"Worst or best," said Edward, with dogged resolution, "it will be necessary for you to speak of it with respect—in my presence."
This seemed to be the end of the matter; but Boulton, who had at last got his pipe agoing, could not forbear offering a few final words on the subject.
"It's all right, Ned," he remarked, in his gentlest and kindest tones, "perfectly right and natural that a young fellow should make a fool of himself. That's exactly what's expected of him. But it isn't necessary that he should make an everlasting fool of himself. Not—strictly—necessary."
Edward rose and left the room.
To leave the room in a region upon which unpicturesque prosperity has not yet descended is equivalent to leaving the house, and that is exactly what the young man did. Of course there was a loft above that was reached by a perilously steep pair of stairs; but he was not a cur to creep away into a kennel. He went out and battled with the pitiless storm, a fiercer storm beating within his breast than that which raged without. The crazy words he had just uttered were not spoken simply to stop the idle talk of his companions; they were the ultimate expression of the thoughts over which he had brooded for days past. Helene was dead to him, and her mocking ghost haunted the desolate chambers of his heart, filling them with scornful laughter. But now upon the door of this wretched habitation had timidly knocked another guest—a guest of blooming and throbbing flesh and blood. Should he deny her admittance? Unlearned was she as one of the shy birds of the forest, but then she was eminently teachable. If his love for her could not be called a liberal education was it not something better? Was it not a liberal and lasting joy? After all, what did women know, any way? A few miserable half-learned accomplishments, the aggregate of which did not amount to so much as the eagle's feather on the proud little head of his darling. Yes, he dared to say it—his darling! He pictured her in winter as sitting by his side, before the fire, the delicate head of his pet dog encircled by her arm; in summer they would roam in blest content together through the endless forests of this beautiful new world.
And so with all his doubts triumphantly set aside he returned to the house, and during the remainder of their stay his continued flow of exuberant good spirits seemed to confirm the rightfulness of his conclusions. On his way back to York he stopped a few hours at his old home, for the sake of a brief stolen interview with Wanda. She met him with little low murmurs of tenderness and joy, and parted from him as a girl parts from the man in whose love she has absolute confidence, for whose sake she would willingly die.
When he reached home, his appearance of high health and persistent overflow of liveliness were ascribed by his family to continuous out-door exercise, nor did they dream that the sweet fever and delirium of love was upon him. Rose gave him an anxious glance or two, but poor Rose had trouble enough of her own. That cold night at the Oak Ridges, which had completely killed Edward's hopes with regard to Helene, had cast a light but lasting frost over her own. It had been painful enough to avoid Allan, but it was no less painful to be deprived of that privilege. The truth was he had given her very few opportunities to put into practice the course of treatment recommended by her father. Had she been the heroine of a novel there would inevitably have been misunderstandings of the most serious and complicated character. But she was mortal, and withal a very tender-hearted little maiden, and the secret of her cold tones and wistful glances, though for a while it sorely puzzled Allan, was at last divined by the sure intuition of love. They met frequently at various social gatherings, but it was as though a solid sheet of glass intervened between them. Through this apparently impalpable medium they could see, and smile, and speak, but no tender touch of palm, or breath of love, or thrill of quickened heart-beat could be felt between. How many times had Allan Dunlop been tempted to outstretch his hand and shatter this glassy surface! It were easily done but at the price of possible sharp pain and aching wounds, and the greater horror of seeing the sweet grieving face on the other side shrink away from him, startled by the shock. No, he would bide his time. And so, while his eyes grew hollow, his close shut lips remained very resolute. Love can wait (though waiting is the hardest task ever assigned it), but only on condition that it is given the food it needs.
Allan kept his love alive on glimpses of sunny hair, and sad little smiles, and fragments of talk, that, light and conventional as they might seem to chance listeners, were to him clothed with lovely hidden meanings. Sometimes when the eyes met by chance the small warm hands plucked nervously at the flowers she carried, or there was a restless consciousness in step and glance, or a scarcely perceptible quiver of the curved lip, or a piteous droop of the regal little head. Very slight things were these, yet out of them Memory and Imagination made a sumptuous feast, at which Love, like a starveling prince in exile, sat down with never sated appetite.