Sidney, despite his perfections, was only man. For a moment he had forgotten her tears; then remembering, he said to himself that soon he would kiss away all tears from her eyes.
The best of men are prone to consider their kisses a panacea for all woman’s ills. Perhaps, with the irrefutable logic of the homœopathists, they argue that what produces an ill will cure it!
“Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean;
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rite in the heart and gather to the eyes
In looking on the happy autumn fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.”
The lines sprang spontaneously to his lips. This was the secret of Vashti’s tears. How often he had felt that almost intolerable regret, begotten by the recognition of the evanescence of beauty. And Vashti with her splendid natural soul must feel with treble keenness all these things.
Doubtless to her the crimsoning of the leaves was as the hectic flush upon an ailing child’s cheek to mother eyes. “The days that are no more,” ah! could it be she thought of the days when the grain was growing high, the first days of their companionship? Deluding himself thus with futile fancies he turned slowly, slowly towards the house, arriving to find Vashti already there in the midst of the housewifely bustle.