Page:The Garden of Romance - 1897.djvu/244

232 unexpected he wished to come, and so he arrived unexpected.

He had a welcome! wine filled high in the great tankards, lively company of the very best, a beautiful chamber, and a soft bed; and yet it was not what he had so often thought and dreamed of. He did not understand himself, and he did not understand the others. But we can understand it! One can live in a house and family, and yet not become one of them. People can talk together as one talks in a stage-coach, know each other as one does in a stage-coach, weary each other, and each man wish either himself or his good neighbour away. Something of all this Anthony felt.

"I am an honourable girl," said Molly to him, "and I will tell you all. Everything has changed since we were children; all is different both within and without, and custom and one's own will have no power over the heart! Anthony! I would not have an enemy in you; now, when I am going far away, believe me, I have always kind thoughts of you; but as to loving you as I now know one can love another, that I have never done! and you will have to get used to it! Farewell, Anthony!"

And Anthony, too, said farewell; tears came to his eyes, but he understood that he was no longer Molly's friend. Hot iron and cold iron both take the skin from our lips with the same sensation when we kiss them, and Anthony burnt as fiercely now in hatred as he had in love.

In less than four and twenty hours Anthony was at home again in Eisenach, but the horse that he rode was quite ruined. "What does it matter?" he said; "I am ruined, and I will ruin everything that can remind me of her—Lady Holle, Lady Venus, thou heathen woman!