Everest was supposed to need exercise, and every afternoon took a walk to the sea unaccompanied. The two elder girls were not good walkers enough to be able to go with him, and after a hint from their father forbore to press their own or other society upon him, but, as he spent the entire morning and evening in their company, left him undisturbed in the afternoon, to sleep if he felt touches of fever returning on him, or to walk where the fancy took him.
Though they did not know it, it always took him to the Chalet and its garden. Every day the girl in her new-found emotions, in her joy and pride and innocent happiness, grew more lovely. Her eyes shone more brightly, her skin grew more exquisitely transparent; but it was not the same with Everest; the sense of the Future gripped him too strongly, and sleepless, troubled nights brought back the fever. Daily his cheek grew paler, and except when talking, or under the influence of some emotion, his face did not have the same animation, nor his eyes the same brilliance, as when he came.
One afternoon when they met in the garden she saw at once that something was oppressing him. His face was white, and the usually calm lines of the brows were contracted with pain.
"My darling, I cannot stay here," he said, after their first long kiss. "You must not ask me, sweetest one. It is killing me, and it is too dangerous for you. This garden seems to alter everything.... When I am here, I forget the world of men outside, in which, after all, vile as it is, we have to live. I must go, Regina, before it is too late."
"It is too late," she answered, in a low voice. "Oh, Everest, if you knew what I shall feel when you go. It is so dreadful, so impossible, to give you up.... All the rest of my life must be wretched.... I have only this time, these wonderful days, while you are here, to be happy in.... Don't shorten them. Stay with me a little longer...!"
And in the still magic shade of the garden, Everest promised to stay, because it seemed to him, too, that it was impossible to leave her, and all the world, the hateful, ridiculous, jarring world, seemed far away, non-existent, under those fragrant roses, where the nightingales sang and Nature held full sway.
But that same night, at home, in his room, the idea came again very sharply before him that his duty was either to go away or to offer to marry Regina.
It was treacherous, cruel, dishonourable to stay any longer, unless he did that; he had stayed too long as it was, he knew; but that was done now. He could not help it, all he could do was to go at once, before things were still worse. Mechanically, he began to put a few things together that he always packed himself. Then he stopped, and sat down again. Suppose he just followed his own desires, and did not trouble about anything else?... Suppose he married Regina, and gave himself up to golden weeks of wandering with her?... There was no reason why he should not. He was free to marry if he chose. But the permanence of it, the insane laws of the thing frightened him, as it had done all his life.
He sat silent, looking down at the floor, thinking deeply; everything grows so much more complicated and difficult to decide as one grows older. One loses that saving narrowness of view that, in youth, prevents one from seeing more of a project than the side presented to one, and so simplifies one's course of conduct. In youth, too, everything seems so permanent; that clears away another difficulty. In love matters it makes everything remarkably easy.... We love, and our passion is certain to last for ever and ever. Then, it is fairly easy to arrange for it. But as we grow older we see that nothing is permanent. Everything is moving, shifting, changing, and the whole difficulty of man arises from the fact that he will shut his eyes to this universal truth. He makes institutions and laws, which would only be good and serviceable if our emotions, our passions, ourselves were lasting and changeless instead of being the victims of constant metamorphoses, and consequently man's life is a perpetual and fruitless struggle to adapt these solid, permanent and unelastic inventions to the restless varying of his life and his being.
Thus do we bid him build the solid rock house of marriage—where?—upon the shifting sands of his passions and emotions.