ncredible beauty, wherein mountain and forest and
lake were but the garments, diaphanous, impalpable, of some delicate,
indwelling light and fire spirit, which breathed and pulsed through the
solidity of rock, no less visibly than through the crystal leagues of
air or the sunlit spaces of water.

Yet presently, as it were, a hush of waiting, of tension, fell upon
their little party. Nature offered her best; but there was only an
apparent acceptance of her bounties. Through the outward flow of talk
and amusement, of wanderings on lake or hill, ugly hidden forces of pain
and strife, regret, misery, resistance, made themselves rarely yet
piercingly felt.

Julie drooped again. Her cheeks were paler even than when Meredith
arrived. Delafield, too, began to be more silent, more absent. He was
helpful and courteous as ever, but it began to be seen that his gayety
was an effort, and now and then there were sharp or bitter notes in
voice or manner, which jarred, and were not soon forgotten.

Presently, Meredith and the Duchess found themselves looking on,
breathless and astonished, at the struggle of two personalities, the
wrestle between two wills. They little knew that it was a renewed
struggle--second wrestle. But silently, by a kind of tacit agreement,
they drew away from Delafield and Julie. They dimly understood that he
pursued and she resisted; and that for him life was becoming gradually
absorbed into the two facts of her presence and her resistance.

"_On ne s'appuie que sur ce qui resiste_." For both of them these words
were true. Fundamentally, and beyond all passing causes of grief and
anger, each was fascinated by the full strength of nature in the other.
Neither could ever forget the other. The hours grew electric, and every
tiny incident became charged with spiritual meaning.

Often for hours together Julie would try to absorb herself in talk with
Meredith. But the poor fellow got little joy from it. Presently, at a
word or look of Delafield's she would let herself be recaptured, as
though with a proud reluctance; they wandered away together; and once
more Meredith and the Duchess became the merest by-standers.

The Duchess shrugged her shoulders over it, and, though she laughed,
sometimes the tears were in her eyes. She felt the hovering of passion,
but it was no passion known to her own blithe nature.

And if only this strange state of things might end, one way or other,
and set her free to throw her arms