He saw them all--those white, innocent thoughts--flying out like birds, like a flock of white birds, and disappearing in the darkness. How could a soul not have felt them fluttering about it, crying vainly for admittance? He almost shared Allida's wonder.
"And to-day, I sent all the letters with the last one telling of my death. For--I saw it this morning--he is engaged. So I couldn't go on. I could never love any one else; I shouldn't want to. My heart broke when I read the paper; really it broke. And I explained it all to him, so that it could not hurt him, that I was dying because life had become worthless to me--and yet that there was joy in dying because I could, in dying, tell him. There had been beauty and joy in loving him; he must not be too sorry; and he must care for my love. It was a gift--a gift that I could give him only in going away for ever myself."
She was silent. The evening was late by now, and the fog about them shut them into a little space, a little island just large enough for their bench, a bit of path, a dim border of railing opposite, and a branch of tree overhead. The muffled sound of cautious traffic was far away. They were wonderfully alone.
Haldicott took one of the hands on which she leaned, and raised it to his lips.
She turned her head and looked at him; it was almost as if she saw him for the first time--the man, not only Life's personification. They could still see quite clearly each other's faces, and for a long time, gravely, they looked into each other's eyes.
"Don't you see that it's all a dream?" said Haldicott.
"A dream?" Allida repeated. "The reality of a whole year?"
And yet it was a dream to her; even while she had told him of that year it was as if she told of something far behind her, lived through long, long ages ago, in another, a different life.
But she struggled to hold the vanishing pain and beauty of it all--the reality that, unreal, would make her whole being seem like a little handful of thin cloud dying away into emptiness.
"This is a dream," she said, still looking at him, "_this, this_. What am I doing here?" She rose to her feet, gasping now. "Oh! he will get the letter--and I shall not be dead! I must go at once--at once!"