The two were left together amongst all the empty chairs, in a silence that was hardly broken by the organist's movements at the far end of the hall, closing the stops and keys of his enormous instrument.
"Well," said Mr. Dalrymple, looking down upon his companion, who lifted to his sombre eyes a pale but solemn face, "well—so this is all, I suppose!"
Her lips twitched a little; she could not answer him.
"You are not sorry that I came, are you, Rachel? It will not make it harder for you, will it?"
"Oh, no, Roden! But it is you on whom it is so hard—you will be so lonely without me! I can't bear to think what I have brought on you—and you had so many troubles already!"
"Not you, dear—not you. And I can bear all my part of it, if only things go well with you."
"Why did you break that trace?" she exclaimed, with a touch of bitter passion. "But for that—but for two minutes lost—you would never have seen me, and then I should never have spoiled your life like this."
"But, dear, we are not going to regret that, I hope. We have got something 'saved from chance and change,' if not much, that to me at any rate—yes and to you too, I know—is worth even this heavy price that we are paying for it now. It need not spoil our lives, Rachel, to know—what we know. It is an agonising thing to see how blessed it might have been for us, and to be obliged to give it all up; but I shall never think of those two hours, when we belonged entirely to each other—only two hours, Rachel, out of our whole lives!—without being thankful for the chance which gave them to us. Yes, and I think we shall be the better for them—I don't say happier, because I really don't know what that word means—but I think life will somehow have a finer quality henceforth, whatever happens, on account of those two hours. Dear, I am forcing myself to give in to the hard fate that has done us out of our inheritance; but there is one thing that I don't think I could get reconciled to—and that is to thinking that you would ever live to wish that we had never known each other."
"I could not wish it," she whispered; "I could only try to persuade myself that I did."
"Do not try. You are under no obligation of duty to do that. Try to be happy with your husband—try not to fret over what is irrevocable, and not to hanker after what is hopeless. But don't try to turn me out of the only place in your life where I have a corner of my own. Let me keep the little of you that I have got—it is little enough! Do you remember what you said to me that night?—you said you had no rights in my past. He has no rights in our past. Keep it sacred, Rachel, for my sake. That will not hurt anybody. You are not afraid that such remembrances, if you shut them away in your heart, will militate against your efforts to do what is right by him? And you are not afraid that I will ever tempt or trouble you?"