CHAPTER III: NEW ACTORS, AND A NEW STAGE



When Argemone rose in the morning, her first thought was of
Lancelot. His face haunted her. The wild brilliance of his
intellect struggling through foul smoke-clouds, had haunted her
still more. She had heard of his profligacy, his bursts of fierce
Berserk-madness; and yet now these very faults, instead of
repelling, seemed to attract her, and intensify her longing to save
him. She would convert him; purify him; harmonise his discords.
And that very wish gave her a peace she had never felt before. She
had formed her idea; she had now a purpose for which to live, and
she determined to concentrate herself for the work, and longed for
the moment when she should meet Lancelot, and begin--how, she did
not very clearly see.

It is an old jest--the fair devotee trying to convert the young
rake. Men of the world laugh heartily at it; and so does the devil,
no doubt. If any readers wish to be fellow-jesters with that
personage, they may; but, as sure as old Saxon women-worship remains
for ever a blessed and healing law of life, the devotee may yet
convert the rake--and, perhaps, herself into the bargain.

Argemone looked almost angrily round at her beloved books and
drawings; for they spoke a message to her which they had never
spoken before, of self-centred ambition. 'Yes,' she said aloud to
herself, 'I have been selfish, utterly! Art, poetry, science--I
believe, after all, that I have only loved them for my own sake, not
for theirs, because they would make me something, feed my conceit of