“Do you know yourself?” Kingcote went on, under his breath. “Have you any consciousness of that fearful power which is in you? No more, I suppose, than the flower has of its sweetness. You have so drawn my life into the current of your own, that I have lost all existence apart from you. I have dreamed of loving, but that was all idle; I had no imagination for this spell you have cast upon me.”
“I am glad you came! I too was longing to touch your hand.”
She pressed it to her lips.
“Oh, if I could only stay with you, now!”
“Yes, I know I must not keep you. You have friends waiting. They have a better right.”
“A better right? That you know they have not, Bernard. But—I cannot——”
“They represent the world that is between you and me,” he said, moving away. “You cannot leave them—no, it is impossible. Think how strange it sounds. It would be as easy for you to do anything that is most disgraceful in the world’s eyes, as to leave those friends to themselves for my sake. I am not speaking harshly; I mean that it is in truth so, and it shows us how amazingly we are creatures of conventional habit.”
It was doubtful whether Isabel understood his meaning, her point of view was so different.
A thought which strikes one into speechless astonishment will leave another quite unmoved. It is a question of degree of culture—also of degree of emotion.
“Dear, if you had forewarned me of your coming. Don’t speak unkindly to me!”