Emil took one of her little hands timidly. He turned a ring round and round on her tiny finger, staring at her, endeavouring to find words. Suddenly two arms were laid about his neck and all quivering in the storm of her own emotions, like a bird seeking shelter, she fluttered against his breast. Her hat had slipped to her shoulders. He felt that she was sobbing violently, and scarcely knowing what he did, he clasped her closely in his arms and muttering unintelligible words which he himself did not understand, he pressed his lips again and again to her small blond head. But the plum that tumbles into our lap without the asking is seldom as fine as the fruit we climb for, strain for, spend hours in thirsting after. Three weeks--and this fierce agitation of the senses had subsided. It was an excitement, a fever, which at the time had been augmented by so many equivocal influences; by the noise of the presses which had seemed to keep time to his pulses, by the gleam of the girl's jewels, by the softness of her attire, by the fact, more than all else, that she was his chief's daughter. A whiff of sea air and Emil looked back on the affair with utter weariness. Without a conscience, he was accustomed to follow simply the dictates of his own nature. The memory of the girl irked him, therefore with heavy sighs like a weary horse, he destroyed her letters. However, the phantom of love had passed very close, and it was not in vain that all the electric currents of his being had been set in motion. He was awake now to another world than that in which he had hitherto dwelt,--awake, with his great inquisitive eyes, attentive. It was at this juncture that Rachel Beckett dawned on his horizon. When she came round the rock leading the cow, a novel sensation convulsed that strange uncultivated heart of his. A man's heart is a garden in which, before the coming of death, many flowers of emotion bloom; and the history of these flowers is the history of his life. CHAPTER VIII IN THE CAUSE OF SCIENCE Since the night of Emil's departure, which had brought such terror to her heart, a divine serenity had fallen upon Mrs. St. Ives. His frequent letters, filled with the vitality of his genius and all radiant with love, were to her a second baptism of youth. Palpitating with enthusiasm, she carried them to her room where she read and reread them. Sometimes she wept over them, and for days after the receipt of one, she went about with an expression of utter peace. But when, for some reason, a letter failed to arrive, then in that house far removed from the scenes among which he dwelt, she would clasp her hands in silent agony, she would be given over to anxiety, glancing about her, more nervous than any bird; she would rebuke the teasing grandchildren and fiercely demand the letter which, she imagined, her daughter-in-law kept from her. Then became evident in her no longer the triumph of youth but the tragedy of age.