“That is pure fairy-tale, you know,” he said. “People can’t marry on only the prospect of starvation. How could Maurice have spoken with only that prospect to offer? I am not blaming him. I only want to understand.”
“We fell in love. How could he help speaking? To look was enough. We must have known that we adored each other. Oh, my poor Maurice! my darling Maurice! What he has suffered, too, I know—it is part of my own suffering—it aches and aches in me. But I would far rather suffer and die of suffering than not have known—not have had him tell me. At least now I have the memory. I know that we once were happy.”
Geoffrey did not wince. He was glad to feel her trust in her loss of all reserve; but, with his new insight, he felt in it, too, the helpless abandonment of a nervous break-down. She leaned against the tree exhausted, hardly able to stand but for the support.
“Sit down here,” he said, indicating a fallen tree-trunk, a felled and prostrate oak-tree whose shade had made the clearing where they stood. “All this has been too much for you. You are ill. I can see it.”
She obeyed him blindly, stumbling to the seat, her hand before her face.
He sat down beside her and, his hands clasped as he leaned forward, his arms upon his knees, he stared at the ground.
The distant fluting of a bird, reiterating with delicate precision its little loop of clear, soft notes, the urgent rhythm of a brook, joyous, melancholy, a shiver of bells in loneliness, were the only sounds. Felicia dried her eyes and raised her head.
How fresh and keen and hopeless all memory became in the midst of that young renewal. Her longing was like a sword in her heart. To see Maurice! If only she could see him! If only it were Maurice beside her. Like yesterday, it seemed, that distant autumn evening; the dim flowers, the sad sunset, and Maurice’s sad face.
The thought of the helpless longing near her, the useless love, brought a sudden self-reproach; it mastered the torment of recollection.
“See,” she said, in a shaken but different voice, “the snowdrops; they are all out.”