“And you’re happy now?” she asked.
“Absolutely. I want nothing more. All this week I could have said to every moment: ‘Stay, thou art fair.’ And, oh! how fair you are, Madge. Smile, please—no, not the sad smile with all the sorrows of the world behind it.”
Madge ceased smiling altogether.
“Oh, Evelyn, I am so happy, too!” she said. “But I can’t forget all the scaffolding, as it were, in which our house of love was built, which now lies scattered about in bits.”
Evelyn sat up quickly, demolishing the altar he had made with such care.
“Ah! don’t think of that,” he said. “We agreed that what has happened had to happen. Now pity and sorrow when you can’t help in any way seems to me a wasted thing.”
“But if you can’t help pitying and being sorry?” she asked.
Evelyn gave a little click of impatience.
“You must go on trying till you do help it,” he said. “Of course, if one dwells on the matter, one is sorry for Philip; I am awfully sorry for Philip when I think of him. I hate the idea of anybody being wounded and hurt as he must have been, and since he was my friend, it is the more distressing. Only it is an effort for me to think of him at all. I can only think of one person, and of one thing—you and my love for you.”
This time Madge’s smile was more satisfactory, and with his bright eager eyes he looked at her as the eagle to the sun.