“You have no fear that your love for me will fail? Dear, I am not the wife you should have sought.”
“You are the wife I was fated to seek; that is enough. You are throned above all women when my soul worships.”
They rested in the after-thought of each other’s words; he pressed her hands against his lips.
“I have few ambitions, Isabel,” he continued. “Of things which men mostly seek, few are of any account to me; I could not stir myself to pursue what awakens others to frantic zeal. One ambition there is that has ruled my life; a high one. I have wished to win a woman’s love. To me that has always been the one, the only thing in the end worth living for. I thought my life would pass and I should never know that supreme blessing. Whatever comes after this, I have had your love, bright one!”
“And always will have.”
He raised his hand in playful warning.
“Life is full of tragedies. The tragedy, I have always thought, is not where two who love each other die for the sake of their love. That is glorious triumph. But where love itself dies, blown upon by the cold breath of the world, and those who loved live on with hearts made sepulchres—that is tragedy.”
“I shall always love you.” She repeated it under her breath, convincing herself.
“On Tuesday I go to London,” Kingcote said, seating himself by her. “So good-bye to my cottage. We shall not forget that poor little house? I hope sometimes to come and look at it, and see my dead self. Some family of working people will live there next. It will be well if they are not haunted.”
“Why haunted?”