those terrible
times. The sadness and the horror fell on Adrienne de St. Andre as it
fell on so many others, but besides the terror of those days she had to
bear a still heavier sorrow. There is no pang which the heart can suffer
like the realization, too late, that we have lost what we most prize;
that we have missed some great opportunity for happiness which can never
come to us again; that we have rejected and passed by what we would now
sell our souls to possess. This conviction, slowly borne in upon
Adrienne, caused her more anguish than she had supposed, in her
ignorance, anything in the world could make her feel. The man whose name
she bore was scarcely a memory to her. For the first time she knew what
love was and realized that she had cared for Calvert with all the
repressed tenderness and unsounded depths of her heart. Her very
helplessness, the impossibility to recall him, made him more dear to her
by far. A man can stretch out his hand and seize his happiness, but a
woman must wait for hers. And if it passes her by she must bear her hurt
in silence and as best she can. It was with a sort of blind despair that
Adrienne thought of Calvert and all that she had wilfully thrown away.
Had he been at her beck and call, fetched and carried for her, she would
never have loved him. But the consciousness that he was as proud as she,
that, though he was near her for so long, she could not lure him back,
that he could master his love and defy her beauty and charm, exercised a
fascination over her. And when he left her entirely and was gone away
without even seeing her, she suddenly realized how deeply she loved him.
We have all had such experiences--we live along, thinking of things
after a certain fashion, and suddenly there comes a day when everything
seems changed. It was so with Adrienne. All things seemed changed to
her, and in that bitter necromancy her pride was humbled. Wherever she
went there was but one dear face she longed to see--one dear face with
the quiet eyes she loved. There were days when she so longed to see him,
when the sound of his voice or the touch of his hand would have been so
inexpressibly dear to her, that it seemed as if the very force of her
passion must surely draw him back to her. But he never came. During
those two long years something went from her forever. She was not
conscious of it at the time--only of the dull ache, and feverish
longing, and utter apathy that seized her by turns. There