And why should he not be angered with her for her poor, feeble woman's interference with his lion nature? Why should he not turn upon her and revile her for coming across his path? Who was she that she must irritate him that was all the world to her, and deferred to by all men who came his way? Why should she thwart or impede him?
He was not perfect, no doubt, but who had set her the task of perfecting him?
Yes, the very intensity of her love had ended in the estrangement of the lover. She found noble qualities in the man, and she had tried to make him divine. Not because he was _her_ lover, but because she _loved him_. She had given him her heart and soul, and now she had sacrificed her love itself upon the altar of her devotion.
That was the heroic aspect of the affair, and as in all other sorrows that take large shape, the heroic aspect elevated above pain and forbade the canker of tears.
She should miss him--oh, so bitterly! She should miss him the whole of her life forth from that hour! She should miss him in the immediate future. She had missed him that day in the Park. She should miss him tomorrow. He always came on Saturdays. He used to say he always came to Curzon Street on Saturday afternoon, like any other good young man, to see his sweetheart when the shop was shut. She should miss him on Sunday, too, for he always came on Sunday, saying, the better the day the better the deed. On Mondays he made it a point to stay away, but contrived to meet her somewhere, in the Park, or at a friend's place, or in Regent Street, and now he would stay away altogether, not making a point of it, but because she had told him to make an observance of always staying away.
She should miss his voice, his marvellous voice, which could be so clarion toned and commanding among men, and was so soft and tunable for her ear. When he spoke to her it always seemed that the instrumental music designed to accompany his words had fined off into silence for shame of its inadequacy. How poor and thin and harsh all voices would sound now. They would merely make idle sounds to the idle air. Of old, of that old which began its backward way only yesterday, all voices had seemed the prelude of his. They sounded merely as notes of preparation and awakening. They were only the overture, full of hints and promises.