“Since we have come to these explanations,” George continued after a pause, “I will try and tell you what it is that I feel. I called you Miss Fearing just now. Do you know why? Because it seems more natural. You are not the same person you once were, and when I call you Constance, I fancy I am calling some one else by the name of your old self, of the Constance I loved, and who loved me—a little.”
“It is not I who have changed,” said the young girl, looking down. “I am Constance still, and you are my best and dearest friend, though you be ever so unkind.”
“A change there is, and a great one. I daresay it is in me. I was never your friend, as you understand the word, and you were mistaken in thinking that I was. I loved you. That is not friendship.”
“And now, since I am another person—not the one you loved—can you not be my friend as well as—as you are of others? Why does it seem so impossible?”
“It is too painful to be thought of,” said George in a low voice. “You are too like the other, and yet too different.”
Constance sighed and twisted a blade of grass round her slender white finger. She wished she knew how to do away with the difference he felt so keenly.
“Do you never miss me?” she asked after a long silence.
“I miss the woman I loved,” George answered. “Is it any satisfaction to you to know it?”
“Yes, for I am she.”
There was another pause, during which George glanced at her face from time to time. It had changed, he thought. It was thinner and whiter than of old and there were shadows beneath the eyes and modellings—not yet lines—of sadness about the sensitive mouth. He wondered whether she had suffered, and why. She had never loved him. Could it be true that she missed his companionship, his conversation, his friendship, as she called it? If not, why should her face be altered? And yet it was strange, too. He could not understand how separation could be painful where there was no love. Nevertheless he was sorry that she should have suffered, now that his anger was gone.