In a way, half a lifetime had gone
since the day before, when he had first seen what he called to himself
"the captive maid." He had never been so happy in his life; and yet he
knew that he had not the faintest right to be happy. The girl who had so
upset his self-control as to make him stumble on her doorstep was the
wife of another man. It was, of course, silly to call him "another man,"
because he seemed a million miles away from any sphere in which Orlando
lived. Yet he was another man; and he was also the husband of the girl
who had made Orlando feel for the very first time a strange singing in
his veins. It actually was as though some wonderful, magnetic thing was
making his veins throb and every nerve tingle and sing.
"It beats me," he said to himself fifty times that day. He had never been
in love. He did not know what it was like, except that he had seen it
make men do silly things, just as drink did. He did not know whether he
was in love or not. It was absurd that a man should be in love with a
face at a window--a face with the beauty of a ghost rather than of a real
live woman.
Orlando had little evil in his nature; his eyes did not look towards
Tralee as did Burlingame's eyes. Nothing furtive stirred in Orlando's
intensely blue eyes. Whatever the feeling was, it was an open thing,
which had neither motive nor purpose behind it--just a thing almost
feminine in its nature.
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