We had it all out, of course, on the subject of those erst-peevish perversities and misunderstandings. There is no joy like a converted jealousy; quarrels become relishes when they can be discussed impartially. I told Fifine of my savage decision, on the hill that fateful night, to achieve the world-conquering work which was to refute and overwhelm her with a sense of what she had thrown away. She laughed; but, like the dear love she was, immediately stroked me down, in remorse for the pain her apparent insensibility might be giving me.
“Gossip,” she said—for we had resumed that pretty address as being singularly appropriate to our state—“you will come to do for love of me, will you not, what you designed to do for my punishment. My heart will sing then for its very shame.”
And indeed it sang, and sang me on to inspiration. I did my utmost, in those golden days, to vindicate her sacrifice to her through the persistent endeavour that her soul so prized. I schemed, and designed, and made innumerable colour notes, while she glowed beside, my patient, enthusiastic ministrant. Yes, and my prompter too, for she was no despicable critic either as to ends or means. We would make a compromise of our theories, our principles, with even perhaps a slight leaning of the balance towards the traditional; and in the result—well, those were but plans, elevations, as it were. The whole, into which the infinite parts were compacted, exists for any one to see who likes.[1] It is the only work of mine in which heart and soul and brain made a common cause of it to achieve perfection. It has not achieved it, of course, for Fifine was not perfection. But what approach to it it makes was her doing and hers alone. There is sunshine in it, which they call sunshine. I wonder sometimes if one from the idle multitudes who pass it by ever chances to penetrate the secret of the truth from which it was drawn.
Once we climbed up to the hill-top on which I had been fog-bound, and found the pit into which my stumbling steps had nearly precipitated me. It was a very death-trap, even as regarded by day, sawn clean and square into the bowels of the rock. Ruthless the greed which could thus assert itself, callous of human safety. They had been quarrying everywhere since my former visit, cutting wholesale into the majesty of the hills. But now, though late, the government, we heard, was interfering, with a view to stopping the brutal devastation. Might its powers, we prayed, prove despotic in a free land! We looked over into the black gulf, and could see no bottom. Fifine drew away from it, sick and shuddering; and suddenly she was clinging to me. Yet I had been careful to make light of my escape; and Carabas I had altogether spared in my half-jocose reference to it.
“Sit me down,” my girl whispered: “I shall be all right in a minute.”
We rested on a great stone, and for a time she could only breathe in silence.
“O, Felix!” she panted presently—“O, Felix!”
“My gossip—this is not to be your reasonable self. Here I am, you see.”
“I should have been a murderess.”
“Now, Fifine?”