She closed her lips tightly, and I saw that tears welled in her eyes.
“My happy dream is over,” she said bitterly, “and the awakening has come.”
“No,” I cried, “you cannot say that, Edith. You do not mean it, I’m sure! Remember the early days of our love, and recollect that my affection for you is as strong now as then—indeed, stronger to-day than it has ever been.”
She was silent. In that moment my new-found happiness of those days in Scotland all came back to me. I remembered that summer-time of long lingering beneath the shadowy glades of the glen; of moonlight wanderings along the lanes, of love-trysts under the rising sun, by rose-garlanded and dew-spangled hedgerows. Ah! many had been the vows we had plighted in the deep heart of Scottish hills during those golden summer days, and many were the lovers’ kisses taken and given under the influences of those long balmy evenings, when merely to idle was to be instinct with the soul of passion and of poetry.
“I remember those days,” she answered. “They were the dawning days of our love. No afterglow of passion can ever give back the subtle charm of those sweet hours of unspoken joy. But it is all past, Gerald, and there is now a breach between us.”
“What do you mean?” I asked anxiously. “I do not understand.”
“I have already told you,” she answered in a hard voice. “You love another woman more than you love me. Ah, Gerald! you cannot know how I have suffered these past months, ever since the truth gradually became apparent. All through these summer days I have wandered about the country alone, revisiting our old haunts where we had lingered and talked when you were here twelve months ago. Years seem to have passed over my head since that day in June when you last stood here and held my hand in yours. But now you have slipped slowly from me. I have drunk deeply of the cup of knowledge, and life’s cruellest teachings have been branded upon my heart.”
“But why?” I cried. “I cannot see that you have any cause whatever for sadness. True, we are compelled to be apart for the present, but it will not be so always. Your life is, I know, a rather monotonous one, but soon all will be changed—when you are my wife.”
“Ah,” she sighed, “I shall never be that—never!”
“Why not?”