Page:Whyte-Melville--Bones and I.djvu/139

 move herself so far as to be altogether out of sight. It is the golden haze of "middle distance" that sheds on her this warm and tender light. She is all the more attractive that we see her through a double veil of retrospection and regret, none the less lovely because her beauty is dimmed and softened in a mist of tears.

Letter after letter, they have flared, and blackened, and shrivelled up. There is an end of them—they are gone. Not a line of those different handwritings shall I ever see again. The bold, familiar scrawl of the tried friend and more than brother; why does he come back to me so vividly to-night? The stout heart, the strong arm, the brave, kind face, the frank and manly voice. We shall never tread the stubble nor the heather side by side again; never more pull her up against the stream, nor float idly down in the hot summer noons to catch the light air