"Dear Faith!" he said kissing her, "do you think I could bear that? How often I shall be able to come I cannot quite tell, but come I shall—from time to time, if I live. And in the meanwhile we must make letters do a great deal."
Her face brightened. She sat quietly looking at him.
"Will that shadow come any more,—now that you have told me?"
"I will give you leave to scold me, if you see it," Mr. Linden said, answering her smile,—"I ought not to be in shadow for a minute—with such a sunbeam in my possession. Although, although!—do you know, little bright one, that the connexion between sunbeams and shadows is very intimate? and very hard to get rid of?"
"Shall I talk to you about 'nonsense' again?"—she said half lightly, resting her hand on his arm and looking at him. Yet behind her light tone there was a great tenderness.
"You may—and I will plead guilty. But in which of the old classes of 'uncanny' folk will you put me?—with those who were known by their having no shadow, or with those who went always with two?"
"So I suppose one must have a little shadow, to keep from being uncanny!"
"You and I will not go upon that understanding, dear Faith."
Faith did not look like one who had felt no shadow; rather perhaps she looked like one who had borne a blow; a look that in the midst of the talk more than once brought to Mr. Linden's mind a shadowy remembrance of her as she was after they got home that terrible evening; but her face had a gentle brightness now that then was wanting.
"I don't know"—she said wistfully in answer to his last words.—"Perhaps it is good. I dare say it is, for me. It is a shame for me to remind you of anything—but don't you know, Endecott—'all things are ours'? both 'things present and things to come?'" And her eye looked up with a child's gravity, and a child's smile.