all of Italy, from the lakes to Naples. We can take a doge's pa

Ai

a; tell me, you will give up all t

he stage is one of them. I should have adopted it long ago, had it not been for mother. She seems to think that a Raritan-but there, you know what mothers are.

t obedience, yet her voice

hould go. He had been afloat in unnavigated seas of happiness, but still in his heart he felt the burn of a red, round wou

he was about to leave, "

before she spoke. Then catching his face

se," she whispered, and

presently, when he left the house, he reeled as though