“With me?”
“Yes; you seem so excited.”
“Oh, nothing,” he said, shrinking from the sharpness of that scrutiny in a woman’s eyes, which, when it begins the perusal of a man’s soul, astonishes and intimidates him; he never perhaps becomes able to endure it with perfect self-control. “I suppose a slight degree of excitement in meeting you may be forgiven me.” He smiled under the unrelaxed severity of her gaze.
“Was Mrs. Bowen saying anything about me?”
“Not a word,” said Colville, glad of getting back to the firm truth again, even if it were mere literality.
“We have made it up,” she said, her scrutiny changing to a lovely appeal for his approval. “What there was to make up.”
“Yes?”
“I told her what you had said. And now it’s all right between us, and you mustn’t be troubled at that any more. I did it to please you.”
She seemed to ask him with the last words whether she really had pleased him, as if something in his aspect suggested a doubt; and he hastened to reassure her. “That was very good of you. I appreciate it highly. It’s extremely gratifying.”
She broke into a laugh of fond derision. “I don’t believe you really cared about it, or else you’re not thinking about it now. Sit down here; I want to tell you of something I’ve thought out.” She pulled him to the sofa, and put his arm about her waist, with a simple fearlessness and matter-of-course promptness that made him shudder. He felt that he ought to tell her not to do it, but he did not quite know how without wounding her. She took hold of his hand and drew his lax arm taut. Then she looked up into his eyes, as if some sense of his misgiving had conveyed itself to her, but she did not release her hold of his hand.
“Perhaps we oughtn’t, if we’re not engaged?” she suggested, with such utter trust in him as made his heart quake.
“Oh,” he sighed, from a complexity of feeling that no explanation could wholly declare, “we’re engaged enough for that, I suppose.”
“I’m glad you think so,” she answered innocently. “I knew you wouldn’t let me if it were not right.” Having settled the question, “Of course,” she continued, “we shall all do our best to keep our secret; but in spite of everything it may get out. Do you see?”
“Well?”
“Well, of course it will make a great deal of remark.”
“Oh yes; you must be prepared for that, Imogene,” said Colville, with as much gravity as he could make comport with his actual position.
“I am prepared for it, and prepared to despise it,” answered the girl. “I shall have no trouble except the fear that you will mind it.” She pressed his hand as if she expected him to say something to this.
“I shall never care for it,” he said, and this was true enough. “My only care will be to keep you from regretting. I have tried from the first to make you see that I was very much older than you. It would be miserable enough if you came to see it too late.”
“I have never seen it, and I never shall see it, because there’s no such difference between us. It isn’t the years that make us young or old—who is it says that? No matter, it’s true. And I want you to believe it. I want you to feel that I am your youth—the youth you were robbed of—given back to you. Will you do it? Oh, if you could, I should be the happiest girl in the world.” Tears of fervour dimmed the beautiful eyes which looked into his. “Don’t speak!” she hurried on. “I won’t let you till I have said it all. It’s been this idea, this hope, with me always—ever since I knew what happened to you here long ago—that you might go back in my life and take up yours where it was broken off; that I might make your life what it would have been—complete your destiny—”
Colville wrenched himself loose from the hold that had been growing more tenderly close and clinging. “And do you think I could be such a vampire as to let you? Yes, yes; I have had my dreams of such a thing; but I see now how hideous they were. You shall make no such sacrifice to me. You must put away the fancies that could never be fulfilled, or if by some infernal magic they could, would only bring sorrow to you and shame to me. God forbid! And God forgive me, if I have done or said anything to put this in your head! And thank God it isn’t too late yet for you to take yourself back.”
“Oh,” she murmured. “Do you think it is self-sacrifice for me to give myself to you? It’s self-glorification! You don’t understand—I haven’t told you what I mean, or else I’ve told it in such a way that I’ve made it hateful to you. Do you think I don’t care for you except to be something to you? I’m not so generous as that. You are all the world to me. If I take myself back from you, as you say, what shall I do with myself?”
“Has it come to that?” asked Colville. He sat down again with her, and this time he put his arm around her and drew her to him, but it seemed to him he did it as if she were his child. “I was going to tell you just now that each of us lived to himself in this world, and that no one could hope to enter into the life of another and complete it. But now I see that I was partly wrong. We two are bound together, Imogene, and whether we become all in all or nothing to each other, we can have no separate fate.”
The girl’s eyes kindled with rapture. “Then let us never speak of it again. I was
