We
could have made it a daily." He searched in vain for a trace of raillery
in her voice; there was none; she seemed to intend her words to be taken
literally.
"I don't understand," he said. "I don't know what you mean."
"I mean that I want to stay here; that I ought to stay here; that my
conscience tells me I should--but I can't and it makes me very unhappy.
That was why I acted so badly."
"Your conscience!" he cried.
"Oh, I know what a jumble and puzzle it must seem to you."
"I only know one thing; that you are going away to-morrow morning, and
that I shall never see you again."
The darkness had grown heavy. They could not see each other; but a wan
glimmer gave him a fleeting, misty view of her; she stood half-turned away
from him, her hand to her cheek in the uncertain fashion of his great
moment of the afternoon; her eyes-he saw in the flying picture that he
caught--were adorably troubled and her hand trembled. She had been
irresistible in her gaiety; but now that a mysterious distress assailed
her, the reason for which he had no guess, she was so divinely pathetic;
and seemed such a rich and lovely and sad and happy thing to have come
into his life only to go out of it; and he was so full of the prophetic
sense of loss of her--it seemed so much like losing everything--that he
found too much to say to be able to say anything.
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