“I don't know so much about that. Is she very pretty? I suppose you are very much in love with her?”
“Yes, I love her very much. Dark, not like you a bit—just the opposite.”
“And you met her since you saw me?”
“No.”
“Ah, I thought as much, and yet you told me the day we went up the river together that you never had and couldn't care for any one elsebut me. Men are all alike—they never tell the truth.”
“Wait a minute; wait a minute. I knew her long before I knew you; I have known her since I was a boy, but that doesn't mean that I have been in love with her since I was a boy. I never thought of her until you threw me over, until long after; it was last summer I fell in love with her.”
Lizzie's eyes were full upon him, and it seemed to them that each could see and taste the essence of the other's thought.
“What have you been doing ever since? You have told me nothing about yourself.”
“Well, after trying vainly to find you—having searched, as I thought, all Speirs and Pond's establishments in London, I tried to resign myself to my fate. I assure you, I was dreadfully cut up—could do nothing. My life was a burden to me. You have been in love, and you know what an ache it is; it used to catch me about the heart. There was no hope; you were gone—gone as if the earth had swallowed you. I got sick of going to the 'Gaiety' and asking those girls if they knew anything about you; so to cure myself I went to France, and I worked hard at my painting. In such circumstances there is only one thing—work.”
“You are right.”