| 246 | 247 | 248 | 249 | 250 |
| 1 | 74 | 149 | 223 | 297 |
|
When the aspiring Mwres effected his introduction to Elizabeth, it
seemed to him that his good fortune was complete. He fell in love with
her at once. Of course, he had always been falling in love since he was
sixteen, in accordance with the extremely varied recipes to be found in
the accumulated literature of many centuries. But this was different.
This was real love. It seemed to him to call forth all the lurking
goodness in his nature. He felt that for her sake he could give up a way
of life that had already produced the gravest lesions on his liver and
nervous system. His imagination presented him with idyllic pictures of
the life of the reformed rake. He would never be sentimental with her,
or silly; but always a little cynical and bitter, as became the past.
Yet he was sure she would have an intuition of his real greatness and
goodness. And in due course he would confess things to her, pour his
version of what he regarded as his wickedness--showing what a complex of
Goethe, and Benvenuto Cellini, and Shelley, and all those other chaps he
really was--into her shocked, very beautiful, and no doubt sympathetic
ear. And preparatory to these things he wooed her with infinite subtlety
and respect. And the reserve with which Elizabeth treated him seemed
nothing more nor less than an exquisite modesty touched and enhanced by
an equally exquisite lack of ideas.
Bindon knew nothing of her wandering affections, nor of the attempt made
by Mwres to utilise hypnotism as a corrective to this digression of her
heart; he conceived he was on the best of terms with Elizabeth, and had
made her quite successfully various significant presents of jewellery
248
Page
Quick Jump
|