“Do you mean that if I were happy—married to Maurice—you would be happier too?”
Geoffrey, looking away from her, did not speak for some moments. Her question hardly required an answer. It was of its further suggestions he was thinking.
“Do you think that Maurice would make you happy?” he asked.
“I wouldn’t care. The word would mean such different things. Unhappiness with him would be happiness.”
“You love him—you are sure—so much?”
“You know; you must see.” She leaned her face into her palms, not weeping, with a weariness too deep for tears, and again her tragic sincerity made her seem far from him.
“You must have courage,” said Geoffrey, after a little while. He had taken out his pocket-book and laid the snowdrops neatly away within it. “You are both young. Maurice has talent.”
“Ah; how can I have courage if he has none? See how that embitters it all, even though I know that it is the truest courage in him to set me free. How can I hope when he tells me not to? For months I have had courage; for months I have hoped. Day after day when I woke I said to myself, ‘He will come to-day; he must come to-day!’ How I waited—how I hoped. And then came the time when the letters stopped. I don’t know how I lived. But now, in looking back, it all seems rapture; the time when I could wait—and could hope.”
Her long sighing breaths shook Geoffrey more than her sobbing.
“Ah! don’t suffer so!” he pleaded.