Let us pray
that we may live them to each other. I go to seek fortune as well as
foes, and I will win it for your sake that we may marry.'
She shook her head sadly. 'It were too much happiness, Thomas. Men and
women may seldom wed their true loves, or if they do, it is but to lose
them. At the least we love, and let us be thankful that we have learned
what love can be, for having loved here, perchance at the worst we may
love otherwhere when there are none to say us nay.'
Then we talked on awhile, babbling broken words of love and hope and
sorrow, as young folks so placed are wont to do, till at length Lily
looked up with a sad sweet smile and said:
'It is time to go, sweetheart. My father beckons me from the lattice.
All is finished.'
'Let us go then,' I answered huskily, and drew her behind the trunk of
the old beech. And there I caught her in my arms and kissed her again
and yet again, nor was she ashamed to kiss me back.
After this I remember little of what happened, except that as we rode
away I saw her beloved face, wan and wistful, watching me departing out
of her life. For twenty years that sad and beautiful face haunted me,
and it haunts me yet athwart life and death. Other women have loved me
and I have known other partings, some of them more terrible, but the
memory of this woman as she was then, and of her farewell look, overruns
them all.
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