"But think of the honour and the experience, the novelty, the joy of it! It would be well worth being burned alive for, I think!"
Everest did not answer for a moment. His laugh died away, and she thought his face looked pale and grave in the sunlight. Just then the Rector's voice came to them calling Everest, and Regina drew away towards the copse.
"Good-bye, then. I am going to the garden. I hope you will enjoy your afternoon." And as he turned back to his host, she disappeared in the soft green shadows of the wood.
She walked quickly, and could have well run or danced, she felt so full of life and joy; the breeze was soft, it came to her cheek like a caress. The wood seemed full of music; small birds were warbling in it everywhere and calling to each other across the leafy screen of green; the leaves themselves quivered and rustled and murmured in the warm and scented air.
Regina for the past few years had been happy in the knowledge of her youth and power to please, and now that love had come to her also, it seemed as if her heart, her whole system, could not contain her delight. For she knew within herself that though nothing had been said, and though his acquaintance with her could be measured by hours, Everest was going to love her just as the doctor and the master and the assistant master and the curate had done. There was the same curious softening of all his face when he looked at her as she had seen in theirs, the same velvet edge to his tones when he spoke to her, as she had heard from them. And while their love was useless to her, because she could not return it, for this man she felt she could, and was ready to feel a passionate adoration, to pour out her life in love for him, and so know the supreme happiness that Nature holds in this life for a woman. To be loved is nothing, to love is something, to love and be loved is everything. Critical and sensitive about every point in another, as she was, so that the least deviation from her standard of beauty or intellect would have spoiled the perfection of her feeling, she could find nothing wanting in Everest; in all her dearest dreams and visions no ideal had ever been invested with greater charm than the living man now had for her. And it seemed to her like a miracle in her favour that, of all the men that might have come to her home, he had been the one to do so.
To be merely in the same room with him, to see and hear him talking to another, to study him as he leant back in an arm-chair, reading, and watch the slender brown hand, that she knew had such power, hold a book or newspaper, seemed to make her whole being vibrate with delight; and he admired her, wondered at her, liked to match his learning and his talk with her, was interested in, sought her; soon, she knew, he would desire and love her. And the price of it all? What would it be? Her feet, that had been dancing so merrily over the green moss, stopped suddenly; a trembling seized all her limbs and a chill came over her in the soft sunny air. She sank on an old log, by the winding path, both hands pressed over her heart to still its beating. In these moments she knew, whatever the price, she must pay it.
When the time came for him to ask anything from her, she must give it. She knew beforehand she could not resist him, could not refuse or deny to this man anything, because of the glorious pleasure of the giving, pleasure that would compensate her for everything, for life itself, if won....
She was very pale as she sat there and shivered, for love is absolutely merciless and inexorable, and counts out its moments of supreme delight against the drops of its victim's life-blood, and she knew this. All in a moment, in the midst of her happy triumph, the thought of his wealth and position, so far above her own in its powers and possibilities, had reared itself up in her mind, like a great wall towering over her, menacing to crush her. She hated it; it separated him from her. If he had only been poor, like the young master, who had had nothing but his life, which he had laid down at her feet! How perfect then her happiness might have been! The meanest, commonest existence, shared with Everest, would have been as if it were wrapped in cloth of gold to her. Tiny rooms, poor living, hard working, what would she have cared? Had he said: "Marry me and come to a lonely tent in the burning Soudan," she would have said: "Yes," oh, how gladly! As she would have said it had he asked her to marry him and share a prison, or hell itself. But some instinct told her that Everest would not want to marry her, that a man with that accumulated wealth and vast inheritance would not enter marriage merely for the sake of passion; that he would need other conditions, which she vaguely felt she did not fill.
And even if in the blindness of love he offered it, would it be her part, would it be right to accept it?
Suppose in the awakening, after, from that blinding dream that passion is, she saw that he regretted?