This shifted the tragic issue of the question and put him more at ease. If it could but be brought back to the general ground, on which mutual professions of fidelity would suffice and time could be gained! So far as that went, Cosmo knew very well what to say. It was only the practical result that filled him with alarm. Why had he been so hasty in declaring himself? The preliminaries of courtship may go on for years, but the moment an answer has been asked and given, some conclusion must be come to. However, it is always easy to answer a girl when she utters such words as these. He eluded the real difficulty, following her lead, and so filled up the time with lovers’ talk that the hour flew by without any decision. They talked of the one subject in a hundred different tones—it was all so new, and Anne was so easily transported into that vague and beautiful fairyland where her steps were treading for the first time. And she had so much to say to him on her side; and time has wings, and can fly on some occasions though he is so slow on others. It was she who at the end of many digressions finally discovered that while they had been talking the green terrace below had become vacant, the company dispersed. She started up in alarm.
‘They have all gone in. The game is over. How long we must have been sitting here! And they will be looking for me. I was obliged to say I had a headache. Indeed I had a headache,’ said Anne, suddenly waking to a sense of her subterfuge and hanging her head—for he had laughed—which was a failure of perception on his part and almost roused her pride to arms. But Cosmo was quick-sighted and perceived his mistake.
‘Dear Anne! is this the first issue of faith to me?’ he said. ‘What am I to do, my darling? Kill myself for having disturbed your life and made your head ache, or——’
‘Do not talk nonsense, Cosmo; but I must go home.’
‘And we have been talking nonsense, and have come to no settlement one way or another,’ he said, with a look of vexation. Naturally Anne took the blame to herself. It could only be her fault.
‘The time has gone so fast,’ she said, with a sigh. ‘But, perhaps, on the whole, it is best not to settle anything. Let us take a little time to think. Is there any hurry? Nobody can separate us so long as we are faithful to each other. There is no need that I know for—any conclusion.’
Poor Cosmo! there were points in which at this moment his was a hard case. He was obliged to look vexed and complain, though he was so fully convinced of the wisdom of this utterance. ‘You forget,’ he said tenderly, ‘that I have to go away, to return to my life of loneliness—perhaps to ask myself if Anne was only a heavenly dream, a delusion, and to find myself waking——’
‘To what?’ she replied, in her enthusiasm, half angry, ‘to what?’ ‘If you have my heart with you and my thoughts, is not that the best part of me? The Anne that will be with you will be the true Anne, not the outside of her which must stay here.’
‘But I want the outside too. Ah, Anne, if I were to stay here, if I could live at your gate like Charley Ashley (poor fellow!). But you forget that I must go away.’
‘I don’t forget it. When must you go?’ She sank her voice a little and drew closer to him, and looked at him with a cloud rising over her face. He must go, there was no eluding that certainty, and to think of it was like thinking of dying—yet of a sweet death to be borne heroically for the sake each of each, and with a speedy bright resurrection in prospect; but it would be an extinction of all the delight of living so long as it lasted. Cosmo’s mind was not so elevated as Anne’s, nor his imagination so inspiring, but the look of visionary anguish and courage went to his heart.