"Need I answer that? But you are so young, so pretty,—I am afraid, my darling, it—it would be unpleasant for you."
"Be satisfied: I am not thinking of the stage. But do not question me, Teddy. I shall write to you, as I have promised, in six months,—if I succeed."
"And if you fail?"
"I suppose then—I shall write to you too," she answers, with a sigh and a faint smile. "But I shall not fail. After all, success will bring me no nearer to you: I shall always have the children to provide for," she says, despondingly.
"We can at least live and hope."
He draws her shawl, which has slipped to the ground, close round her, and mutely, gloomily, they stand listening to the murmuring of the sympathetic stream.
"I always think of this spot as the dearest on earth," he says, after a pause. "Here I picture you to myself with your hands full of forget-me-nots. I have a large bunch of them yet, the same you gathered; faded, it is true, to others, but never so to me. They will always be as fresh in my eyes as on the evening I took them from you. 'My sweet love's flowers.' Darling, darling," pressing her to his heart in a very agony of regret, "when shall we two stand here again together?"
"Never," she whispers back, in a prophetic tone, and with a trembling, sobbing sigh more sad than any tears.
"Give me something to remember you by,—something to remind me of to-night."
"Shall you need it?" asks she, and then raising her hands she loosens all her pretty hair, letting it fall in a bright shower around her. "You shall have one little lock all to yourself," she says. "Choose, and cut it where you will."