Risca looked about the room. Yes, everything was Stella. And behold there was one new thing, essentially Stella, which he had not noticed before. Surely it had been put there since his last visit.
In her own bedroom had hung since her imprisonment a fine reproduction of Watt's “Hope,” and, child though she was, she had divined, in a child's unformulative way, the simple yet poignant symbolism of the blindfold figure seated on this orb of land and sea, with meek head bowed over a broken lyre, and with ear strained to the vibration of the one remaining string. She loved the picture, and with unconscious intuition and without consultation with Wratislaw, who would have been horrified at its domination of his Adam room, had ordained that a similar copy should be hung on the wall facing the pillow of her Great High Belovedest's bed.
The application of the allegory to his present state of being was startlingly obvious. Risca knitted a puzzled brow. The new thing was essentially Stella, yet why had she caused it to be put in his room this day of all disastrous days? Was it not rather his cousin Julia's doing? But such delicate conveyance of sympathy was scarcely Julia's way. A sudden dread stabbed him. Had Stella herself heard rumours of the tragedy? He summoned Herold, who had a prescriptive right to the adjoining room.
“If any senseless fools have told her, I 'll murder them,” he cried.
“The creatures of the sunset told her--at least as much as it was good for her to know,” said Herold.
“Do you mean that she did it in pure ignorance?”
“In the vulgar acceptance of the word, yes,” smiled Herold. “Do you think that the human brain is always aware of the working of the divine spirit?”
“If it's as you say, it's uncanny,” said Risca, unconvinced.
Yet when Sir Oliver and Julia both assured him that Stella never doubted his luxurious happiness, and that the ordering of the picture was due to no subtle suggestion, he had to believe them.
“You always make the mistake, John, of thinking Stellamaris mortal,” said Herold, at the supper-table, for, on receipt of the young men's telegram, the Blounts had deferred their dinner to the later hour of supper. “You are utterly wrong,” said he. “How can she be mortal when she talks all day to winds and clouds and the sea-children in their cups of foam? She's as elemental as Ariel. When she sleeps, she's really away on a sea-gull's back to the Isles of Magic. That's why she laughs at the dull, clumsy old world from which she is cut off in her mortal guise. What are railway-trains and omnibuses to her? What would they be to you, John, if you could have a sea-gull's back whenever you wanted to go anywhere? And she goes to places worth going to, by George! What could she want with Charing Cross or the Boulevard des Italians? Fancy the nymph Syrinx at a woman writers' dinner!”