"Yes, I know all that. I have often seen Miss Moore; she is a very charming girl, and I liked her for insisting on staying with Baba for the present, so that Cicely should not be left stranded. It seemed to show grit, and a fine character."
"She has grit, and a fine character. She has more; she has a most lovable character; and, Rupert, she would make a man who cared for her, a most tender and loving wife."
"A man who cared for her," Rupert repeated with emphasis; "not a man whose whole heart was given to another woman."
"Some day—when the other woman—has gone—right away—remember what I said. That is all. It is not a thing to be discussed, even between two friends. Only—remember that my little Christina is worthy to be loved. She has a sweet and a strong soul."
More than once on that April afternoon, Rupert tried to take Margaret's conversation back to his own deep love for her; but, just as her brother Arthur had found, four months earlier, so he found now, that some dominating force in her personality kept him at bay—mastered him, in spite of himself. It was she who finally gave him a gentle word of dismissal, so gentle, that he could not be hurt, even though the parting from her seemed to him to tear his heart in two.
"I may come again?" he said, his speech sounding terse and abrupt, because of his very excess of feeling; and she smiled into his face, a strange smile, which he could not understand.
"Yes," she answered; "you may—come again; and, Rupert, forgive me if by being your friend I have only hurt you. I have done nothing for you, excepting give you pain. I think——"—she paused, and her eyes turned to the soft sky behind the delicate April leaves—"I think I have done so little, so terribly little with my life."
"But you have been so much," he answered, his hand holding hers closely, in a long warm clasp; "and it is what you are that matters, and that influences your fellow beings—what you are, so much more than what you do. And what you are lives for ever," he added, in a burst of inspiration very rare in the man, who so seldom gave expression to his thoughts. "There is no end to a good influence; it never dies; it could not ever die. What you are has helped everyone who knows—and loves you."
"But this is not good-bye," he said a moment later, before he left the room. "You say I may come again; this is only au revoir."
"Au revoir, then," she answered, that inexplicable smile breaking over her face again. "But," she whispered under her breath, as the door closed behind him, "it will be au revoir in a land where there will not be any more heart-breaks or good-byes—the land—that is not—very far off—but—near—so very near."