"Bernard, dearest, look at me. All things can be changed by fashion or expediency save a woman's love, and that is eternal. Don't think, please, of any of these terrible things that may be in store for us, or what other people would think or say. I want you to remember that love, even though it be personal love, is far above all circumstance. No power in this world can alter or change it. It belongs to that better part of ourselves which lifts us above all misfortune and trouble. You have given me a great happiness, Bernard, and you shall not take it away from me. Whatever happens to you, it is my right to share it. Remember, for the future, it is 'we,' not 'I.' You must not think of yourself alone in anything, for I belong now to everything that concerns you."
And so it was that for the first time in his life Bernard Maddison, who had written much concerning them, much that was both faithful and beautiful, saw into the inner life of a true woman. Only for the man whom she loves will she thus lift the curtain from before that sweet depth of unselfishness which makes even the homeliest of her sex one of the most beautiful of God's creations; and he, if he be in any way a man of human sensibility and capacity, must feel something of that wondering awe, that reverence with which Bernard Maddison drank in the meaning of her words. The mute anxiety of her tearful gaze, the color which came and fled from her face—he understood all these signs. They were to him the physical, the material covering for her appeal. A life of grand thoughts, of ever-climbing ideas, of pure and lofty aims, had revealed to him nothing so noble and yet so sweetly human as this; had filled his being with no such heart-shattering emotion as swept through him at that moment. A woman's hand had lifted him out from his despair into a higher state, and there was a great humility in the silent gesture with which he yielded his will to hers.
And then again there were spoken words between them which no chronicles should report, and a certain calm happiness took up its settled place in his heart, defiant of that despair which could not be driven out. Then came that reawakening to mundane things which seems like a very great step indeed in such cases. She looked at the clock, and gave a little start.
"Bernard, it is nearly eleven o'clock," she cried. "We must go into the drawing-room at once. What will aunt think of us? You must come with me, of course; but you'd better say good night now. There, that will do, sir!"
She drew away and smoothed her ruffled hair back from her forehead, looking ruefully in the glass at her tear-stained cheeks, and down at the crushed violets in her corsage.
"May I have them?" he asked.
She drew them out and placed them in his hand.
"To-morrow——" she said.
"To-morrow I must go into the land of violets," he interrupted.
She turned round quickly.