'Yes; I suppose it would have been patched up that way; by the slow heart-breaking process of smiling at grief and all the rest of it. And of course you mean to imply that her fate would have its use, in the way of serving as a warning to incautious youth against being in love with ideals?'
'Of course I meant no such thing, and you know that I did not,' I replied, laughing outright. 'I should think there is need for a great deal of the ideal in all love, to keep it alive.'
'Ah, now we are getting on to fresh ground,' he said enjoyably. 'Let me see, the proposition is that love needs a great deal of the ideal to keep it alive; and yet'——
But I was not going to indulge him with a disquisition upon love; giving him a Roland for an Oliver, in my own fashion: 'No one is more glad that Lilian's has turned out to be only an ideal love, than yourself.'
'Ah, that is not spoken with your usual accuracy of statement. Should you not rather have said that no one could be more sorry than I that her ideal did not preserve her from'——
'She is preserved; and that is what you care most about.'
He smiled. 'Well, perhaps it is.'
When we arrived at the turn in the lane leading to the cottage, he took leave of me. I did not invite him to go in with me, and I think he quite understood my motive for not doing so, this first evening of our entrance upon a new life. But he responded as heartily as I could wish, when I expressed a hope that he would come as frequently as he could to the cottage; adding that we should expect a great deal from him now that he had shewn us how helpful he could be in times of emergency. 'Besides, it will be good for us, I suppose, to occasionally see one of the lords of creation, lest we should come to forget that we are but women.'
'Yes; you at least require to be occasionally taken down.'
'You must consider me very amiable to say that in my presence.'