XI
He did not try to understand what it was that lay glimmering at the bottom of that deep look of hers. Her talk of Coulton and of "Miss Richardson" had put before him a whole picture of his life, from the days when he had played with little "Miss Margaret" in the broken summer-house, down to the last written words which he had received from her in Leipzig; and he went back over it all, incident by incident, and chapter by chapter, as if it were a printed story of which he had yet to read the end. Was it possible that, so far as she was concerned, it was already ended? Was she gone out of his life for ever? Was his future to be a disjoined series of new incidents to which she would be a stranger?
He revolted against the thought as if against a change in his own identity. Surely love could not be such an impotent tragedy. Surely he was not wrecked here in a life that had settled down to mere aimless regret. Surely it was a very law of existence that his future should be a development of his past. He said to himself that it must be so, that it should be so, that he would make it so. With a determined effort he threw off the depression that had fastened on him; and by a trick of imagination he made himself feel a confident expectation that Margaret would come back to him, and that his life would continue to fulfil the promise with which it had begun.
When he returned to his rooms, both the Pittseys were
