"It sounds rather cheerless," says Colonel Carlisle gravely. "Art cannot satisfy our emotional faculties, or fill our hearts as human love and sympathy can."
"Tennyson says, 'The feelings are dangerous guides,'" she answers bitterly; "and emotion is apt to make us capricious. As to sympathy, well, I don't think I have outlived that——"
"But love, you have?" he interrupts softly.
Her eyes meet his in startled confusion. All their ordinary calm is swept away.
"Have you any right to ask such a question?" she says coldly.
His face changes. A storm of feeling sweeps over his soul, and for a moment chains back the impetuous words he fain would utter.
"No; I have not—unless a long, faithful memory of—you gives me any right."
His voice is very low, his face pale, despite the bronzing of Indian suns. His eyes rest on her with a great sadness and a great longing in their depths. She is so much to him—this woman sitting there, with the dying daylight on her rich-hued dress, and the fire-gleams playing over the drooped golden head. So much, and he—— Oh, fool that he has been to lose her!
"I thought men's memories were never faithful," she murmurs, in answer to his last words.
"I know you judge them very harshly," he answers coldly. "I only trust that the effeminate, long-haired apostles of your new school may prove more virtuous, if less manly, than the old type."