If he did not love her, why not tell her so? What was there to hinder him? Nothing, except that strange notion of the "dishonorableness" of asking a woman's love when one has nothing but love to give her in return. This, even, he had seemed at the last to have set aside, as if he could not go away without speaking. And yet he did it.
Perhaps he thought she did not care for him? He had once said a man ought to feel quite sure of a woman before he asked her. Also, that he should never ask twice, since, if she did not know her own mind then, she never would know it, and such a woman was the worst possible bargain a man could make in marriage.
Not know her own mind! Alas, poor soul, Fortune knew it only too well. In that dreadful fortnight it was "borne in upon her," as pious people say, that though she felt kindly to all human beings, the one human being who was necessary to her—without whom her life might be busy, indeed, and useful, but never perfect, an endurance instead of joy—was this young man, as solitary as herself, as poor, as hard-working; good, gentle, brave Robert Roy.
Oh why had they not come together, heart to heart—just they two, so alone in the world—and ever after belonged to one another, even though it had been years and years before they were married?
"If only he had love me, and told me so!" was her bitter cry. "I could have waited ever so hardly, and quite alone, if only I might have had a right to him, and been his comfort, as he was mine. But now—now—"
Yet still she waited, looking forward daily to that dreadful post hour; and when it had gone by, nerving herself to endure until tomorrow. At last hope, slowly dying, was killed outright.
One day at tea-time the boys blurted out, with happy carelessness, their short-lived regrets for him being quite over, the news that Mr. Roy had sailed.
"Not for Calcutta, but Shanghai, a much longer voyage. He can't be heard of for a year at least, and it will be many years before he comes back. I wonder if he will come back rich. They say he will: quite a nabob, perhaps, and take a place in the Highlands, and invite us all—you too, Miss Williams. I once asked him, and he said, 'Of course.' Stop, you are pouring my tea over into the saucer."
This was the only error she made, but went on filling the cups with a steady hand, smiling and speaking mechanically, as people can sometimes. When the tea was quite over, she slipped away into her room, and was missing for a long time.
So all was over. No more waiting for that vague "something to happen." Nothing could happen now. He was far away across the seas, and she must just go back to her old monotonous life, as if it had never been any different—as if she had never seen his face nor heard his voice, never known the blessing of his companionship, friendship, love, whatever it was, or whatever he had meant it to be. No, he could not have loved her; or to have gone away would have been—she did not realize whether right or wrong—but simply impossible.