CHAPTER XXII.

LIFE'S COMPENSATIONS.

MUCH had happened, though but a few hours had passed since Savrola left his house to hurry to the Mayoralty. The deep and intricate conspiracy, which had been growing silently and in secret for so many months, had burst on the world's stage and electrified the nations. All Europe had learned with amazement of the sudden and terrible convulsion that in a few hours had overthrown the Government which had existed for five years in Laurania. In the fighting that had raged throughout the ninth of September upwards of fourteen hundred persons had been killed and wounded. The damage done to property had been enormous. The Senate-House was in flames; the palace had been destroyed; both, together with many shops and private houses, had been looted by the mob and the mutineers. Fires were

still smouldering in several parts of the city; in many homes there were empty places and weeping women; in the streets the ambulances and municipal carts were collecting the corpses. It had been a momentous day in the annals of the State.

And all through the terrible hours Lucile had waited, listening to the sound of the musketry, which, sometimes distant and fitful, sometimes near and sustained, suggested the voice of a wrathful giant, now sunk in sulky grumblings, now raised in loud invective. She had listened in sorrow and suspense, till it was lost in the appalling din of the cannonade. At intervals, between the bathos of the material consolations of the old nurse, soup, custards, and the likeshe had prayed. Until four o'clock, when she had received a message from Savrola acquainting her with the tragedy at the palace, she had not dared to add a name to her appeals; but thenceforward she implored a merciful Providence to save the life of the man she loved. Molara she did not mourn: terrible and cruel as was his death, she could

not feel she had suffered loss; but the idea that he had been killed on her account filled her heart with a dreadful fear of guilt. If that were so, she said to herself, one barrier was removed only to be replaced by another. But the psychologist might cynically aver that force and death were the only obstacles that would restrain her affection for Savrola, for above all she prayed for his return, that she might not be left alone in the world.

Her love seemed all that was left to her now, but with it life was more real and strongly coloured than in the cold days at the palace amid splendour, power, and admiration. She had found what she had lacked, and so had he. With her it was as if the rising sunbeam had struck the rainbow from the crystal prism, or flushed the snow peak with rose, orange, and violet. With Savrola, in the fierce glow of love the steady bluewhite fires of ambition had become invisible. The human soul is subjected to many refining agents in the world's crucible. He was sensible of a change of mood and thought; no longer would he wave his hat

at Fate; to his courage he had now added. caution. From the moment when he had seen that poor, hideous figure lying on the steps of the palace, he had felt the influence of other forces in his life. Other interests, other hopes, other aspirations had entered his mind. He searched for different ideals and a new standard of happiness.

Very worn and very weary he made his way to his rooms. The strain of the preceding twenty-four hours had been tremendous, and the anxieties which he felt for the future were keen. The step he had taken in overruling the Council and sending the prisoners into foreign territory was one the results of which he could not quite estimate. It was, he was convinced, the only course; and for the consequences he did not greatly care, so far as he himself was concerned. He thought of Moret, -poor, brave, impetuous Moret, who would have set the world right in a day. The loss of such a friend had been a severe one to him, privately and politically. Death had removed the only disinterested man, the only one on

whom he could lean in the hour of need. A sense of weariness, of disgust with struggling, of desire for peace filled his soul. The object for which he had toiled so long was now nearly attained and it seemed of little worth, of little comparative worth, that is to say, beside Lucile.

As a Revolutionist he had long made such arrangements with his property as to make sure of a competence in another land, if he had to fly Laurania; and a strong wish to leave that scene of strife and carnage and to live with the beautiful woman who loved him took possession of his mind. It was, however, his first duty to establish a government in the place of that he had overthrown. Yet when he reflected on the crossgrained delegates, the mean pandering crowd of office-seekers, the weak, distrustful, timid colleagues, he hardly felt that he cared to try; so great was the change that a few hours had worked in this determined and aspiring man.

Lucile rose to meet him as he entered. Fate had indeed driven them together, for