CHAPTER LXIII.
"VARIUM ET MUTABILE."
"You escaped us last night, Mrs Dudley," said one of her acquaintances next morning.
"Yes. I wanted to watch the dancing; but the salon gets so warm in the evening, I could not stand it. We went for a stroll instead."
"Neither of you gives us too much of your company, certainly. I am anxious to hear your husband's opinion of a leader in this morning's Times."
"Here he comes, then," said Mona, as Ralph appeared with a rug over his arm. "Captain Bruce wants to speak to you, dear. You will know where to find me by-and-bye."
She strolled on into the woods, and ensconced herself comfortably on a gnarled old trunk, to wait for her husband. It was not many minutes before he joined her.
"That's right!" he said, throwing himself on the grass at her feet, with a long sigh of content. "How you spoil one, dear, for other people's conversation!"
"I have not had a very alarming competitor this morning," she said, smiling.
"No; but if he had been an archangel, it would have made little difference. Go on, lady mine, talk to me—talk to me 'at lairge.' I want to hear your views about everything. Is not it delightful that we know each other so little?"
Mona laughed softly and then grew very grave.
"I hope you will say twenty years hence, 'How delightful it is that we know each other so well!'"
"I will say it now with all my heart! But it is very interesting to live when every little event of life, every picture one sees, every book one reads, has all the excitement of a lottery, till I hear your opinion of it."
Mona passed her hand through his hair. "Then I hope you will still say twenty years hence, 'How delightful it is that we know each other so little!'"
"I think there is little doubt of that. My conception of you is like a Gothic cathedral: its very beauty lies in the fact that one is always adding to it, but it is never finished. Or, shall I say of you what Kuenen says of Christianity?—'She is the most mutable of all things; that is her special glory.'"
"Varium et mutabile in fact! It is a pretty compliment, but I seem to have heard it before."
"Varium et mutabile semper femina," he repeated, smiling.
"A higher compliment was never paid to your sex. Varium et mutabile—like the sea! I never know whom I shall find when I meet you,—the high-souled philosopher, the earnest student, the brilliant woman of the world, the tender mother-soul, the frivolous girl, or the lovable child. I don't know which of them charms me most. And when I want something more than any of those, before I have time to call her, there she is,—my wife, 'strong and tender and true as steel.'"
Mona did not answer. Her turn would come another time. They knew each other too well to barter compliments like goods and coin across a counter.
"I thought you were going to talk to me," he said presently. "Let us talk about the things that can never be put into words. Imagine I am Gretchen, sitting at your feet. 'Glaubat du an Gott?'"
Mona smiled down on the upturned face.
"If Gretchen asked me, I hope the Good Spirit would give me words. If my husband asked me——"
"He does. 'Glaubst du an Gott?'"
Mona did not answer at once. She looked round at the silent eloquent world of olive-trees, with their grand writhing Laocoon-like stems, and their constant, ever-varying crown of leaves—those trees that seem to have watched the whole history of man, and that sum up in themselves all the mystery of his life, from the love of pleasure in the midst of pain, to the worship of sorrow in a world of beauty——
"Ralph," she said, "when you ask me I cannot tell; but I worship Him every moment of my life!"
She smiled. "You have surprised me out of my creed, and you see it is not a creed at all."
"Be thankful for that! It seems to me that the intensest moment in the life of a belief is when it is just on the eve of crystallising into a creed. Don't hurry it."
"No, I am content to wait. When I go to church, I always feel inclined to invert the words of the prayer, and say, 'Granting us in this world life everlasting, and, in the world to come, knowledge of Thy truth.'”