Rose MacLeod

								

dared dwell upon her as she ruthlessly seemed. She was again like the
bright American air, too determinate, too sharp. She almost hurt the
eyes. He wondered vaguely over several things he was unwilling to ask
her, since he could not bear to bring their difference to a finished
issue: why she cherished a boundless belief in the father and only
reprobation for the daughter, when she had seen neither the one nor the
other; why she had this vivid enthusiasm for the charity that embraces
the world and none for a friendless child at her door. Their interview
seemed to have dropped flat in inconceivable collapse; what was to have
been the beginning of their dual life was only the encounter of a
hand-to-hand discussion. He tried to summon back the vividness to his
fagged emotions, and gave it up. Then he ventured to think of his
imperial lady, and found a satirical note beating into his mind. He took
refuge in the practical.
"I have not seen Osmond yet."
"Wasn't he there to meet you?"
"No. Grannie said I should have to go down to the plantation, to find
him. Does he keep up his old ways, Electra?"
"Yes. Sleeping practically out of doors summer and winter, or in the
shack, as he calls it,--that log hut he put up years ago. Haven't you
known about him? Hasn't he written?"
"Oh, he writes, but not about himself. Osmond wouldn't do that. Somehow
grandmother never wrote any details about him either. I fancied he
didn't want her to. So I never asked. She only said he was 'well.' You
know Osmond always says that himself."
"I believe he is well," said Electra absently. She was thinking of the
alien presence at the other house. "He looks it--strong, tanned. Osmond
is very impressive somehow. It's fortunate he wasn't a little man."
Peter made one of the quick gestures he had learned since he had been
away from her. They told the tale of give and take with a more mobile
people. He could not ask her to ignore Osmond's deformity, yet he could
not bear to hear her speak of it. Osmond was, he thought, a colossal
figure, to be accepted, whatever his state, like the roughened rock that
builds the wall. He rose, terminating, without his conscious will, an
interview that was to have lasted, if she had gone to the other house
with him and he had returned again with her, the day long.
"I must see Osmond," he hesitated.
Electra, too, had risen.
"Yes," she said conformably, though the table, she knew, would be laid
for them both in what had promised to be their lovers' seclusion.
"I will come back. This afternoon, Electra?"
That morning, the afternoon had been his and hers only. She had expected
to listen to the recital of his triumphs in Paris, and to scan eagerly
the map of his prospects which was to show her way also. And she too
opened her lips and spoke without preconsidered intent.
"This afternoon I shall be busy. I have to go in town."
"You won't--" he hesitated again. "Electra, you won't call at the house