Where the Path Breaks

								

the face of a pretty woman, young looking till the girl came near....
The girl had come now! The cream-and-rose tints of her youth made the
other face old. This was rather pathetic. He remembered that it had so
impressed him more than once. Yet he had never been able to like the
mother.
The dream was growing in distinctness. They three--he and the girl and
the woman--were in a house. It was a beautiful old house, in the
country. Outside it was black and white, with elaborate patterns of oak
on plaster. A sheet of water lay so near that the black and white front
was reflected in it, like a dream within a dream. The calm water was
asleep, and dreaming the house; and some great dark trees and clumps of
rhododendrons were dreaming also, which seemed very confusing, and made
him doubt whether there were any such soul as his, or whether after all
he were only the spirit of the water or the trees, and had never known
this girl who was walking with the ugly man. Yet it seemed to be the
ugly man's house, and he knew what the man was thinking. They were one
and the same, at all events in the dream. And though he was out of
doors with the girl, he could see every room in the house as plainly as
he could see the lake and the trees and the pink rhododendrons. He
seemed to pass through each room, one after another, because the girl
was extolling the charm of the house, and his mind moved here and there
following her words, picturing her, white and flower-like against a
dark oak paneling, or old brocade, or hanging of faded tapestry.
Yes, it was a beautiful house. He had that to offer her, and money too.
There were women who would take him because of what he had to give. And
there was something else. What was it? Oh, a title. Not much of a
title. He couldn't believe she would be influenced by a trifle like
that. She was too perfect, too wonderful. A great many men with nobler
titles and more money must have asked her to marry them, or they would
ask her in future; for she was still very young. So far she had never
fallen in love. She had told him so.
"Not seriously in love," she had said, half laughing, and half in
earnest. "There was only my cousin. I adored him when I was child. But
I haven't seen him since I was sixteen. And now I'm twenty-one. He was
most awfully good looking, and I thought he was a knight and a hero.
Perhaps if he came back from India I should be disappointed in him."
Queer that the groping soul should hold an echo of these chance words
about India, though there was none for the name of the cousin, nor even
of the girl herself. This made the awakening man wonder again if the
girl had existed, or whether she lived only in his dreams. It was a
vaguely sweet, vaguely sad dream, which seemed to have ended before it
was fairly begun, with a very sorrowful ending which he couldn't quite
recall yet. He wished to go on dreaming, and to change the end if he
could.
The girl and her mother were visiting the ugly man at the old black and