“She is very young,” said Ludovic pitifully. “Don’t you think she may change her mind?”
“Oh, yes, yes!” cried Rosamund. “If I didn’t think that, day and night, I should go mad. If I thought it would go on like this always—I couldn’t bear it.”
Ludovic knew that nothing goes on always, that the strongest, swiftest tide knows but its ebb and flow, but he would not tell her so then.
“Don’t you think she will come away?” she asked him urgently, as though she could not bear the thought that his silence might imply a dissent.
“I hope with all my heart that she may, for her sake and for yours,” he said gravely. “But—if you knew she was happy there, and wanted to stay?”
“I don’t know what would happen then,” she said. “It’s as though my mind stopped, when I think of that. I just can’t imagine any further.”
She covered her eyes with her hand, and then turned slowly to go upstairs.
Ludovic saw that she had forgotten his presence.
He stood looking after her rather wistfully, and suddenly she turned and came back to him.
“Good-night,” she said rather breathlessly. “You are the only person who has seemed to understand at all.”