She was silent. The evening was late by now, and the fog about them shut them into a little space, a little island just large enough for their bench, a bit of path, a dim border of railing opposite, and a branch of tree overhead. The muffled sound of cautious traffic was far away. They were wonderfully alone.
Haldicott took one of the hands on which she leaned, and raised it to his lips.
"Sweet, foolish child!" he said.
She turned her head and looked at him; it was almost as if she saw him for the first time—the man, not only Life's personification. They could still see quite clearly each other's faces, and for a long time, gravely, they looked into each other's eyes.
"Don't you see that it's all a dream?" said Haldicott.
"A dream?" Allida repeated. "The reality of a whole year?"
And yet it was a dream to her; even while she had told him of that year it was as if she told of something far behind her, lived through long, long ages ago, in another, a different life.
But she struggled to hold the vanishing pain and beauty of it all—the reality that, unreal, would make her whole being seem like a little handful of thin cloud dying away into emptiness.
"This is a dream," she said, still looking at him, "this, this. What am I doing here?" She rose to her feet, gasping now. "Oh! he will get the letter—and I shall not be dead! I must go at once—at once!"
"To save yourself from being ridiculous? You are going to kill yourself so as to keep a tragic attitude that you've taken before this man who doesn't care for you—an attitude that's really disarranged? Dear—pitiful—enchanting little idiot!" said Haldicott.