Remember that I
love you always, and that I am waiting for you always on this side of
the grave."
She caught her breath in a little quick sob, and pressed my hand.
"Yes," she whispered: "I promise. Good-bye." She pressed my hand again
and was gone; and, as I gazed at the empty doorway through which she had
passed, I caught a glimpse of her reflection in a glass case on the
landing, where she had paused for a moment to wipe her eyes. I felt it,
in a manner, indelicate to have seen her, and turned away my head
quickly; and yet I was conscious of a certain selfish satisfaction in
the sweet sympathy that her grief bespoke.
But now that she was gone a horrible sense of desolation descended on
me. Only now, by the consciousness of irreparable loss, did I begin to
realise the meaning of this passion of love that had stolen unawares
into my life. How it had glorified the present and spread a glamour of
delight over the dimly considered future: how all pleasures and desires,
all hopes and ambitions, had converged upon it as a focus; how it had
stood out as the one great reality behind which the other circumstances
of life were as a background, shimmering, half seen, immaterial, and
unreal.
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