“Doll, you know I call her my evil destiny. The fact is, I am afraid of her; she overpowers my reason. Well, now, Doll, what I am driving at is this: supposing—not that I think she will—that she were to crop up again, and take it into her head to try and make a fool of me! She might succeed, Doll.”
“Ernest, will you promise me something on your honour?”
“Yes, dear.”
“Promise me that you will hide from me nothing that passes between Eva and yourself, if anything ever should pass, and that in this matter you will always consider me not in the light of a wife, but of a trusted friend.”
“Why do you ask me to promise that?”
“Because then I shall, I hope, be able to keep you both out of trouble. You are not fit to look after yourselves, either of you.”
“I promise. And now, Doll, there is one more thing. It is somehow fixed in my mind that my fate and that woman’s are intertwined. I believe that what we are now passing through is but a single phase of interwoven existence; that we have, perhaps, already passed through many stages, and that many higher stages and developments await us. Of course, it may be fantasy, but at any rate I believe it. The question is, do you care to link your life with that of a man who holds such a belief?”
“Ernest, I daresay your belief is a true one, at any rate for you who believe it, for it seems probable that as we sow so shall we reap, as we spiritually imagine so shall we spiritually inherit, since causes must in time produce effects. These beliefs are not implanted in our hearts for nothing, and surely in the wide heavens there is room for the realisation of them all. But I too have my beliefs, and one of them is, that in God’s great Hereafter every loving and desiring soul will be with the soul thus loved and desired. For him or her, at any rate, the other will be there, forming a part of his or her life, though, perhaps, it may elsewhere and with others also be pursuing its own desires and satisfying its own aspirations. So you see, Ernest, your beliefs will not interfere with mine, nor shall I be afraid of losing you in another place.
“And now, Ernest, my heart’s love, take my hand, and let me lead you home; take my hand, as you have taken my heart, and never leave go of it again till at last I die.”
And so hand in hand they went home together, through the lights and shadows of the twilight.