"How is he?"
He shook his head reproachfully at her: "When I saw him at least he seemed better than you seem."
"I knew he was not well—I have known it for a long time. But you saw him—in town—on the street—with his friends—attending to business?"
"Yes—in town—on the street—with his friends—attending to business."
"May I stay here? I ordered my luggage to be sent here."
"Your room is ready and has always been ready and waiting since the day you left. I think Anna has been putting fresh flowers in it all autumn. You will find some there to-night. She has insisted of late that you would soon be coming home."
An hour later she came down into the library again. She had removed the traces of travel, and she had travelled slowly and was not tired. All this enabled him to see how changed she was; and without looking older, how strangely oldened and grown how quiet of spirit. She had now indeed become sister for him to those images of beauty that were always haunting him—those far, dim images of the girlhood of her sex, with their faces turned away from the sun and their eyes looking downward, pensive in shadow, too freighted with thoughts of their brief fate and their immortality.
"I must have a long talk with you before I try to sleep. I must empty my heart to you once."
He knew that she needed the relief, and that what she asked of him during these hours would be silence.
"I have tried everything, and everything has failed. I have tried absence, but absence has not separated me from him. I have tried silence, but through the silence I have never ceased speaking to him. Nothing has really ever separated us; nothing ever can. It is more than will or purpose, it is my life. It is more than life to me, it is love."