“In some respects,” remarked Mrs. Percy-Bartlett musingly, “it would be an ideal union.”
“If there are such,” put in Richard reflectively.
“That sounds like the cynicism of your friend Mr. Fenton. I hope, Mr. Stoughton, that you are not losing your ideals.”
“On the contrary,” said Richard earnestly, “I am finding new ones.”
“May I ask where?” she murmured, a wistful look in her brown eyes.
“I have found the highest of them all in this little music-room,” he said with more earnestness in his tone than it had held before. “What ideal is so beautiful as that which forms the basis of our friendship? Is it not true that the altar on which we make the hardest sacrifice is that which becomes the most sacred in our sight? I might live a thousand years, but when memory grew weary of its heavy task, it would still turn fondly to the scene before me now, and I would see myself in fancy a youth with an ideal—an ideal that sealed his lips—and broke his heart.”
He had turned very pale, and his words seemed to him to have been forced from him by a mysterious and irresistible influence that he could neither recognize nor control.
The woman’s eyes were heavy with unshed tears. As he had gone on speaking in a low, vibrant tone, she had felt the blood rush to her face, and then recede, leaving her cheeks white and drawn. Her hands trembled as she turned and struck a few wavering, melancholy chords on the piano.
Richard had arisen, and was looking down at her, his face grown old, as if life had whispered a mighty secret into his unwilling ears, and marred the pristine glory of his youth.
Neither of them spoke for a time. Finally he said,—