"We shall become the same, we shall be one Spirit within two frames. Oh! wherefore two? One passion in twin-hearts, which grows and grew, Till, like two meteors of expanding flame, Those spheres instinct with it become the same, Touch, mingle, are transfigured: ever still Burning, yet ever inconsumable."
Graeme laid down the volume. His eyes were shining, and his face had become very pale.
"Nothing banal about that," he murmured; "no married sameness, no dreary domesticity. It’s all free and lawless, as it ought to be. God, the thing’s maddened me; I can’t keep still!" He sprang up, hesitated for a moment, and then hurrying below looked furtively up and down the decks. He searched the saloon, the music-room, the library, but all to no purpose; that which he sought was not there. Gradually he was seized with anger, then anxiety, and finally a sick longing. Restlessly he wandered about the ship, now trying to read, now pacing the decks, till at length the dinner-bugle sounded and he went below to dress.
"She shan’t escape me afterwards," he thought, watching her across the crowded saloon; "we’ll sit together away from the world, and the romance of our lives shall begin." Stara, nevertheless, did escape him, despite his vigilance, and, wait though he did till after the decks were in darkness, she appeared no more.
Sick with disappointment and a bitter sense of humiliation, he at length went down to his cabin, and, flinging himself on the bed, tried hard to sleep. But the bells clanged the hours away and sleep refused to come, till at last he rose from the tumbled bed and sat up, irresolution in his eyes.
"Sanders told me not to," he muttered; "he said for me it was fatal, but what am I to do? I shall go mad if I don’t sleep. I don’t care—I will," and Hector switched on the light, dragged out a dressing-case and took out a small phial containing tabloids.
"Thank heaven," he murmured drowsily, half an hour later; "better than all the natural sleep in the world. Stara..." His eyes closed, and he fell asleep at last.
The old proverb, "One man may better steal a horse, than another look over the hedge," like most sayings of its kind, possesses a very deep meaning, particularly when applied to the passions and emotions by which human nature is swayed.