Neither of them had eaten much that day, and Sylvester took Lucian to his club and ordered supper, but he looked white and wretched, and shook his head when his friend pressed him to eat and drink. He hated the public place, the sense of homelessness, he wanted to hide himself like an unhappy dog. At last he said,—
“I can do nothing to make up for the past.”
“Well, two years is a long time,” said Sylvester, whose own feelings were too exacting just then to leave space for much sympathy with Lucian.
“Is it? I’ve done a great many things since we parted; but I’ve never felt anything but—wanting her. She seems a thousand times more glorious than ever to me, and I am nothing to her—now.”
“But you didn’t think, before you saw her again, that, after all that passed, she had continued to care for you?” said Syl, curiously.
“I did not know then, if she ever had truly cared for me,” said Lucian. “I supposed that she had not, that it had all been a delusion. What else could I think? Even then, I did not forget her. But when I found, when she herself says now, that in that old time, she was real and true—I don’t see how any one can change a true love once given. It’s a thing I can’t conceive possible. It would have seemed a fresh wrong to her to fear it.”
“Did it never occur to you,” said Sylvester impatiently, “that she was not half-grown-up, two years ago, and that now she may see that you are not the kind of person to suit her?”
“I never could have outgrown her,” said Lucian. “And did you never think that she has never forgiven us—you—for misjudging her?”
“That is a different thing. That is not how it is,” said Lucian, positively; then, standing up, “I want to get back to your rooms, Syl. I can’t stand anything more. I’ll go to bed, I feel done for.” There was something pathetic in the faithfulness that could not imagine the possibility of change in the love that had once been proved worthy; but naturally Lucian’s self-confidence struck Sylvester forcibly, and as they walked away together once more, he suddenly lost the remains of his patience, and broke out—
“Can’t you see that a creature like that has a thousand needs and possibilities that have developed in her since she belonged to you? It may be for good, or it may be for evil, but she cannot go back. Did it never strike you then that you had got hold of a being all force and fire, a splendid goddess, altogether out of your ken?”