Erica was delighted with the glow worms, and delighted with the dewy fragrance of the garden, and delighted with the soft, balmy stillness of the night. She was one of those who revel in Nature, and all that she said was evidently the overflow of a rapturous happiness, curiously contrasting with the ordinary set remarks of admiration, or falsely sentimental outbursts too much in vogue. But Leslie Cunningham found that the child-likeness was not only in manner, but that Erica had no idea of flirting; she was bright, and merry, and talkative, but she had no thought, no desire of attracting his attention. She had actually and literally come out into the garden to see the glow worms, not to monopolize the much-run-after young M.P, and as soon as she had seen them she said she felt cold, and suggested going back again.
He was disappointed, but the words were so perfectly sincere, so free from suspicion of mere conventionality, that there was nothing for it but to return. Half amused, half piqued, but wholly in love, he speedily forgot himself in real anxiety.
“I hope you haven't taken cold,” he said, with great solicitude.
“Oh, no,” said Erica; “but I want to be careful for the night-school work will be beginning soon, and I must go home fresh for that.”
Something in her words broke the spell of perfect happiness which had hitherto held him. Was it the mention of her every-day life, with its surroundings unknown to him? Or was it some faint perception that in the world of duty to which she referred their paths could not rightly converge? A cold chill crept over him.
“You were quite right,” he said with an involuntary shiver. “It is decidedly cold out here; the mist rises from the river, I expect, or else your reference to the working-day world has recalled me from fairy-land. You should not speak of work in such a place as this it is incongruous.”
She smiled.
“Ernst ist das leben,” she replied quietly. “One can't forget that even at such a time as this, and in such a place.”
“How is it that some never forget that for a moment, while others never remember it at all?” he said musingly.
“Some of us have no excuse for ever forgetting,” she answered “hardly a chance either.”