She repeated this often—in impassioned moments. "Nothing can part us. Whatever Fate may bring we shall be together. There can be no more parting."
He was not given to serious thoughts. He never had been. His one irresistible charm had been his careless enjoyment of the present hour, and indifference to all that might come after. He had never considered the ultimate result of any action in his life. He left the Army with no more thought than he left off a soiled glove! He threw up a painter's art, and all its chances of delight and fame, the moment he found discouragement and difficulty. He hated difficult things; he hated hard work; he hated giving up anything he liked. His haunting idea of evil was the dread of being bored.
Once Vera found herself making an involuntary comparison between the dead man and the living.
If Claude had had a dying daughter whom he loved, could he have watched her sink into her grave, and kept the secret of his sorrow, and smiled at her while his heart was breaking? She knew he could not. He was a creature of light and variable moods, of sunshine and fine weather. She had loved him for his lightness. He had brought her relief from ennui whenever he crossed her threshold; he had brought her gladness and gay thoughts, as a man brings a bunch of June roses to his sweetheart. And now that the past was done with, and that she was his for ever, they were to be always glad and gay. There was to be no gloom in their atmosphere, no long, dull pause in life to give time for dark thoughts.
"Everybody has something to be sorry for," Vera told Susan Amphlett; "that's why people's existence is a perpetual rush. Niagara can have no time to think—but imagine, if nature were alive, what long aching thoughts there might be under the bosom of a great, smooth lake."
"You know, my darling Vera, I generally think everything you do is perfect," Susan answered, more sensibly than her wont, "but, I sometimes fear that you and Claude are burning the candle at both ends. You are too much alive. You seem to be running a race with time. Neither your health nor your beauty can last at the pace you are going."
"I'll take my chance of that. There is one thing that I dread more than being ill and growing ugly."
"What is that?"
"Living to be old."