Violet looked round with a sad smile that was beautiful on her girlish face.
“And the chestnut trees—I wonder how old they are,” said William. “I must see you once more, Violet, among the chestnut trees;” and he led her towards them, she going willingly, with a little laugh that sounded low and sadly.
Among their stems, he stopped before that of a solitary beech tree.
“Do you remember that tree?” said William, speaking very low.
“I do indeed,” said Violet, with the faintest little laugh in the world.
“It’s more than three years ago—it’s four years ago—since I carved them.” He was pointing to two lines of letters, already beginning to spread and close in as such memorials on the living bark will do—but still legible enough. They were—
Vi Darkwell.
William Maubray.
“These are going,” he said with a sigh, “like the old inscriptions in Saxton Church-yard; I believe it is impossible to make any lasting memorial; even memory fails as we grow old; God only remembers always; and this little carving here seems to me like an epitaph, times are so changed, and we—Vi Darkwell—William Maubray”—(he read slowly). “Little Vi is gone—dead and buried—and William Maubray—he did not know a great many things that he has found out since. He is dead and gone too, and I am here. He did not know himself; he thought the old things were to go on always; he did not know, Vi, how much he loved you—how desperately he loved you. You don’t know it—you can’t know it—or how much rather I’d die than lose you.”
She was looking down, the point of her little foot was smoothing this way and that the moss on the old roots that overlaced the ground.