Beatrice Haldane looked away towards the dying fires. "There was a time when you would not have been content."
The wondrous green transparency had almost gone, the dew touched the wheat, and we stood alone in the emptiness, under the hush that crept up with the dimness from the east, and through which one could almost hear the thirsty grasses drink. I knew now that I had never loved Beatrice Haldane as a man usually loves a woman, but had offered an empty homage to an unreality. Still, the semblance had once been real enough to me, and I could not wholly hold my peace and let her go. Furthermore, both she and her sister possessed the gift of forcing one's inmost thoughts, and there was a power in the quiet voice stronger than my will.
"No. I once had my ambitions and an ideal," I said. "At first their realization seemed possible, but I had my lesson. Even when I knew the ideal was unattainable, the knowledge did not decrease its influence, and now, while smiling at past presumption, I can at least cherish the memory. I think you must have known part of this."
Beatrice Haldane had by knowledge attained to a perfection of simplicity, and, while my own was either the result of ignorance or born in me, we met upon it as man and woman—the latter too queenly to stoop to any small assumption of diffidence.
"I guessed it long ago, and there was a time when I was pleased," she said. "However, it was doubtless well for you that, when contact with the world taught me what we both were, I knew it was impossible. When we met again on the prairie, you could not see that I was not the girl you knew in England. She had, in the meantime, bought enlightenment dearly; though whether it or her earlier fancies were nearer the hidden truth she does not know."
"In one respect you can never change to me," I said. "The sunny-faced girl in England will always live in my memory."
Beatrice Haldane smiled, though the fast fading light showed the weariness in her eyes. "Until you find the substance better than the shadow; and she must always have been unreal. Still, we are not proof against such assurances, and I am even now partly pleased to hear you say so. Do you know that you have shamed me, Harry Ormesby?"
"That would be impossible," I said; and my companion smiled.
"Hold fast by your blunt directness if you are wise," she said. "I was blinded by the critical faculty, and you rebuked me by clinging to your visionary ideal, while I—misjudged you. I do not mind admitting now that it hurt me, the more so when I found that Lucille, being—and there is truth in the phrase—unspotted by the world, believed in you implicitly. It was because of this I allowed you to speak as you have done. I felt that I must ask your forgiveness, because we shall probably never meet again."
Whether Beatrice Haldane was correct in her own estimate I do not know; but she was the most queenly woman I had ever met, and I lifted the rent hat as I said: "Circumstances betrayed me, and you could do no wrong. Even if that had been possible, how far would one suspicion count against all that the girl in England has done for me? Now it only remains for us to part good friends—and with full sincerity I wish you every happiness."