'You are unhappy, and I fear you must be unhappy and not at ease for a long time,' she would say to herself in the intervals of her work; 'but idleness will not help you.' And to give her her due, she was never busier than during the summer that followed Michael's leave-taking. She had no idea that Michael knew all she was doing, and that her father often wrote to him. Michael had kept his word, and his letters to Audrey were very few and far between, and there was not a word in them that her mother or Geraldine could not have read if she had chosen to show them; but Michael's letters had always been sacred to her. Still it was impossible to answer them with her old freedom. The happy, sisterly intercourse was now a thing of the past. She could no longer pour out to her friend all her innocent girlish thoughts; a barrier—a strange, unnatural barrier—had been built up between them, and Audrey's letters, with all her painstaking effort, gave very little pleasure to Michael.
'Poor child! she is still afraid of me,' he thought, as he folded up the thin paper. And he could not always suppress a sigh as he missed the old playfulness and open-hearted affection that used to breathe in every carelessly-worded sentence. But he knew that she could not help herself; that it was impossible for her now to tell him how she missed him and how heavily the days passed without him; and how could he know it, if she thought less of Cyril and more of him every day?
Michael could not guess at all that inward self-questioning that seemed for ever making dumb utterance in her breast. Now and then, when no one needed her, she would wander down to 'Michael's bench' in the dusk or moonlight, and go over that strange conversation again.
'Let your own heart plead for me,' had been his parting words; and, indeed, it seemed as though some subtle influence were for ever bringing his words to her memory. Why had he left her? Could he not have trusted her to do even this for him? She had loved Cyril, but she had not wished to marry him; she had wished to marry no man. It was the instinct of her nature to make others happy, and not to think of herself; and if Michael had wanted her——But the next moment a sort of despair seized her.
He was not like Cyril. What she had to give would not content him in the least.
'I must have all your heart or none,' he had said to her; and his eyes seemed to dominate her as he spoke. 'I should ask more than he did.' And she had not dared to answer him.
No; she could not deceive him. She knew that no kindness on her part would ever wear in his eyes the semblance of the love he wanted. What could she do for him or for herself?
'Can love come by trying?' he had asked; and she could recall vividly the bitterness of his tone as he said this.
But the speech over which she pondered most, sometimes for an hour together, was a very different one.
'I shall leave you,' he had told her, and there had been a strange light in his eyes as he spoke—'I shall leave you to question your own heart. Let it speak truly. Perhaps—I do not say it will be so, but perhaps you may find that I am more to you than you think. If that time ever comes, will you send for me?'