“I’m going, as I told you, to try Toppings. That’s what I have to look to. My mother will be glad my chance is over.”
“She wishes you to settle down?”
“Yes, of course. I could never have anything said about the past—and her, from my mother’s point of view; and knowing that she felt so strongly, has made a sort of separation. But I shall ask her if she likes to bring the girls to Toppings. The life there would suit her.”
“But, Lucy,” said Sylvester, “why should you give up the white bears that you had set your heart on? Two years hence, as you said, is quite time enough for you to settle down at Toppings.”
Lucian was silent for a minute, then he said—
“I don’t care much about the bears, so it’s better to do what suits other people. Besides, I had rather know what happens to her, and I couldn’t hear if I was in the Arctic regions.” Sylvester sat up and looked at him. It had never occurred to him to think that Lucian suffered from solitude or want of sympathy, or indeed to think that his life had been permanently saddened by his disappointment. He had always believed the interests which he picturesquely symbolised as “white bears” to be enough for the strong, healthy, active youth; and even his faithfulness to Amethyst had seemed to Sylvester to spring more from a sense of what was due to himself, than from involuntary yearning for her.
“I suppose,” Lucian went on, before he could speak, “that you meant—her—in that poem of yours all the time.”
“Well, yes,” said Syl, half laughing, “I suppose I did.”
“Its quite true,” said Lucian, “I couldn’t say all that; but there seems nothing else to think of, and icebergs would make no difference at all.”
“I didn’t think, Lucy, that you would spend your life in looking for the rainbow’s end.”