“You love it almost too much, I think. It takes you away from everything else. Do you mean to work in this way always? Have you no other visions of the future?”
“Oh, I have had visions!” he said, thrusting his hands into the pockets of his sack-coat, and bracing himself against the end of the mantel, while he looked at her steadily as he spoke. “I have had visions—plenty of them! They mostly took the form of very simple, quiet dreams of life; for I have already told you, Miss Trevennon, by what a very demon of domesticity I am haunted. The sweetest of all thoughts to me is that of home—a quiet life, with a dear companion—that would be my happiness. Exterior things would be very unimportant.”
He seemed to rouse himself, as if from some sort of lethargy which he dreaded, and, standing upright, he folded his arms across his breast, and went on:
“But if I had this vision once, I have put it from me now, and only the old routine remains—business and reading and a half-hearted interest in society. There is music, but that I mistrust; it brings the old visions back, and shows me the loneliness of a life in which they can have no part. So it is no wonder, is it, that I call my work my best friend?”
Poor, poor Margaret! Her heart sank lower and lower, and when he finished with this calmly uttered question, a little shudder ran through her.
“I am cold,” she said, rising; “I must go.”
He went and brought her white wrap from where she had thrown it on a chair, and with one of his peculiarly protecting motions he threw it around her. Then, gathering the soft folds in his hands on each side, he drew them close across her breast, and held them so a moment, as he said:
“Yes, Margaret, you must go. And it is not for the night, nor for the season, nor even for the year; it is forever. What would you say to me, if you knew we were never to see each other again?”
“Most likely we never shall,” she said, speaking in a cold, vacant way.
“And what will you say to me? What will you give me to remember?”