“The evening is so fine,” Phil began; “you—”
“I saw yesterday something finer and sweeter than all that,” Ethel interrupted, with a gesture which took in the forest and the sumptuous sky. “I saw some one yesterday repulse with disdain a fortune, to remain faithful to a childhood love.”
Phil stopped short.
“It was a young girl,” Ethel went on, slowly, as if to communicate to him her own conviction,—“a young girl who believes in the sanctity of promises made when one is young, when the heart is as clear as the sky,—a young girl who believes in loyalty to her word once given, and to oaths exchanged later, when she knew what she was doing—at the age when one still sees in love only love itself.”
“It might be for me and Helia!” Phil thought. “Yet, she knows nothing about it.”
“That is why I look radiant,” Ethel continued. “Ah, it refreshes me after what we see so often,—vile hearts and cowardly consciences.”
“This is my punishment,” thought Phil.
In full daylight, Ethel would certainly have noticed his fearful pallor. He stammered out: “One is not always master of his own heart!”
“A true heart,” replied Ethel, “loves but once. There are not different oaths for each different age of life.”
All this was a lightning-flash to Phil’s soul. Ethel had never seemed more friendly to him, and she was radiant and gay. But he no longer thought of her. He was face to face with himself.