"Oh, death, death—there is no remedy for death." Bessie shuddered. There was repulsion in her face as well as awe.
Harry felt surprised: this was his own feeling, but women, he thought, had more natural resignation. Not so, however, his young comrade. She loved life, and hoped to see good days. He reminded her that she had lost both her parents early.
"Yes," she said, "but my other father and mother prevented me suffering from their loss. I scarcely recollect it, I was such a happy child. It would be different now if any of those, young like myself, that I have grown up with and love very much, were to pass out of sight, and I had to think that nowhere in the world could I find them any more."
"It would touch you more personally. There was a young fellow drowned at Oxford whom I knew: we were aghast for a day, but the next we were on the river again. I recollect how bitterly you cried the morning your father was buried; all the afternoon you refused to be comforted, even by a sweet black puppy that I had brought over for the purpose, but in the evening you took to it and carried it about in your pinafore. Oh, God and time are very good to us. We lose one love, another steps in to fill the void, and soon we do not remember that ever there was a void."
Bessie was gazing straight away into heaven, her eyes full of sunshiny tears, thoughts of the black puppy struggling with more pathetic thoughts. "We are very dismal, Harry," said she presently. "Is the moral of it how easily we should be consoled for each other's loss? Would you not pity me if I died? I should almost die of your death, I think."
"And if I am to live and never do any good, never to be famous, Bessie? If I come to you some day beaten and jaded—no honors and glories, as I used to promise—"
"Why, Harry, unless it were your mother no one would be kinder to you than I would," she said with exquisite tenderness, turning to look in his face, for he spoke in a strained, low voice as if it hurt him.
He took her hands, she not refusing to yield them, and said, "It is my belief that we are as fond of each other as ever we were, Bessie, and that neither of us will ever care half so much for anybody else?"
"It is my belief too, Harry." Bessie's eyes shone and her tongue trembled, but how happy she was! And he bowed his head for several minutes in silence.
There was a rustling in the bushes behind them, a bird perhaps, but the noise recalled them to the present world—that and a whisper from Bessie, smiling again for pure content: "Harry dear, we must not make fools of ourselves now; my lady might descend upon us at any moment."