“Don’t speak of that,” he interrupted, “for then you were kissing someone else.”
“It is not true. I never kissed anyone else in that way, and I do not think I ever shall. I kissed a rose, that’s all, and I gather that you have done as much and very likely a great deal more. But it is of the lady I am speaking, not of the ball. She seemed to come up from her grave and enter into me, and say something.”
“Well, what did she say, Isobel?” he asked dreamily.
“That’s it, I don’t know, although she talked to me as one might to oneself. All I know is that it was of trouble and patience and great joy, and war and tragedy in which I must be intimately concerned, and—after the tragedy—of a most infinite rest and bliss.”
“I expect she was telling you her own story, which seems to have ended well,” he replied in the same dreamy fashion.
“Yes, I think so, but also that she meant that her story would be my story, copied you know, as I copied her dress. Of course it is all nonsense, just the influence of the place taking hold of me when overcome by other things, but at the time it seemed very real.”
“So does a bad dream,” said Godfrey, “but for all that it isn’t real. Still it is odd that everything important seems to happen to us within a few feet of that lady’s dust, and I can’t quite disbelieve in spirits and their power of impressing themselves upon us; I wish I could. The strange thing is that you should put any faith in them.”
“I don’t, though I admit that my views about such matters are changing. You know I used to be sure that when we die everything is over with us. Now I think differently, why I cannot say.”
Then the subject dropped, because really they were both wrapped in the great joy of a glorious hour and disinclined to dwell upon fancies about a woman who had died five hundred years ago, or on metaphysical speculations. Also the fear of what might follow upon that hour haunted them more vividly than any hovering ghost, if such there were.
“My dear,” said Isobel, “I am sorry, but I must say it; I am sure that there will be trouble about this business.”