Hilda tiptoed to the end of the corridor, laid the telegram on the floor in front of Mrs. Fulton's door, knocked very firmly, and the moment she heard someone stirring within, turned upon her heel and fled.
So much for the average strength of those grand passions upon which so many marriages are wrecked!
"Are they happy now, Hilda—the way they used to be?"
Oh no, not happy, fairly contented. She would never love him the way she used to. Her fantastics [Transcriber's note: fantasies?] had taken the beauty plumb out of their lives. But something remained. A loving husband, an unloving, but naturally kind, good-natured and affectionate wife, trying to do her duty by the two children that were and the one that was to be.
"Oh, Mr. Mannering," said Hilda; "you mustn't blame yourself too much. If it hadn't been you, it would have been someone else. I didn't think so, but now I do. And he might not have been a gentleman."
XXXV
We had dinner on the terrace of the Tamerlane Inn, overlooking the Sound.
"But, Hilda," I was arguing, toward coffee, "we might have gone on caring forever—if we hadn't been separated. Propinquity feeds love; absence starves it."
"Love? Indeed it doesn't. Fancy? Yes."