Yes, the very intensity of her love had ended in the estrangement of the lover. She found noble qualities in the man, and she had tried to make him divine. Not because he was _her_ lover, but because she _loved him_. She had given him her heart and soul, and now she had sacrificed her love itself upon the altar of her devotion.
That was the heroic aspect of the affair, and as in all other sorrows that take large shape, the heroic aspect elevated above pain and forbade the canker of tears.
But this girl saw other aspects too.
She should miss him--oh, so bitterly! She should miss him the whole of her life forth from that hour! She should miss him in the immediate future. She had missed him that day in the Park. She should miss him tomorrow. He always came on Saturdays. He used to say he always came to Curzon Street on Saturday afternoon, like any other good young man, to see his sweetheart when the shop was shut. She should miss him on Sunday, too, for he always came on Sunday, saying, the better the day the better the deed. On Mondays he made it a point to stay away, but contrived to meet her somewhere, in the Park, or at a friend's place, or in Regent Street, and now he would stay away altogether, not making a point of it, but because she had told him to make an observance of always staying away.
She should miss his voice, his marvellous voice, which could be so clarion toned and commanding among men, and was so soft and tunable for her ear. When he spoke to her it always seemed that the instrumental music designed to accompany his words had fined off into silence for shame of its inadequacy. How poor and thin and harsh all voices would sound now. They would merely make idle sounds to the idle air. Of old, of that old which began its backward way only yesterday, all voices had seemed the prelude of his. They sounded merely as notes of preparation and awakening. They were only the overture, full of hints and promises.
She should miss his eyes. She should miss the clear vivid leap of flame into his eyes when he glanced at her with enthusiasm, or joy, or laughter. She should miss the gleam of that strange light which, once having caught his eye in moments of enthusiasm, appeared to bathe his face while he looked and spoke. She should miss the sound of his footstep, that fleet herald of his impatient love!
Oh, it was hard--hard--hard to be doomed to miss so much!
And all this was only what she should miss in the immediate future.
In the measure of her after life would be nothing but idle air. In her dreams of the future she had pictured him going forth from her in the morning radiant and confident, to mingle in some worthy strife, and coming back in the evening suffused with glory, to draw breaths of peaceful ease in her society, in her home, her new home, their joint home. She had thought of the reverse of this picture. She had thought of him returning weary and unsuccessful, coming home to her for rest now, and soothing service of love and inspiriting words of hope.
She had visions of later life and visions of their gradual decay, and going down the hill of life hand in hand together. She had dreamed they should never, never, never be parted.