He laughed.
"What did, what should I care? I tell you I loved her madly; you do not know, cannot understand what such love means! Know, then, Lil, that I would rather have died than lose her—that, having lost her, life has become void and barren for me—that the days and hours until I forget her will be so much time of torture and regret, and vain, useless longing. I shall see her face, hear her voice, wherever I may be, in the day or in the night; and no pleasure, no pain will efface her from my memory or my heart."
"Oh, Ley!—my poor Ley!"
"Thus it is with me. And now I have come to say 'good-bye.'"
"Good-bye. You are going—where?"
"Where?" he echoed, with the same discordant laugh. "I neither know nor care. I am afraid all places will be alike for awhile. The whole earth is full of her; there is not a wild flower that will not remind me of her, not a sound of music that will not recall her voice. If I meet a woman I shall compare her with my Stella—my Stella! no, Jasper Adelstone's! Oh, Heaven! I could bear all but that. If she were dead, I should have at least one comfort—the consolation of knowing that she had belonged to no other man—that in some other remote world we might meet again, and I might claim her as mine! But that is denied to me. My white angel is stained and besmirched, and is mine no longer!"
Worn out by the passion of his grief, he dropped on the seat at her feet, and hid his face in his hands.
She put her arm round his neck, but spoke no word. Words at such moments are like gnats round a wound—they can only irritate, they cannot heal.
They sat thus motionless for some minutes, then he rose, calmer but very white and worn.
"This is weak of me, worse than weak, inconsiderate, Lil," he said, with a wan smile. "You have so much of your own sorrows that you should be spared the recital of other people's woes. I will go now. Good-bye, Lil!"