“Eva, how can you say such things! it is not kind of you!”
“O, why not? It is true. O yes, I know that I am better-looking, and that is what you men always think of; but she has more brains, more fixity of mind, and, perhaps, for all I know, more heart than I have, though, for the matter of that, I feel as if I was all heart just now. Really, Ernest, you had better transfer your allegiance. Give me up, and forget me, dear; it will save you much trouble. I know that there is trouble coming; it is in the air. Better marry Dorothy, and leave me to fight my sorrow out alone. I will release you, Ernest;” and she began to cry at the bare idea.
“I shall wait to give you up until you have given me up,” said Ernest, when he had found means to stop her tears; “and as for forgetting you, I can never do that. Please, dear, don’t talk so any more; it pains me.”
“Very well, Ernest; then let us vow eternal fidelity instead; but, my dear, I know that I shall bring you trouble.”
“It is the price that men have always paid for the smiles of women like you,” he answered. “Trouble may come—so be it, let it come; at any rate, I have the consciousness of your love. When I have lost that, then, and then only, shall I think that I have bought you too dear.”
In the course of his after life these words often came back to Ernest’s mind.
CHAPTER XIV.
GOOD-BYE
There are some scenes, trivial enough perhaps in themselves, that yet retain a peculiar power of standing out in sharp relief, as we cast our mind’s eye down the long vista of our past. The group of events with which these particular scenes were connected may have long ago vanished from our mental sight, or faded into a dim and misty uniformity, and be as difficult to distinguish one from the other as the trees of a forest viewed from a height. But here and there an event, a sensation, or a face will stand out as perfectly clear as if it had been that moment experienced, felt, or seen. Perhaps it is only some scene of our childhood, such as a fish darting beneath a rustic bridge, and the ripple which its motion left upon the water. We have seen many larger fish dart in many fine rivers since then, and have forgotten them; but somehow that one little fish has kept awake in the storehouse of our brain, where most things sleep, though none are really obliterated.
It was in this clear and brilliant fashion that every little detail of the scene was indelibly photographed on Ernest’s mind when, on the morning following their meeting in the cave, he said good-bye to Eva before he went abroad. It was a public good-bye, for, as it happened, there was no opportunity for the lovers to meet alone. They were all gathered in the little drawing-room at the Cottage: Miss Ceswick seated on a straight-backed chair in the bow-window; Ernest on one side of the round table, looking intensely uncomfortable; Eva on the other, a scrapbook in her hand, which she studiously kept before her face; and in the background, leaning carelessly over the back of a chair in such a way that her own face could not be seen, though she could survey everybody else’s, was Florence. Ernest, from where he sat, could just make out the outline of her olive face, and the quick glance of her brown eyes.
And so they sat for a long time, but what was said he could not remember; it was only the scene that imprinted itself upon his memory.