How
often have I told you that? I have seen all the world, and yet I have
only seen one thing in the world--you."
"Owen, you mustn't speak to me like that."
"While that bird is singing you are afraid to listen to me! How
passionately it sings, but how little it feels compared with what I
am feeling. Why did you say that the Evelyn of old is dead?"
"Well, Owen, don't you know that we are always dying, always
changing. You are in love, not with me, but with your memory of me."
"A great deal of my love is memory, of course, still--"
Words again seemed vain, foolish, even sacrilegious, so little could
he convey to her of what he believed to be the truth, and they walked
in silence through the fragrance of the soft night, thinking of the
colour of the sky, in which the sunset was not yet quite dead. His
memory of his love of this woman long ago in Dulwich, in Paris, and
in all the cities and scenes they had visited together, raised him
above himself; and he felt that her soul mingled with his in an
ecstatic sadness beyond words, but which the nightingale sang
clearly; the stars, too, sang it clearly; and they stood mute in the
midst of the immortal symphony about them.
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