Leonora begged me to stay at her house; I refused, for I wished to be alone. John deposited her with her mother, and we drove home. He gave me one of his infallible medicines, and told me not to get up in the morning. But when morning came, I remembered Harry Lothrop was coming, and made myself ready for him. As human nature is not quite perfect, I felt unhappy about him, and rather fond of him, and thought he possessed some admirable qualities. I never could read the old poets any more without a pang, unless he were with me, directing my eye along their pages with his long white finger! I never should smell tuberoses again without feeling faint, unless they were his gift!
By the time he came I was in a state of romantic regret, and in that state many a woman has answered, "Yes!" He asked me abruptly if I thought it would be folly in him to ask me to marry him. The question turned the tide.
"No," I answered,—"not folly; for I have thought many times in the last two years, that I should marry you, if you said I must. But now I believe that it is not best. You have pursued me patiently; your self-love made the conquest of me a necessary pleasure. That was well enough for me; for you made me feel all the while, that, if I loved you, you were worth possessing. And you are. I like you. But my feeling for you did not prevent my fainting away at the opera-house last night, when Redmond told me that his wife was dead."
"So," he said, "the long-smothered fire has broken out again! Chance does not befriend me. He saw you last night, and yielded. He said yesterday he should not tell you. He asked me about you after we left you, and wished to know if I had seen you much for the last year. I offered him your last letter to read,—am I not generous?—but he refused it.
"'When I see her,' he asked, 'am I at liberty to say what I choose?'
"On that I could have said, 'No.' Redmond and I have not seen each other since the period of my first visit to you. He has been nursing his wife in the mean time, taking journeys with her, and trying all sorts of cures; and now he seems tied to his aunt and mother-in-law. He was merely passing through the city with her, and this morning they have gone again.—Well," after a pause, "there is no need of words between us. I have in my possession a part of you. Beautiful women are like flowers which open their leaves wide enough for their perfume to attract wandering bees; the perfume is wasted, though the honey may be hid."
"Alas, what a lesson this man is giving me!" I thought.
"Farewell, then," he said. He bit his lips, and his clenched hands trembled; but he mastered his emotion. "You must think of me."
"And see you, too," I answered. "Everything comes round again, if we live long enough. Dramatic unities are never preserved in life; if they were, how poetical would all these things be! But Time whirls us round, showing us our many-sided feelings as carelessly as a child rattles the bits of glass in his kaleidoscope."
"So be it!" he replied. "Adieu!"