“I shall not. There are plenty of things to do. But, since I misjudged her so, there can be no peace till she is happy. You see, at first, I felt as if I could never get over knowing that I had been wrong, when all the comfort I’d ever had in the matter, had been thinking that giving her up was the only right thing to do. I went once that wretched afternoon—right up to the Hall—and then I turned back, and thought I wouldn’t be made a fool of—when all the while I was making a fool of myself.”
“We were all infernal fools,” said Sylvester. “Then,” said Lucian, “I remembered that it didn’t matter so much about me, since I had found out that she was—what I’d always thought her. I’m glad now it was all my fault and not hers. Something in your poem put that into my head.”
He gave a little smile as he spoke, and Sylvester noticed for the first time how grave his face had grown. It had never been exactly lively, but surely the weight on the straight, clearly-marked brows was new.
“I suppose I hadn’t given her up really,” he went on after a minute, “because I seem to have to begin quite new. It’s odd how hard it is to believe that I’m going to settle down at Toppings. I feel as if something must happen to prevent it. But it won’t now. It will be all right if she is happy—and good. So I mean what I said, Syl; I hope you’ll get her. I think I always knew you did love her, and that made me shy off when you meant to be kind to me. Then it will be all right—for her.”
He sat up and looked out over the sunny sea. The ache at his heart was hard to bear, all the harder perhaps that even now he had hardly found the right words for it. There seemed so little to look forward to. Sylvester, full of hopes and fears, interests and longings, with a future from which Amethyst was not shut out, and able to rejoice even in the suffering which brought to him so intense a life, could hardly realise the passion that only made itself felt as want and loss.
“Let’s walk on,” said Lucian presently. “We had better look up some of the Pirate places by and by. We might get down to the beach now, perhaps.”
There was a little rough path, a mere sheep-track, leading off the headland down a steep descent to the shore. The turf gave place to jagged rocks and loose stones. Lucian went on with rapid, practised tread, and presently turned off from the descent and followed the track along the cliff side. The rocks grew more precipitous, and the track narrower, the sea dashed up at their feet in great breakers of foam.
“You don’t get dizzy, do you, Syl?” he called back; “this is rather a nasty corner.”
“No,” said Syl. “I can look at the soap-suds.”
“All right. Here’s a splendid great wash-tub.”