Page:Anthony Hope - The Kings Mirror.djvu/358

 from the beautiful lips, the twofold appeal. Though passion was gone, pleasure in her remained; my love was dead. As I sat there I wished it alive again; I longed to be back in the storm of it, even though I must battle the storm again.

"After all," she said, with a glance at me, "I have my share in you. You can't think of your life without thinking of me. I'm something to you. I'm one among the many foolish things—You don't hate the foolish things?"

"On my soul, I believe not one of them; and if you're one, I love one of them."

"I like you to say that."

A long silence fell on us. The thing had not come in either of the fashions in which I had pictured it, neither in weariness nor in excitement. It came full with emotions, but emotions that were subdued shadows of themselves, of a mournful sweetness, bewailing their lost strength, yet shrinking from remembrance of it. Would we have gone back if we could? Now I could not answer the question. Yet we could weep, because to go back was impossible. But it was with a slight laugh that at last I rose to my feet to say good-bye.

"It's like you always to laugh at the end," she said, a little in reproach, but more, I think, in the pleasure of recognising what was part of her idea of me. "You used often to do it, even when you were—even before. You remember the first time of all—when we smiled at one another behind your mother's back? That oldest memory comforts me. Do you know why? I was never so many centuries older than you again. I'm not so many even now. You look old, I think, and seem old; if we're nearer together, it's your fault, not my merit. Well, you