Shirley

perhaps, you will comprehend me; and then we shall be reconciled.‹
    Farewell drops rolled slow down her cheeks: she wiped them away.
    ›I am sorry for what has happened – deeply sorry,‹ she sobbed. So was I, God knows! Thus were we severed.«
    »A queer tale!« commented Mr. Yorke.
    »I'll do it no more,« vowed his companion: »never more will I mention marriage to a woman, unless I feel love. Henceforth, Credit and Commerce may take care of themselves. Bankruptcy may come when it lists. I have done with slavish fear of disaster. I mean to work diligently, wait patiently, bear steadily. Let the worse come – I will take an axe and an emigrant's berth, and go out with Louis to the West – he and I have settled it. No woman shall ever again look at me as Miss Keeldar looked – ever again feel towards me as Miss Keeldar felt: in no woman's presence will I ever again stand at once such a fool and such a knave – such a brute and such a puppy.«
    »Tut!« said the imperturbable Yorke, »you make too much of it; but still, I say, I am capped: firstly, that she did not love you; and, secondly, that you did not love her. You are both young; you are both handsome; you are both well enough for wit, and even for temper – take you on the right side: what ailed you, that you could not agree?«
    »We never
have
been – never
could
be
at home
with each other, Yorke. Admire each other as we might at a distance, still we jarred when we came very near. I have sat at one side of a room and observed her at the other; perhaps in an excited, genial moment, when she had some of her favourites round her: her old beaux, for instance, yourself and Helstone, with whom she is so playful, pleasant, and eloquent. I have watched her when she was most natural, most lively, and most lovely; my judgment has pronounced her beautiful: beautiful she is, at times, when her mood and her array partake of the splendid. I have drawn a little nearer, feeling that our terms of acquaintance gave me the right of approach; I have joined the circle round her seat, caught her eye, and mastered her attention; then we have conversed; and others – thinking me, perhaps, peculiarly privileged – have withdrawn by degrees, and left us alone. Were we happy thus left? For myself, I must say, No. Always a feeling of constraint came over me; always I was disposed to be stern and strange. We talked politics and business: no soft sense of domestic intimacy ever opened our hearts, or thawed our language, and made it flow easy and limpid. If we had confidences, they were confidences of the counting-house, not of the hearth. Nothing in her cherished affection in me – made me better, gentler: she only stirred my brain and whetted my acuteness: she never crept into my heart or influenced its pulse; and for this good reason, no doubt, because I had not the secret of making her love me.«
    »Well, lad, it is a queer thing. I might laugh at thee, and reckon to despise thy refinements; but as it is dark night and we are by ourselves, I don't mind telling thee that thy talk brings back a glimpse of my own past life. Twenty-five years ago, I tried to persuade a beautiful woman to love me, and she would not. I had not the key to her nature: she was a stone wall to me, doorless and windowless.«
    »But you loved
her,
Yorke: you worshipped Mary Cave: your conduct, after all, was that of a man – never of a fortune-hunter.«
    »Ay! I
did
love her; but then she was beautiful as the moon we do
not
see to-night: there is naught like her in these days: Miss Helstone, maybe, has a look of her, but nobody else.«
    »Who has a look of her?«
    »That black-coated tyrant's niece; that quiet, delicate Miss Helstone. Many a time I have put on my spectacles to look at the lassie in church, because she has gentle blue een, wi' long lashes; and, when she sits in shadow, and is very still and very pale, and is, happen, about to fall asleep wi' the length of the sermon and the heat of the biggin' – she is as like one of Canova's marbles as aught else.«
    »Was Mary Cave in that style?«
    »Far grander! Less lass-like and flesh-like. You wondered why she hadn't wings and a crown. She was a stately, peaceful angel – was my Mary.«
    »And you could not persuade her to love you?«
    »Not with all I could do; though I prayed Heaven many a time, on my bended knees, to help me.«
    »Mary Cave was not what you think her, Yorke – I have seen her picture at the Rectory. She is no angel, but