Page:The Yellow Book - 08.djvu/347

English meadows he walked with Dorothea in the spring. It was not so very long ago, but the ten years had spanned a tragedy for him. Was it possible, he wondered, that love should pass quite away, should change and commute like the fashions of a generation? His eyes suffused. Ah no, he thought, not such a passionate whole love as theirs. He had not forgotten, only not remembered these six months. Somewhere under the sweet earth Dorothea's gracious heart throbbed to his pulses, her pleading eyes were lit with thoughts of him. The photograph dropped from his fingers, as the book had done, and the curtains swung in a mist before him. His memories provoked a warm and happy past; a sense, as it were, of physical pleasure filled him in the recollection of those fine days, now gathered into forgotten Time. The sadness of his reveries filled him with a positive delight. He sighed again, and his glance fell newly upon the picture. Reinformed by his sensitive imagination the bright flesh sparkled with life, and reproached him with its immeasurable eyes. It seemed that those five years which had sounded in his ears so desolately long, which had worn so wearily, inadequately marked his supreme sorrow. The grass was ancient over Dorothea in those five miserable years. The world might well attribute to him a remarkable fidelity. At nights he had sat and thought upon her, those long and terrible nights when her departure was fresh among his griefs, those sad nights, too, upon which it became something of a solace to recall and remember and to weep. The devotion of his mourning spoke to his great love, and yet now that his old happiness and glory were vivid before him, he knew that not five years, not ten, that a lifetime should be the limit of his irreconciliation. The tears welled in his eyes; a short little sob shook him; his shaded eyes devoured the portrait; and then a knock fell on the door, and a light voice broke upon him.

"May I come in, Frank? Are you busy?"

The