The Wheel of Life eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 464 pages of information about The Wheel of Life.

The Wheel of Life eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 464 pages of information about The Wheel of Life.

CHAPTER VI

THE FEET OF THE GOD

When Kemper, in an emotional moment, had declared that he would give up his trip to Europe, he had expected that Laura would see in the sacrifice a convincing proof of the stability of his affection; but, to his surprise, she had accepted the suggestion as a shade too much in the natural order of events.  Europe, empty of his presence, would have been in her eyes a desert; and that any grouping of mountains or arrangement of buildings could offer the slightest temptation beside the promised month in the Adirondacks appeared to her as entirely beyond the question.  If the truth were told he did immeasurably prefer the prospect of a summer spent by her side, but he felt at the same time—­though he hardly admitted this even to himself—­that in remaining in America he was giving up a good deal of his ordinary physical enjoyments.  It was not that he wanted in the very least to go; he felt merely that he ought to have been seriously commended because he stayed away.  Since he had never relinquished so much as a day’s pleasure for any woman in the past, he was almost overcome by appreciation of his present generosity.

For a time the very virtue in his decision produced in him the agreeable humour which succeeds any particular admiration for one’s own conduct.  Of all states of mind the complacent suavity resulting from self-esteem is, perhaps, the most pleasantly apparent in one’s attitude to others; and no sooner had Kemper assured himself that he had made an unusual sacrifice for Laura than he was rewarded by the overwhelming conviction that she was more than worth it all.  In some way peculiar to the emotions her value increased in direct relation to the amount of pleasure he told himself he had given up for her sake.

When at last he had freed himself from a few financial worries he had lingered to attend to, and was hurrying toward her in the night express which left New York, he assured himself that now for the first time he was comfortably settled in a state which might be reasonably expected to endure.  The careless first impulse of his affection would wane, he knew—­it were as useless to regret the inevitable passing of the spring—­but beyond this was it not possible that Laura might hold his interest by qualities more permanent than any transient exaltation of the emotions?  He thought of the soul in her face rather than of the mere changing accident of form—­of the smile which moved like an edge of light across her eyes and lips—­and this rare spiritual quality in her appearance appealed to him at the instant as vividly as it had done on the first day he saw her.  This charm of strangeness had worn with him as nothing in the domain of the sensations had worn in his life before.  In the smoking car, when he entered it a little later, he found a man named Barclay, whom he saw sometimes at his club; and they sat talking

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The Wheel of Life from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.