“Alas, no. It would have been my story over again, the positions reversed, and you without my illusions, had you loved her, married her; and yet, it was because you had no illusions that I hoped.”
But Damier could not think of dead hopes.
“What you have suffered!” he said.
“Yes,” Madame Vicaud answered, “I have suffered; but do not, in your kindness, your tenderness, exaggerate. I have suffered, but all has not been black. There have been flowers on the uphill road. I don’t believe in a woe that is blind to them, or to the sky overhead.”
But she still stood looking at dead hopes, not thinking of him.
“Clara,” said Damier.
She was a woman of deep understanding, yet even now,—and hardly was it to be wondered at, so lifted through its very intensity was his love for her above love’s ordinary manifestations,—even now her name so gravely spoken by him had no further meaning for her than the one openly, proudly, joyously accepted, the meaning of the strange tie that had united them; but, while she accepted it, his look startled her. It showed nothing new, but seemed to interpret newly something she had not recognized before. Smiling faintly, she said:
“You have a right.”
“Not the right I would have.” He felt no excitement, only the enraptured solemnity that a soul might feel in some quiet dawn of heaven on finding another soul parted from years ago on earth—long sought for, long loved.
She said nothing, her dark eyes fixing him with a wonder that was already a recognition.