"No," he continued; "I have been so madly happy in being with you that
I've fairly worn out your patience. I've haunted you all day, and
I have----"
"All that has nothing to do with it," she said, slowly. "Just after you
left, this afternoon, I found that I could not stay here. My people are
going abroad, to Dresden, at once, and I must go with them. That's what
almost made me cry. I leave to-morrow morning."
He felt something strike at his heart. In the sudden sense of dearth he
had no astonishment that she should betray such agitation over her
departure from a place she had known so little, and friends who certainly
were not part of her life. He rose to his feet, and, resting his arm
against a sycamore, stood staring away from her at nothing.
She did not move. There was a long silence.
He had wakened suddenly; the skies had been sapphire, the sward emerald,
Plattville a Camelot of romance; to be there, enchantment--and now, like a
meteor burned out in a breath, the necromancy fell away and he gazed into
desolate years. The thought of the Square, his dusty office, the bleak
length of Main Street, as they should appear to-morrow, gave him a faint
physical sickness. To-day it had all been touched to beauty; he had felt
fit to live and work there a thousand years--a fool's dream, and the
waking was to emptiness.
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