Of course, it must; even if not too good to be true, it was too wonderful to be enduring; the clock strikes twelve for every Cinderella, and few are blessed enough to be able to leave behind them a matchless slipper.
But whatever happened, nothing now could prevent her carrying to her grave the memory of this one glorious flight: "better to have loved and lost--" The wraith of an old refrain troubled Sally's reverie. How did it go? "Now die the dream--"
Saturate with exquisite melancholy, she leaned out over the window-sill into the warm, still moonlight, drinking deep of the wine-scent of roses, dwelling upon the image of him whom she loved so madly.
What were the words again?
". . . The past is not in vain, For wholly as it was your life, Can never be again, my dear, Can never be again."
She shook a mournful head, sadly envisaging the loveliness of the world through a mist of facile tears; that was too exquisitely, too poignantly true of her own plight; for, wholly as it was, her life could never be again.
And not for worlds would she have had it otherwise.
Below, in the deserted drawing-room, a time-mellowed clock chimed sonorously the hour of two.
Two o'clock of a Sunday morning, and all well; long since Gosnold House had lapsed into decent silence; an hour ago she had heard the last laggard footsteps, the last murmured good nights in the corridor outside her door as the men-folk took themselves reluctantly off to their beds.
She leaned still farther out over the sill, peering along the gleaming white facade; no window showed a light that she could see. She listened acutely; not a sound but the muttering of fretful little waves and the drowsy complaint of some bird troubled in its sleep.