“Dreaming, Victoria?” he said.
“Yes,” she answered simply, and was silent once more. He loved these silences of hers,—hinting, as they did, of unexplored chambers in an inexhaustible treasure-house which by some strange stroke of destiny was his. And yet he felt at times the vague sadness of them, like the sadness of the autumn, and longed to dispel it.
“It is so wonderful,” she went on presently, in a low voice, “it is so wonderful I sometimes think that it must be like—like this; that it cannot last. I have been wondering whether we shall be as happy when the world discovers that you are great.”
He shook his head at her slowly, in mild reproof.
“Isn't that borrowing trouble, Victoria?” he said. “I think you need have no fear of finding the world as discerning as yourself.”
She searched his face.
“Will you ever change?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said. “No man can stand such flattery as that without deteriorating, I warn you. I shall become consequential, and pompous, and altogether insupportable, and then you will leave me and never realize that it has been all your fault.”
Victoria laughed. But there was a little tremor in her voice, and her eyes still rested on his face.
“But I am serious, Austen,” she said. “I sometimes feel that, in the future, we shall not always have many such days as these. It's selfish, but I can't help it. There are so many things you will have to do without me. Don't you ever think of that?”