Was that to be our last walk together, I wondered? I sighed when I recollected how utterly we were the children of circumstance.
Beside her I walked with a swelling heart. I consumed my soul in muteness and bitterness, my eyes set before me to the grey hills behind which the sun had risen.
Chapter Twenty Four.
“I am not Fit!”
Of a sudden, she turned her head and glanced full in my eyes. Her thoughts were, like mine, of the past—of those glad and gracious days.
I stood still for a moment, and catching her hands kissed them; my own were burning.
We went on by the curving course outside the wood quite silent, for the gloom of the future had settled upon us.
The past! Those days when my Ella was altogether mine! I loved to linger on those blissful days, for they were lighted with the sweetest sunlight of my life. Never since, for me, had flowers blossomed, and fruits ripened, and waters murmured, and grasshoppers sung, and waves beat joyous music as in the spring and summer of that wondrous time.