"Would it make you glad to know that if this were poison I would take it, to share even so much of you?"
"It is poison, rank, acid poison, straight out of my wicked heart——"
"Then empty it; let me drain it, that there may be room for nothing but love."
"Love is a vaster emptiness—it is only a shadow thrown by ourselves."
"You have proved it so?" he questioned, anxiously. "You have loved?"
"I have loved," she breathed, with a weary accent on the middle word.
There was a long pause while they looked intently into the evening mists, which were weaving themselves into a veil of purple tissue over the horizon. A horrible tremor had seized him, and his next words, when they found voice, came thickly out from the burial place of a sob.
"Was it—was it Rosser?"
She merely bowed her head without looking at him.
He rose mutely, stretched his arms to right and left, drew himself to full length like some huge dog wakened from slumber, then for some moments he stood with hands clenched on his stick before he spoke.