things that smiled, somehow, without faces. She was not very imaginative, perhaps, else the faces might have come too, and voices, and all, save the one reality which had as yet neither voice nor face, nor any name. It was all the something that love was to mean, somewhere, some day—the airy lace of a maiden life-dream, in which no figure was yet wrought amongst the fancy-threads that the May moon was weaving in the soft spring night. There was no sadness in it, at all, for there was no memory, and without memory there can be no sadness, any more than there can be fear where there is no anticipation, far or near. Most happiness is really of the future, and most grief, if we would be honest, is of the past.
The young girl sat still and dreamed that the old world was as young as she, and that in its soft bosom there were exquisite sweetnesses untried, and soft yearnings for a beautiful unknown, and little pulses that could quicken with foretasted joy which only needed face and name to take angelic shape of present love. The world could not be old while she was young.
And she had her youth and knew it, and it was almost all she had. It seemed much to her, and she had no unsatisfiable craving for the world’s stuff in which to attire it. In that, at least, her mother had been wise, teaching her to believe and to enjoy, rather than to doubt and criticise, and if there had been anything to hide from her it had been hidden, even beyond suspicion of its presence. Perhaps the armour of knowledge is of little worth until doubt has shaken the heart and weakened the joints, and broken the terrible steadfastness of perfect innocence in the eyes. Clare knew that she was young, she felt that the white dream was sweet, and she believed that the world’s heart was clean and good. All good was natural and eternal, lofty and splendid as an archangel in the light. God had made evil as a background of shadows to show how good the light was. Every one could come and stand in the light if he chose, for the mere trouble of moving. It seemed so simple. She wondered why everybody could not see it as she did.
A flash of white in the white moonlight disturbed her meditations. Two people had come out of the door and were walking slowly across the platform side by side. They were not speaking, and their footsteps crushed the light gravel sharply as they came forward. Clare recognised Brook and Lady Fan. Seated in the shadow on one side of the great black cross and a little behind it, she could see their faces distinctly, but she had no idea that they were dazzled by the light and could not see her at all in her dark dress. She fancied that they were looking at her as they came on.
The shadow of the rock had crept forward upon the open space, while she had been dreaming. The two turned, just before they reached it, and then stood still, instead of walking back.
“Brook—” began Lady Fan, as though she were going to say something.
But she checked herself and looked up at him quickly, chilled already by his humour. Clare thought that the woman’s voice shook a little, as she pronounced the name. Brook did not turn his head nor look down.
“Yes?” he said, with a sort of interrogation. “What were you going to say?” he asked after a moment’s pause.
She seemed to hesitate, for she did not answer at once. Then she glanced towards the hotel and looked down.
“You won’t come back with us?” she asked, at last, in a pleading voice.
“I can’t,” he answered. “You know I can’t. I’ve got to wait for them here.”
“Yes, I know. But they are not here yet. I don’t believe they are coming for two or three days. You could perfectly well come on to Genoa with us, and get back by rail.”
“No,” said Brook quietly, “I can’t.”
“Would you, if you could?” asked the lady in white, and her tone began to change again.
“What a question!” he laughed drily.
“It is an odd question, isn’t it, coming from me?” Her voice grew hard, and she stopped. “Well—you know what it means,” she added abruptly. “You may as well answer it and have it over. It is very easy to say you would not, if you could. I shall understand all the rest, and you will be saved the trouble of saying things—things which I should think you would find it rather hard to say. ”
“Couldn’t you say them, instead?” he asked slowly, and looking at her for the first time. He spoke gravely and coldly.
“I!” There was indignation, real or well affected, in the tone.
“Yes, you,” answered the man, with a shade less coldness, but as gravely as before. “You never loved me.”
Lady Fan’s small white face was turned to his instantly, and Clare could see the fierce, hurt expression in the eyes and about the quivering mouth. The young girl suddenly realised that she was accidentally overhearing something which was very serious to the two speakers. It flashed upon her that they had not seen her where she sat in the shadow, and she looked about her hastily in the hope of escaping unobserved. But that was impossible. There was no way of getting out of the recess of the rock where the cross stood, except by coming out into the light, and no way of reaching the hotel except by crossing the open platform.
Then she thought of coughing, to call attention to her presence. She would rise and come forward, and hurry across to the door. She felt that she ought to have come out of the shadows as soon as the pair had appeared, and that she had done wrong in sitting still. But then, she told herself with perfect justice that they were strangers, and that she could not possibly have foreseen that they had come there to quarrel.
They were strangers, and she did not even know their names. So far as they were concerned, and their feelings, it would be much more pleasant for them if they never suspected that any one had overheard them than if she were to appear in the midst of their conversation, having evidently been listening up to that point. It will be admitted that, being a woman, she had a choice; for she knew that if she had been in Lady Fan’s place she should have preferred never to know that any one had heard her. She fancied what she should feel if any one should cough unexpectedly behind her when she had just been accused by the man she loved of not loving him at all. And of course the little lady in white loved Brook—she had called him “dear” that very afternoon. But that Brook did not love Lady Fan was as plain as possible.
There was certainly no mean curiosity in Clare to know the secrets of these strangers. But all the same, she would not have been a human girl, of any period in humanity’s history, if she had not been profoundly interested in the fate of the woman before her. That afternoon she would have thought it far more probable that the woman should break the man’s heart than that she should break her own for him. But now it looked otherwise. Clare thought there was no mistaking the first tremor of the voice, the look of the white face, and the indignation of the tone afterwards. With a man, the question of revealing his presence as a third person would have been a point of honour. In Clare’s case it was a question of delicacy and kindness as from one woman to another.
Nevertheless, she hesitated, and she might have come forward after all. Ten slow seconds had passed since Brook had spoken. Then Lady Fan’s little figure shook, her face turned away, and she tried to choke down one small bitter sob, pressing her handkerchief desperately to her lips.
“Oh, Brook!” she cried, a moment later, and her tiny teeth tore the edge of the handkerchief audibly in the stillness.
“It’s not your fault,” said the man, with an attempt at gentleness in his voice. “I couldn’t blame you, if I were brute enough to wish to.”
“Blame me! Oh, really—I think you’re mad, you know!”
“Besides,”
