Of course, by the cessation of his visits, Barbara will learn her fate in time. In time.  Yes! but till then—­till the long weeks in their lapse have brought the certainty of disappointment and mistake?  How can I—­myself knowing—­watch her gentle confidence (for latterly her doubts —­and whose would not?—­have been set at rest) decline through all the suffering stages of uneasy expectation and deferred hope, to the blank, dull sickness of despair?  How, without betraying myself, see her daily with wistful eyes looking—­with strained ears listening—­for a face and a step that come not?  If she were one to love lightly, one of the many women who, when satisfied that it is no longer any use to cry and strive for the unattainable, the out of reach, clip and pare their affections to fit the unattainable, the within reach—!  But I know differently.

Hitherto, whenever love has been offered to her—­and the occasions have been not few—­she has put it away from her; most gently, indeed, with a most eager desire to pour balm and not vinegar into the wounds she has made; with a most sincere sorrow and a disproportioned remorse at being obliged to cause pain to any living thing; yet, with a quiet and indifferent firmness, that left small ground for lingering hopes.  And now, having once loved, she will be slow to unlove again.

It is quite dark now—­as dark, at least, as it will be all night—­and two or three stars are beginning to quiver out, small and cold, in the infinite distances of the sky.  The sight of them, faintly trembling between the bare boughs of the trees, is the first thing that calls me back to the consciousness of outward things.  Again I rise, and begin to walk, stumbling through the long wet knots of the unseen grass, toward the house.  But when I reach it—­when I see the red gleams shining through the chinks of the window-shutters—­my heart fails me.  Not yet can I face the people, the lights—­Barbara!  I turn into the garden, and pace up and down the broad, lonely walks:  I pass and repass the cold river-gods of the unplaying fountain.  I stand in the black night of the old cedar’s shade.  On any other day no possible consideration would have induced me to venture within the jurisdiction of its inky arms after nightfall; to-day, I feel as if no earthly or unearthly thing would have power to scare me.  How long I stay, I do not know.  Now and then, I put up my hands to my face, to ascertain whether my cheeks and eyes feel less swollen and burning; whether the moist and searching night-air is restoring me to my own likeness.  At length, I dare stay no longer for fear of being missed, and causing alarm in the household.  So I enter, steal up-stairs, and open the door of my boudoir, which Barbara and I, when alone, make our usual sitting-room.  The candles are unlit; and the warm fire—­evidently long undisturbed—­is shedding only a dull and deceiving light on all the objects over which it ranges.  So far, at least.  Fortune favors me.  Barbara and Vick are sitting on the hearth-rug, side by side.  As I enter, they both jump up, and run to meet me.  One of them gives little raptured squeaks of recognition.  The other says, in a tone of relief and pleasure: