“Yes,” she asserted; “there are barriers that can’t be stormed. Merely to acquiesce is the hardest thing of all, but in that lies the victory.”
“It’s a bitter one,” he answered moodily.
There was silence for a few minutes while they strolled on through the heather. Afterward, Millicent understood where his thoughts had led, but now she was chiefly conscious of a slight but perplexing resentment against the fact that he should discourse rather crude philosophy. Indeed, the feeling almost amounted to disappointment—it was their last walk, and though she did not know what she had expected from him, it was something different from this. Walking by her side, with his fine poise, his keen eyes that regarded her steadily when she spoke, and his resolute brown face, he appealed to her physically, and in other ways she approved of him. It was borne in upon her more clearly that she would miss him badly, and she suspected that he would not find it easy to part from her. In the meanwhile he recognized that she had, no doubt unconsciously, given him a hint—when the moral difficulties were unsurmountable one must quietly submit.
They stopped when they reached the highest strip of moor. The sun was low, the vast sweep of country beneath them was fading to neutral color, woods, low ridges, and river valleys losing their sharpness of contour as the light left them. A faint cold wind sighed among the heather, emphasizing the desolation of the moorland.
Millicent shivered.
“We’ll go down,” Lisle said quietly; “the brightness has gone. I’ve had a great time here—something to think of as long as I live—but now it’s over.”
“But you’ll come back some day?” she suggested.
“I may; I can’t tell,” he answered. “I’ve schemes in view, to be worked out in the North, that may make my return possible; but even then it couldn’t be quite the same. Things change; one mustn’t expect too much.”
His smile was a little forced; his mood was infectious, and an unusual melancholy seized upon Millicent as they moved down-hill across the long, sad-colored slopes of heather. Then they reached a bare wood where dead leaves that rustled in the rising wind lay in drifts among the withered fern and the slender birch trunks rose about them somberly. The light had almost gone, the gathering gloom reacted upon both of them, and there was in the girl’s mind a sense of something left unsaid. Once or twice she glanced at her companion; his face was graver than usual and he did not look at her.
It was quite dark when they walked down the dale beneath the leafless oaks, talking now with an effort about indifferent matters, until at last Millicent stopped at the gate of the drive to her house.