Diotimos Library · Literary Fiction Collection · English Edition
The Keepers of the People
A Critical Edition of the 1898 Novel
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English Edition · Branch 237 of 254
Chapter XVIII · The Divorce Law of Varandaleel · pp. 331–346
The Keepers of the People
p. 345He drew her to the seat beside the fountain, and sitting down with his arms round her, he kissed her, and said, “I wanted you long ago, in England. But I did not know how much, or I would never have left you behind. You would have come?”
“I do not know — I do not know,” Ruth murmured. “But if you had held me like this — and bidden me come — I do not think — I do not think — I could have said ‘no.’”
“The months were very, very slow bringing you to me. And all the while the fear lest you should never come made them slower. Were they slow to you, dear love? Did you too fear?”
“They were very slow; and I feared,” Ruth murmured. “And then when you came, I could hold you in my arms only for a moment, I could kiss you only once. In Varandaleel, as in England, the chains of kinship held me back from you; I might not touch a kinsman’s wife.”
“Yet we were together: and it was much,” Ruth murmured.
“Yes; it was much; but all the while my hunger and my thirst for you were growing. Sometimes, when you came glowing and radiant, my mouth grew parched, and the world trembled before my eyes, as I held myself back from seizing you in my arms.”
“Sometimes, when you came back tired from riding far into the country, my heart ached to soothe away your weariness,” she murmured. “And when you were fighting the Russians in the dark, my heart died in me.”
“To-morrow shall make you mine for all tomorrows,” he said.
“To-morrow?” said Ruth. “It is very soon.”
“Is it too soon, dear love? We have waited long.”
“No: it is — not — too soon,” said Ruth very low; and he felt her quiver in his arms.
He drew her face against his own; and they sat for a long while silent, in the ecstasy of passion, each heedless of everything in the world save the other’s nearness. Althea, gazing at them with fixed, unbelieving eyes, passed on the other side of the fountain, unseen.
At length with a deep, contented sigh, Ruth drew herself a little away, and said, “It is very late.”
They rose, and still holding one another, came slowly, on lingering feet, to the palace.
Socrates
Reading The Keepers of the People · Book II, Chapter XVIII · The Divorce Law of Varandaleel · Book II, Chapter XVIII · The Divorce Law of Varandaleel · pp. 331–346
Ask about a concept, passage, contradiction, or connection.
Socrates will begin with this book and its sources.About This Reading Edition
Edgar Jepson’s The Keepers of the People begins as a late-Victorian lost-kingdom romance and becomes an unsettling political argument. Ralph Falcon moves from an English country house to the hidden state of Varandaleel, where laughter, secrecy, violence, education, and the duties of rulers are tested against one another.
Historical Text
The novel was first published in London in 1898 by C. Arthur Pearson. This reading text follows the owner-supplied critical edition, whose copy-text is the Methuen Colonial Library issue of the same year digitised by the Internet Archive. The supplied editorial note records the edition’s corrections, normalisations, limits, and unresolved textual risks.
About This Edition
This English Edition preserves the complete supplied text and apparatus: the introduction, reading guide, key words, plot outline, editorial note, both books and all thirty chapters, and the end notes. Its reader branches end at paragraph boundaries, with the original chapter structure and chapter page references mapped to the 1898 printing.
Rights
Edgar Jepson’s 1898 novel is in the public domain. The introduction, reader’s guide, key words, outline, editorial note, notes, editorial arrangement, and design of the supplied edition are © 2026 Diotimos Editions.