Upon mine eyes a cooling balsam lay,
Seeing I am aweary of the day.
But, lo! thy lips are ashen and they quake.
What spectral vision sees thou that can shake
Thy sweet composure, and thy heart dismay?
Perhaps some murderer's cruel eye agleam
Is fixed upon me, or some monstrous dream
Might bring such fearful guilt upon the head
Of my unvigilant soul as would arouse
The Borgian snake from her envenomed bed,
Or startle Nero in his golden house._

"Good stuff," Reginald remarked, laying down the manuscript; "when did
you write it?"

"The night when you were out of town," Ernest rejoined.

"I see," Reginald replied.

There was something startling in his intonation that at once aroused
Ernest's attention.

"What do you see?" he asked quickly.

"Nothing," Reginald replied, with immovable calm, "only that your state
of nerves is still far from satisfactory."

XVIII

After Ernest's departure Ethel Brandenbourg's heart was swaying hither
and thither in a hurricane of conflicting feelings. Before she had time
to gain an emotional equilibrium, his letter had hurled her back into
chaos. A false ring somewhere in Ernest's words, reechoing with an
ever-increasing volume of sound, stifled the voice of love. His jewelled
sentences glittered, but left her cold. They lacked that spontaneity
which renders even simple and hackeneyed phrases wonderful and unique.
Ethel clearly realised that her hold upon the boy's imagination had been
a fleeting midsummer night's charm, and that a word from Reginald's lips
had broken the potency of her spell. She almost saw the shadow of
Reginald's visage hovering over Ernest's letter and leering at her from
between the lines in sinister triumph. Finally reason came and
whispered to her that it was extremely unwise to give her heart into the
keeping of a boy. His love, she knew, would have been exacting,
irritating at times. He would have asked her to sympathise with every
phase of his life, and would have expected active interest on her part
in much that she had done with long ago. Thus, untruth would have stolen
into her life and embittered it. When mates are unequal, Love must paint
its cheeks and, in certain moods at least, hide its face under a mask.
Its lips may be honeyed, but it brings fret and sorrow in its train.

These things she told herself over and over again while she penned a
cool and calculating answer to Ernest's lette