"How near it looks!" she said: "I should not have thought it were two."
"It looks so near, dear Louise," I replied, "from the clearness of the wintry air; and so it is, Louise," I said, "With future as with distant things. To the calm, cold, icy eye of experience and reason, the future and distant times, the five or six years hence, look near as if we could touch them; the space between dwindles down to nothing, and the rest of life seems but as a moment: while, on the contrary, in the warm and sunny days of youth, the airy mist of passion, of fancy, and of expectation, throws every future thing far, far away, and the five or six years that lie between us and happiness seem a long age of wearisome expectation."
She looked up in my face and smiled, saying, "I suppose it is so, Henry. I know that since you went away from Blancford, in thinking when I might probably see you again, the space has seemed interminable."
"And, now that we have met again, Louise," I said, "We are to part in a few short hours--to part, when to meet again?"
She gazed down upon the ground, and sighed deeply; and I said, "You know, Louise, the messenger has gone to the Duke of Anjou's camp, to demand a safe conduct for you and the rest to join your father?"
"So Marguelette told me," she replied; "oh, I hope he will not return immediately."
"It will seem as but a moment to us, dear Louise," I replied; "but as a short moment, and then you will leave me, and it may be years before we meet again; and perhaps by that time, Louise"--my voice trembled, I believe, very much as I spoke--"and perhaps by that time you may be the bride of another."
Louise started and let go her hold of my arm, gazing up in my face with eager and intense looks, as if she had been startled from a dream by the horrible images that came across it.
"Oh, no!" she cried, somewhat reproachfully, "no, Henry--no--no." Her voice dropped as she slowly pronounced the words, and she fell into a fit of musing.
"Louise," I said, after having given her some time for thought, "do you know how I love you?"