'I understand you quite well,' she said, in a low voice. 'But, Robert, I, too, have made up my mind, and I cannot leave them, not even for you. You should never have asked it of me,' she cried, with pardonable indignation.
'I am not aware that I have ever asked anything that was not for your good as well as my own,' said Henley, in an offended tone. 'I begin to think you have never loved me, Dora, or you would not reproach me with my love for you. Who has influenced you?' said he, jealously. 'What does it all mean?'
She stopped short, and stood looking at him steadily, wistfully—not as she used to look once, but with eyes that seemed to read him through and through, until the tears came once more to blind their keen sight.
Raban, who had crossed by the ferry, and who was walking back along the opposite side, saw the two standing by the river-side, a man and a woman, with a plain beyond, and a city beyond the plain.
The sun was setting sadly grey and russet; the long day's mists dispersing; light clouds were slowly rising; turf and leaves stood out against the evening; it was all clear and sweet, and faintly coloured: a tranquil peace seemed to have fallen everywhere. It was not radiance, but peace and subdued calm. Who does not know these evenings? are they sad? are they happy? A break in the shadow. A passing medley of the lights of heaven and earth, of sweet winds and rising vapours.... The cool breeze came blowing into their faces, and Dolly turned her head away and looked across the river to the opposite bank. When she spoke again she was her old self once more.
She was quite calm now; her eyes no longer wet. 'Robert,' she said, 'I have something to tell you. I have been thinking things over, and I see that it is right that you should go; but it is also right that I should stay,' said Dolly, looking him steadily in the face; 'and perhaps in happier times you will let me come to you, or come back for me, and you must not—you will not—think I do not love you because of this.'
What was it in her voice that seemed to haunt him—to touch, to thrill that common-place man for one instant into some emotion? She was so simple and so sad; she looked so fair and wistful.
But it was only for an instant. 'Do you mean that you wish to break the engagement?' he asked in his coldest voice.
'If we love each other what does it matter that we are free?' said Dorothea, with a very sweet look in her face. 'You need fear no change in me,' she said, 'but I want you to be free.' Her voice failed, and she began to walk on quickly.
'Remember, it is your own doing,' she heard him say, as Tom Morgan, who had lingered behind, caught them up. 'But we will speak of all this again,' he added.