“John,” said I, “I never knew you despondent before.”
“This is not despondency.”
“What then?”
“Despair.”
“I cannot offer to cheer you.”
“It is bitter, Wade. I have yearned to be a lover for years. All at once I find the woman I have seen and thought of, and known from my first conscious moment. The circumstances crowded my love into sudden intensity. I made the observations and did the work of months of acquaintance in those few moments while we were at tea. My mind always acts quick. I seem always to have been discussing my decisions with myself, years before the subject of decision comes to me. Whatever happens, falls on me with the force of a doom. I loved Miss Clitheroe’s voice the instant I heard its brave tenderness answering her father. I loved her unseen, and would have died for her that moment. When she appeared, and I saw her face and read her heart, I knew that it was the old dream,—the old dream that I never thought would be other than a dream. The ancient hope and expectation, coeval with my life, was fulfilled. She is the other self I have been waiting for and seeking for.”
“Have you told her so?”
“Can a man stop the beating of his heart? Can a man not breathe? Not in words, perhaps I did not use the lover words. But she understood me. She did not seem surprised. She recognizes such a passion as her right and desert.”
“A great-hearted woman can see how a man worthy of her can nullify time and space, and meet her, soul to soul, in eternity from the first.”
“So I meet her; but circumstances here are stronger than love.”