The Woodlanders

"Then the fire would have burned higher and higher. What would have

immediately followed I know not; but sorrow and sickness of heart at

last."

"Why?"

"Well--that's the end of all love, according to Nature's law. I can

give no other reason."

"Oh, don't speak like that," she exclaimed. "Since we are only

picturing the possibilities of that time, don't, for pity's sake, spoil

the picture." Her voice sank almost to a whisper as she added, with an

incipient pout upon her full lips, "Let me think at least that if you

had really loved me at all seriously, you would have loved me for ever

and ever!"

"You are right--think it with all your heart," said he. "It is a

pleasant thought, and costs nothing."

She weighed that remark in silence a while. "Did you ever hear

anything of me from then till now?" she inquired.

"Not a word."

"So much the better. I had to fight the battle of life as well as you.

I may tell you about it some day. But don't ever ask me to do it, and

particularly do not press me to tell you now."

Thus the two or three days that they had spent in tender acquaintance

on the romantic slopes above the Neckar were stretched out in

retrospect to the length and importance of years; made to form a canvas

for infinite fancies, idle dreams, luxurious melancholies, and sweet,

alluring assertions which could neither be proved nor disproved. Grace

was never mentioned between them, but a rumor of his proposed domestic

changes somehow reached her ears.

"Doctor, you are going away," she exclaimed, confronting him with

accusatory reproach in her large dark eyes no less than in her rich

cooing voice. "Oh yes, you are," she went on, springing to her feet

with an air which might almost have been called passionate. "It is no

use denying it. You have bought a practice at Budmouth. I don't blame

you. Nobody can live at Hintock--least of all a professional man who

wants to keep abreast of recent discovery. And there is nobody here to

induce such a one to stay for other reasons. That's right, that's

right--go away!"

"But no, I have not actually bought the practice as yet, though I am

indeed in treaty for it. And, my dear friend, if I continue to feel

about the business as I feel at this moment--perhaps I may conclude

never to go at all."