"Did you care—so tremendously—about him?"—Lady Elliston asked, and her voice trembled. And, for answer, the drowned eyes looked up at her through strange, cold tears.
"Oh, my dear, my dear," Lady Elliston murmured. Her hand was still in Amabel's and she stood there beside her, her hand so held, for a long, silent moment. They had looked away from each other.
And in the silence each knew that it was the end and that they would see each other no more. They lived in different planets, under different laws; they could understand, they could trust; but a deep, transparent chasm, like that of the ether flowing between two divided worlds, made them immeasurably apart.
Yet, when she at last gently released Amabel's hand, drawing her own away. Lady Elliston said: "But,—won't you come out now?"
"Out? Where?" Amabel asked, in the voice of that far distance.
"Into the world, the great, splendid world."
"Splendid?"
"Splendid, if you choose to seize it and take what it has to give."
After a moment Amabel asked: "Has it given you so much?"
Lady Elliston looked at her from across the chasm; it was not dark, it held no precipices; it was made up only of distance. Lady Elliston saw; but she was loyal to her own world. "Yes, it has," she said. "I've lived; you have dreamed your life away. You haven't even a reality to mourn the loss of."