"I met him over a year ago," said Allida. "I am very miserable at home. I have grown up alone. My mother and I have never been at all sympathetic. I hardly saw her when I was growing up. She only wanted to marry me off as soon as possible, and—she hasn't found it easy to marry me off. I haven't money—or looks in particular—oh, but I can't go into all that! You know mamma. I have hated my life with her."
"Yes, yes. I understand."
"Not that there is any harm in mamma," Allida amended, with a weary exactitude; "everybody understands that, too. Only she is so utterly silly, so utterly selfish. This all sounds horrible."
"I understand."
"I met him. I had never seen any one so dear, so sympathetic. I seemed to breathe with happiness when he was there. It was like morning sunlight after a hot, glaring ballroom, being with him. He never cared one bit for me; but—the first time I saw him he smiled at me, and he was kind and dear to me,—as he would be to any one,—and from that first moment I loved him—oh, loved him!"
She paused, a sacred sweetness in the pause.
Haldicott, sitting beside her in the fog, felt the presence of something radiant and snowy.
"And I sometimes thought and hoped—that he would care for me. I wrote to him all the time, letters I never sent; but I wrote as if he were to see them—some day. It's almost strange to me to think that such love didn't bring him to me by its very force and yearning. One hears, you know, of thoughts making themselves felt—becoming realities. I wonder where all those thoughts of mine went!"
He saw them all—those white, innocent thoughts—flying out like birds, like a flock of white birds, and disappearing in the darkness. How could a soul not have felt them fluttering about it, crying vainly for admittance? He almost shared Allida's wonder.
"And to-day, I sent all the letters with the last one telling of my death. For—I saw it this morning—he is engaged. So I couldn't go on. I could never love any one else; I shouldn't want to. My heart broke when I read the paper; really it broke. And I explained it all to him, so that it could not hurt him, that I was dying because life had become worthless to me—and yet that there was joy in dying because I could, in dying, tell him. There had been beauty and joy in loving him; he must not be too sorry; and he must care for my love. It was a gift—a gift that I could give him only in going away for ever myself."