But already Maurice’s momentary energy had crumbled. The melancholy of the wind, the sunset, seized him like a presage.
“Oh! Felicia,” he exclaimed, holding her closely, “will you always love me? You are so much stronger than I am.”
“But Maurice—dear—the only strong thing in me is my love for you.”
“No, no; not only that. You are not afraid so easily as I am. And this parting—you can bear it—with such calm!”
There was almost the sob of a reproach in his voice as he leaned his cheek to hers for comfort. The echo—as of an alien knock at the doors of her happiness, went through the peace, the radiance within. Tears sprang to her eyes.
“Why, Maurice!—calm! It’s only that loving you—having you to love me is so great, so wonderful, that even yet I can only feel the thankfulness—the beauty. Don’t you know that when you are gone my life will be only a waiting?” The tremor of pain in her, her trust in him, roused again a flare of his manliness.
“Not for long, dearest. Waiting isn’t a keen enough word for what I shall feel. Longing, longing, until I see you again.”
“Oh! it will be keener than mere waiting with me, too.” She felt dimly that she must not shackle him in the fight he was going to make for her by showing him what pain to her would be in the waiting.
They walked on. As they neared the house Felicia said, in a voice that had regained its quiet, “We must tell papa.”
Again in Maurice was that crumbling. The last embers of intoxication seemed, as she spoke, to die, to leave him looking at ashen realities. He would conquer poverty. Yes; but bind himself and her to face it—as yet menacing and unconquered? That would be to wrong her more deeply than she could understand. She must be free—free before the world; and fidelity to him merely a matter of feeling. And, thinking of freedom, his mind, with a pang of self-scorn, looked back for an ugly moment at the forfeited refuge—at Angela—not yet openly forfeited.