His face was wet with her tears. He took her again into his arms, turning her face that he might kiss the tears away. Her whole body shook with her convulsive sobs.
“Dearest little girl! Poor, dear little child!”
In the branches above a bird fluttered and cheeped as though startled in its dreaming. She freed herself, sought her handkerchief to dry her eyes. With the impotence of man before a woman’s grief he sought to brush back a wisp of hair that had fallen across her cheek and his hand trembled. Her face seemed to hover in the star dusk; he saw the quiver of her lashes, the parted lips, felt for an instant the throbbing pulse in her throat.
“I knew the end would come,” she said, with a deep sigh, “But I didn’t know it would be like this. It’s been so dear, so wonderful! I thought it would go on forever!”
Her gaze was upon the dark uneven line of the trees across the river where they brushed the stars.
“But it isn’t the end, dear! A love like ours can’t die. It belongs to the things of all time.”
“Please, Ward,” she said impatiently, drawing her cloak more tightly about her shoulders. “Let’s not deceive ourselves any more. You know we can’t go on,” she continued, as one who has reasoned through a thing and reached an irrefutable conclusion. “It’s all been like a dream; but dreams don’t last. And this should never have begun!”
“You break my heart when you say things like that! As we’ve said so many times—it all had to be!”
“We were fools to think it could last,” she said. “But it was more my fault than yours. And you’ve been dear and kind—Oh, so beautifully kind.”
“You’ve trusted me; you’ve proved that! You’ve never doubted—you don’t doubt now that I love you!”