"Ridiculously little. In the novels--I read dozens of them in the winter--it is always something pathetic. A letter left in a blotting book, or a wrong initial on the envelope, or a false announcement of marriage. Something not to be foreseen or helped. Or if it isn't the fault of fate, they get brain fever and forget their own names. But we! We just quarrelled, and didn't care to make it up. It isn't in the least romantic, I'm afraid."
"But we didn't forget," he said in the same argumentative tone. "At least I didn't."
"Of course not. Does any one ever forget,--absolutely?" Her voice trembled slightly. The pathos of memory was not to be ignored entirely.
"It seems such a pity--you and I leading such lonely lives."
"Lonely? You should see my Noah's Ark."
"Well! Don't scoff at me. I suppose it is absurd, but to-night somehow--"
She interrupted him with a soft hand laid on his. "Don't, please don't. It is like children trying to pretend that their shadows on the wall are alive. But they are shadows; nothing but shadows, and the light which throws them--" she pointed to the window with a laugh that was half a sob. "Poor man! he ought to be extinguished by this time."
"Perhaps you are right," he replied sadly, still holding her hand; "but it seems hard--the shadows were so pretty."
"Not so pretty as the reality."
"What is that?"