th
fading gleam. Overhead began a restlessness in the clouds, as of a giant
drowsily shuffling off some of his bedclothes; but as yet he slept, and
only the silver bosom of his spouse, the moon, was uncovered.

When they landed, the streets of Tyre were already light, but empty, as
though they had got up early to meet some one who had not arrived. Damon
sped through them like a sea-gull that has the harbour to itself, and
was not long in reaching the theatre. How desolate the play-bills looked
that had been so companionable but three or four hours before! And there
was her photograph! Surely it was an omen.

"Ah, my angel! See, I am bringing you my heart in a song. 'All my heart
in this my singing!'"

He dropped the letter into the box; but, as he turned away, momentarily
glancing up the long street, he caught sight of an approaching figure
that could hardly be mistaken. Good Heavens! it was Pythias, and he too
was carrying a letter.

CHAPTER XIV

CONTRIBUTIONS TOWARDS A GENEALOGY

The egregious Miss Bashkirtseff did not greatly fascinate Esther. Her
egotism was too hard, too self-bounded, even for egotism, and there was
generally about her a lack of sympathy. Her passion for fame had
something provincial in its eagerness, and her broadest ideals seemed to
become limited by her very anxiety to compass them. Even her love of art
seemed a form of snobbery. In all these young Mesuriers there was
implicit,--partly as a bye-product of the sense of humour, and partly as
an unconscious mysticism,--a surprising instinct for allowing the
successes of this world their proper value and no more. Even Esther, who
was perhaps the most worldly of them all, and whose ambitions were
largely social, as became a bonny girl whom nature had marked out to be
popular, and on whom, some day when Mike was a great actor,--and had a
theatre of his own!--would devolve the cares of populous "at home" days,
bright after-the-performance suppers, and all the various diplomacies of
the popular wife of fame,--even Esther, however brilliant her life might
become, would never for a moment imagine that such success was a thing
worth winning, at the expense of the smallest loss to such human
realities as the affection she felt for Mike and Henry. To love some one
well and faithfully, to be one of a little circle vowed to eternal
fidelity one to the other,--such was the initial success of these young
lives; and it was to make them all their da