But, after all, it is November for their hearts! Hers is chill as his; she cannot live without him, as he cannot without her. If it were winter, "she'd efface the score and forgive him as before" (thus we perceive that this is not the first quarrel, that he has offended her before with that word which was not so many things!)—and what else is it but winter for their shivering hearts? So he begins to hope. In March, too, there are storms—here is one beginning now, at noon, which shows that it will last. . . . Not yet, then, the too lovely spring!
"It is twelve o'clock:
I shall hear her knock
In the worst of a storm's uproar:
I shall pull her through the door,
I shall have her for evermore!"
. . . I think she came back. She would want to see how well he understood the spring—he who could make that picture of the Pampas' sheen and the wild horse. Why should spring's news unfold itself, and he not "say things" about it to her, like those he could say about the mere Times news? And it is impossible to bear with the guelder-rose—the guelder-rose must be adored. They will adore it together; she will efface the score, and forgive him as before. What fun it will be, in the worst of the storm, to feel him pull her through the door!
In The Lost Mistress it is really finished: she has dismissed him. We are not told why. It cannot be because he has not loved her—he who so tenderly, if so whimsically, accepts her decree. He will not let her see how much he suffers—he still can say the "little things" she liked.
"All's over, then: does truth sound bitter
As one at first believes?
Hark, 'tis the sparrows' good-night twitter
About your cottage eaves!
And the leaf-buds on the vine are woolly,
I noticed that, to-day;
One day more breaks them open fully
—You know the red turns grey."
That is what his life has turned, but he will not maunder about it.
"To-morrow we meet the same then, dearest?
May I take your hand in mine?
Mere friends are we—well, friends the merest
Keep much that I resign."
He is no more "he" for her: he is a friend like the rest. He resigns. But the friends do not know what "he" knew.