"Oh, my dearest, I don't want to talk of it. I have put off talking of it, day after day, yet you must know that I can only stay a very little longer. Think of it! I came for a month, and I have stayed—how long is it? And father must be getting lonesome; and he so seldom writes, and then tells me little or nothing. And everything must be needing me—"
"You extraordinary girl!" exclaimed Fidele, now very wide awake; "I swear I absolutely do not understand you! What do you mean? First you seem—you seem—and then—and then suddenly—"
Fidele could not get out her words, for Chloris's hand was across her lips.
"Hush!" she pleaded, quite earnestly. "Say nothing about it! When a thing has been spoken it seems to exist! You don't understand—I don't understand either. Who is consistent? Who knows what he wants? Who knows ever what he is doing? How many creatures we crush just walking across the grass! A path opens ahead, we take it blindly, not knowing whither it leads. With good reason we say we grope in the dark. Let us have the grace, then, when a moment's illumination is granted us, to go by its light. You don't know what I mean; I scarcely know myself. But don't try to keep me, dear! Remain at my side every minute that is left of my stay here; see me to the train without the shadow of an adventure—and I will love you all my life!"
And a few days later the train that had brought Chloris picked her up again, all flushed with Fidele's last kisses, and flew with her homeward.
She looked out of the window with other eyes than those she had first turned upon the mountains. Yet tears were in them, too, as she said, "Good-bye, dears! Your little sister leaves you, made quite well again. But never will she cease to love you. You shall be always in her dreams. And she will come back one day. When God sends her sorrows she will take refuge again with you."
All through the first hours of being rushed along across the brilliant fading land, that she looked at, scarcely seeing, she retained a sense of exaltation. She seemed to herself as a sword after the proofs of furnace and ice-brook. She could have laughed to think of the philosopher that was going home in place of the pallid victim of an almost pathological sensibility.
The mountains were dwindling to little hills; the latter-year sun was too barely bright: a crude earth-color and a sombre green took place of the angelic vague green and blue and pink of the dewier, earlier period. The plain was opening with its more trivial detail. Chloris's mind descended to its level, and projected itself with a limited emotion into the circumstances of the approaching home-coming. She felt prepared to endure whatever awaited her with grace and dignity; she felt sure, indeed, that she should feel very little. "I have learned the secret of life," she said to herself; "I have weighed and measured everything."
At this same moment an elderly gentleman who had a daughter was thinking how touchingly young and inexperienced his fellow-traveller looked; in his old heart he felt sorry for her, somehow, for being so young.
"I have weighed and measured everything," she said. "God is real, God lasts, and the love of Him. Human passion passes away. One might almost say that it does not exist. It is like a physical pain: it tortures, you try to locate it, you fix your mind upon the presumed seat of it—it is not there, there is no pain; and presently, when you are well, you cannot call up a remembrance of the sensation. I feel fitted to write a book on this subject. I thought I could never endure my life without Damon—dear, dear Damon! Yet I live and am improved in health. And, blinded by I shall never be able to explain what mist, I was beginning to adapt my mind to the thought of life with Demetrius, whom I pictured out of all proportion happy and grateful to me. Why more grateful than another? Thank God I was delivered from committing such a blunder! Ah, if I could teach Chloe all that I have learned! But she does not need it; she gets what she wants, for beyond a doubt Demetrius in time goes back to her. I—I am armed now at every point. I have a defence against every circumstance. The secret is: Nothing matters, but God above. And, knowing this, I mean to be very sweet to all at home, more thoughtful of every one, more generous of all myself—"