She drew back as she looked on his flushed brow, bowed her head submissively, and murmured, “Pardon.”
“Ah,” said Helen, after a pause, “if now we could but find my poor father’s friend! I never so much cared for it before.”
“Yes, he would surely provide for you.”
“For me!” repeated Helen, in a tone of soft, deep reproach, and she turned away her head to conceal her tears.
“You are sure you would remember him, if we met him by chance?”
“Oh, yes. He was so different from all we see in this terrible city, and his eyes were like yonder stars, so clear and so bright; yet the light seemed to come from afar off, as the light does in yours, when your thoughts are away from all things round you. And then, too, his dog, whom he called Nero—I could not forget that.”
“But his dog may not be always with him.”
“But the bright clear eyes are! Ah, now you look up to heaven, and yours seem to dream like his.”
Leonard did not answer, for his thoughts were indeed less on earth than struggling to pierce into that remote and mysterious heaven.
Both were silent long; the crowd passed them by unheedingly. Night deepened over the river, but the reflection of the lamp-lights on its waves was more visible than that of the stars. The beams showed the darkness of the strong current; and the craft that lay eastward on the tide, with sail-less spectral masts and black dismal hulks, looked death-like in their stillness.