“Nothing new, Edward.”
“Only the trouble of yesterday, Tom’s going away?”
“It is not the trouble of yesterday. It is a trouble which lasts, which is going on, which may never come to an end. I don’t think you can say of any trouble that it is only of yesterday.”
“That is very true; still, you and I are not given to philosophising, Winnie, and I thought there might be some new incident. I suppose he sails to-day?”
“Yes, he sails to-day: and when will he come back again? Will he ever come back? The two of them? Oh, Edward, life is very hard, very different from what one thought.”
“At your age people are seldom so much mixed up in it. But there is the good as well as the bad.”
“Perhaps,” said the girl, faltering, “I am looking through spectacles, not rose-coloured, all the other way. I don’t see very much of the good.”
He pressed her arm close to his side.
“Am not I a little bit of good; is not our life all good if it were only once begun?”
“But what if it never begins?”