Perhaps it was as well that he had not
laid his hand upon her shoulder and asked her to stay with him, for
by what spectacle of remorse, of terror, might he not have been
confronted to-morrow or the next day? Cured! Nobody is ever cured.
Never again would she be the same woman as had left Dulwich to go to
Paris with him, he knew that well enough; and he, too, was very far
indeed from being the same Owen Asher who had gone to Dulwich to hear
a concert of Elizabethan music.
A period for every one, for every one a season. The gates of love
open, and we pass into the garden and out of it by another gate,
which never opens for us again. To linger by a closed or a closing
gate is not wise: the tarrying lover is a subject for contempt and
jeers; better to pass out quickly and to fare on, though it requires
courage to fare on through the autumn, knowing that after autumn
comes winter. True, the winds would grow harder. The autumn of their
lives was not over, the skies were still bright above them, and the
winds soft and low. The winds would grow harder, but they must still
fare on through the snow. But there is a joy by the hearth when the
yule-log is burning. So thanking God that he had not attempted to
detain her, he wandered to the window to watch the stars, which
seemed to him like a golden net; and he asked who had cast that net,
and if he and she were parcel of some great draught which, at some
indefinite date, would be drawn out of the depths, and if, when that
time came, they would remember the joy and sorrow they had endured
upon earth, or if all would be swept into forgetfulness.
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