“Did they—those of whom you speak—love you as I do? Was their secret wrenched from them at the very jaws of death?”
“No. Never did I hear words of love under such, strange circumstances. And yet, Mona, the fact that it was so, nearly turned me against you, for I seemed bound—bound to you in common gratitude. If you had left me to myself, I believe that feeling would have changed into strong dislike.”
“And when did the change come—the change for the better?” she said softly.
“I don’t know. It has all been so gradual. But there is something, some magic about you, dear, that drew me to you in spite of myself—and kept me there.”
“Then one can love, really love, more than once in a lifetime?”
“Of course. The notion to the contrary was invented for the purposes of fiction of the most callous sort. More than once, more than twice. But the difference is that through it all runs the interwoven thread of misgiving, that the thing is ill-judged and destined to end in blank—or worse.”
“Mine throughout all the years, did I not say just now?” she whispered, again drawing down his head. “This seals it,” and again speech was stilled in a long, clinging kiss. “This is our farewell—only for a few days—and oh, my heart’s life, how slowly they will drag! I will go to the place where I held you up from death, and there—on that, to me the sweetest, spot on earth—pray, and pray with all my soul that no danger may come near you.”
Were his very senses slipping away from him in that warm embrace? Was it indeed upon him that this love was outpoured, or upon somebody else? The thought passed with jarring hammer strokes through his brain. And like the distant echo of gibing demon-voices, came that old, grim, cynical refrain, “Nothing lasts! Nothing lasts!”
And as a little later he rode homeward through the stillness of the night, on the puffs of the fresh night breeze billowing up the grass, sighing through the coarse bents, still that goading, tormenting refrain kept shrieking in his ears, “Nothing lasts! Nothing lasts!”