Mait. Softly, Sir! you grace me with a title to which I can lay no claim. Lover I was, may be. I am no lover now, not I—not I; you are right; I would not walk to that knoll's edge to see the lady, Sir.
Andre. Well, I must wait your leisure, I see.
Mait. And yet, the last time that we stood together here, her arm lay on mine, my promised wife. A few days more, and by my name, all that loveliness had gone. There needed only that to make that tie holy in all eyes, the holiest which the universe held for us; but needed there that, or any thing to make it such in ours. Why, love lay in her eye, that evening, like religion, solemn and calm.—We should have smiled then at the thought of any thing in height or depth, ending, what through each instant seemed to breathe eternity from its own essence;—we were one, one,—that trite word makes no meaning in your ear.—to me, life's roses burst from it; music, sunshine, Araby, should image what it means; what it meant rather, for it is over.
Andre. What was it, Maitland?
Mail. Oh,—well,—she did not love me; that was all. So far my story has told the seeming only, but ere long the trial came, and then I found it was seeming, in good sooth. The Rebellion had then long been maturing, as you know; but just then came the crisis. It was the one theme everywhere. Of course I took my king's part against these rebels, and at once I was outraged, wronged beyond all human bearing. Her mad brother, her's, her's what a world of preciousness, Andre, that little word once enshrined for me; and still it seems like some broken vase, fragrant with what it held.
Andre. And ever with that name, a rosy flash Paints, for an instant, all my world. Nay, 'tis a little love-poem of my own; go on, Maitland.
Mait. This brother I say, quarrelled with me, though I had borne from him unresentingly, what from another would have seemed insult. We quarrelled at last, and the house was closed against me, or would have been had I sought access; for I walked sternly by its pleasant door that afternoon, though I remember now how the very roses that o'erhung the porch, the benched and shaded porch, that lovely lingering place, seemed to beckon me in. It was a breathless summer day, and the vine curled in the open window,—even now those lowly rooms make a brighter image of heaven to me than the jewelled walls that of old grew in the pageant of our sabbath dreams.
Andre. And thus you abandoned your love? A quarrel with her brother?
Mait. I never wronged her with the shadow of a doubt. Directly, that same day, I wrote to her to fix our meeting elsewhere, that we might renew our broken plans in some fitter shape for the altered times. She sent me a few lines of grave refusal, Sir; and the next letter was returned unopened.
Andre. 'Twas that brother! Pshaw! 'twas that brother, Maitland. I'll lay my life the lady saw no word of it.