"It wouldn't help me. The best thing I can do is to stay where I am and finish."
"Is that the truth?"
"Nothing but the truth."
("But not the whole truth," thought Lucia.)
"Well," she said, rising, "whatever you do, don't lose heart."
He smiled drearily. It was all very well to say that, when his heart was lost already.
"Wait—wait till next spring comes."
He could put what meaning he liked into that graceful little commonplace. But it dismissed at the same time that it reassured him. The very ease and delicacy with which it was done left him no doubt on that point.
He was not going to accept his dismissal then and there. A bold thought leapt in his brain. Could he—might he—? She had read his sonnet; would it do to ask her to read his drama also? To be sure the sonnet had but fourteen lines, while the drama had twice as many hundred. But the drama, the drama, his beautiful Helen in Leuce, was his ultimate achievement, the highest, completest expression of his soul. And what he required of Lucia Harden was not her praise, but fuller, more perfect comprehension. He stood in a cruel and false position, and he longed for her to know the finest and the best of him, before she knew (as she must know) the worst.
She was turning away; but there was a closed gate between her and the hill-path that led down into the valley.