That she should have cast aside her crude, untried schemes and fancies when the man appeared whom she loved, in spite of all efforts not to love him, was perhaps not surprising; indeed, there was perhaps nothing very surprising in the whole matter. But, in every deep, intense, and powerful love there are tragic elements, and those elements were present in this love of Nita’s. Not the least tragic one was, that though, as time went on, Wellfield said many tender things to her, and looked unutterable ones; though she loved him as her life, and would have hailed as a foretaste of heaven the conviction that he loved her, yet she never had that conviction. She did not feel that he loved her; she only felt that the things which she had seen she now could see no more, that her peace and repose of mind were gone, and that thus it must be, until he or she were no more. She felt that she was living in an unnatural manner—in a dream; that the equilibrium between outward and inward things had received a shock. She knew, though she would not have put it in those words, that, sooner or later, that equilibrium must be readjusted—that something would come to restore it, that the restoration might take many shapes. There was the equilibrium which means happiness, the continuous adjustment of outer to inner conditions; there was the imperfect adjustment of those conditions, which meant more or less of sorrow and suffering; there is the final equilibrium—that great adjustment of outward conditions to inward ones, which we call death. Any of these things might come to her she vaguely felt as she paced beside the river walk, with Speedwell beside her, and saw the swirling eddies of the river, and heard its gurgle, and saw the dull, hazy, sultry blue of the sky above her, and felt the warmth of perfect summer in every vein.
Turning and raising her eyes, she saw Wellfield coming from the great gateway towards her. He was on his way from Burnham, where he had been trying to learn how to become a business man in her father’s office.
‘Good-afternoon, Miss Bolton. I have brought you good news.’
‘Have you? What kind of news?’
‘The news that I am at last going to relieve you of my presence here, which you must have thought lately was to become a permanent infliction. I have just been down to Monk’s Gate. The men wish to persuade me that it is not nearly what it ought to be, but I told them it would do very well for me, and that I should have no money to pay them with if they did anything else. I showed them exactly what I would have done. They are to finish to-night, by working an hour overtime, and I shall go there to-morrow.’
He had taken his place by her side, as if he were accustomed to walk there; had deprived her of the book, which she had shut up, and of the sunshade that she had been carrying, and now he looked down at her and waited for her to speak.
‘It—you—I think you have rather hurried them. Is it not rather a sudden resolve?’
‘Sudden action, perhaps. But for more than a week I have been chafing at the delay, and at the way in which I have been obliged to quarter myself upon you here—a proceeding for which I have not the least justification.’
‘Except that of having been often invited to remain as long as you liked, or felt it convenient,’ said Nita, in a low voice.
‘I know you and Mr. Bolton have been kindness itself, and I can never be grateful enough to you.’