"_Is_ there a single _joy_ or pain
That I may _never_ know?"

Stop a bit! What caught at your heart and worried you, Colonel, and
stabbed a little under your D. S. O.? Were you quite fair to that
lovely, high-spirited creature you married, all those years ago?

"_Take_ back your love, it is in vain ..."

Ah, Lady Mary, you are a good twelve stone nowadays, but when that
poor younger cousin gave you that look in the garden and the roses
crawled over the old dial in the moonlight, you were slighter, and
crueler!

"_Bid_ me good-_bye_ and _go_!"

It was a waltz, oh, yes, but it was a very Dance of Death to those of
us who had any parting to look back to, that changed our life--and we
could never go back again and make it better; never any more. That was
what cut so, and Margarita, dark and slim like a plain brown
nightingale, who leaves plumage to the raucous peacock because it
matters so little what she, the real queen of us all, wears--Margarita
spelled it out remorselessly, to the tune of a mess-room waltz, and
told us that youth is only once and so sweet and for so little time!
And the boy beside her smiled with pleasure and embroidered her rich,
clear-cut phrasing and annotated it and threw jewels and flowers of
unexpected chords through it and mocked the sad, charming fatalism of
it as only spendthrift youth can.

"_You_ do not _love_ me, no!
_Bid_ me good-_bye_ and go ..."

Cruel Margarita, how could you make the tears splash down the cheeks
of the poor little princess, who knew what was expected of her and had
no greater sin on her conscience than a tiny lock of her yellow hair
always warm, now, in the breast of a ridiculous second cousin on a
sheep-ranch in far Dakota, U. S. A.?

"Good-_bye_, good-_bye_, 'tis better so ..."

They stand so still in this picture, those big, non-committal British,
each gnawing his lip a little under the drooping mustache; the women's
shoulders are ivory against the panelled oak and bowls of Guelder
roses in Chinese bowls; that beautiful line from the base of the
throat to the top of the _corsage_ which America has not to give her
daughters, as yet, heaves and droops; the Romneys smile behind their
wax candles in sconces. It is only a waltz of the street, but she has
bewitched us with it, has our Margarita.

But strongest and clearest of all, keen in light and dense in shadow
like a Rembrandt, I see that extraordinary night in Trafalgar Squar