Lover's words, spoken by an unconscious lover. They pleased and pained her at the same time.
"I'm afraid you make too much of me," she said, with a sigh. "If I had lived here always, as I am living now——!"
She did not complete her sentence. The memory of things she had seen and known and of which he had known nothing, rose up between them. But she put them aside, and smiled at him again. "After all," she said, "I am here now, and I have never been so happy anywhere else. Perhaps I have been keeping myself for it, without knowing that it was this I was meant for. I think I was meant for it, because all the rest seems like nothing at all. When I go back, it will be less than ever to me."
Her talk of going back stabbed him. Life would be an incredible thing when they were parted. They stirred each the other's fears and shrinkings as they talked of it, but behind all the pain was the thought that they would be with one another for a long time yet. They were so young that time in front of them was not measured by the same rule as time that had passed. More than two whole weeks and most of a third Viola had still to spend in Paradise. They would meet every day. Surely, nothing could prevent their meeting every day! Twice a day they would meet, in this secret place, and be undisturbed for long summer hours in their happiness. No need to spoil it by thinking of the end.
They parted for a time. The last Harry saw of her was the white figure framed in its arch of green. Before she passed out of it she turned and stood there for a moment, motionless. She was too far for him to see her face clearly, but the message passed to and fro between them again. It was all there, though they had not yet spoken it in words, and eyes were too far off to be read.
CHAPTER XII
AT THE THRESHOLD
Harry went home to luncheon and hurried to the wood again immediately afterwards. He had much farther to go to the trysting-place than she. She might even be waiting for him when he got there.
She was not there, and after half an hour she had not come.
Oh cruel! And yet he knew, as his longing grew and his hopes fell, that she would have come if she could. Her father had claimed her; something out of her power to prevent or foresee had kept her away. She would not stay away from him for ever.