Theophil was to feel her crying thus against his bosom till the end of his life.  He shuddered with dread at this terrible crying—­it was as though all her life was leaving her in sobs, as though she were bleeding to death in tears.  It was grief piteously prostrate, wild, convulsive, unutterable.  Jenny was right.  Her heart was breaking.  Theophil’s terror was right.  It was too late to love her.  This was the death-crying of a broken heart.

CHAPTER XXI

IN WHICH JENNY IS MYSTERIOUSLY HONOURED

Still a moment did at last come when the sobs subsided, and Jenny dried her tears.  She was going to try, try to be happy again, try to forget it; and she tried so well that in a few days her face had grown even bright again,—­bright as silver.  It could never again be bright as gold.

And Theophil’s love was like a sun pouring down upon her day by day.  Yes, he loved her.  She could not doubt that, though there were times when his true words and caresses suddenly seemed to wear a torturing falsity, as she thought of Isabel.

But such feelings she put from her bravely.  Jealous of Isabel in the common way she had not been.  She herself loved her too well, and soon she was able to talk of her again to Theophil.  They had agreed that Isabel should not know what Jenny had seen that night of the recital.  For Jenny could not bear to think of the letters it would mean.  “Let that be our secret, dear,” she said to Theophil; and thus, when Isabel wrote, she wrote back in her usual way.  Theophil and Isabel never wrote to each other.  It was no part of their love to deceive Jenny in letters.  Their love was vowed to silence and absence, and in Theophil’s life it must be more and more of a starlit background.

So the weeks went by, and the marriage of Theophil and Jenny was now finally fixed for the 12th of February.  On second thoughts, as their love grew serene once more, they had decided not to anticipate that date, for old Mrs. Talbot’s sake; and meanwhile Jenny was admonished by that old mother to make haste and get that flesh on her bones.

The admonition was not without cause, for it presently became noticeable that Jenny was not merely negatively disobeying her old mother in this.  Not only was she not growing fatter, but, indeed, she was, for one reason or another, slowly and almost imperceptibly growing thinner.  It was not those at home who noticed this first, but outside friends, who, suddenly meeting her, would remark that she wasn’t looking half the girl she used to be.

She had already begun to remark it herself, as with her bare arms she would coil up her hair, standing before her mirror; and she thought nothing of it till one day, as she stood there, she noticed a curious expression flash into her face and go again almost before she could mark it.  Her face, which had always been round and plump, seemed suddenly to gaze back at her, very narrow and pinched and white, strangely sunken, too, and rigid.  It was all a mere flash and gone again, and her real face was presently back once more.  But the look filled her with solemn thoughts, in which she was surprised to find a certain comfort, as of a sad wish fulfilling itself.