“What are they?” she asked, looking up, and Geoffrey saw, or thought he
saw, a strange fear shining in her eyes.
“Here are four of them,” he answered unconcernedly; “we have no time
for long quotations:
“‘That shall be to-morrow,
Not to-night:
I must bury sorrow
Out of sight.’”
Beatrice heard—heard the very lines which had been upon her lips in the
wild midnight that had gone. Her heart seemed to stop; she became white
as the dead, stumbled, and nearly fell. With a supreme effort she
recovered herself.
“I think that you must know the lines, Mr. Bingham,” she said in a low
voice. “They come from a poem of Browning’s, called ‘_A Woman’s Last
Word_.’”
Geoffrey made no answer; what was he to say? For a while they walked on
in silence. They were getting close to the station now. Separation,
perhaps for ever, was very near. An overmastering desire to know the
truth took hold of him.
“Miss Beatrice,” he said again, “you look pale. Did you sleep well last
night?”
“No, Mr. Bingham.”
“Did you have curious dreams?”
“Yes, I did,” she answered, looking straight before her.
He turned a shade paler. Then it was true!
“Beatrice,” he said in a half whisper, “what do they mean?”
“As much as anything else, or as little,” she answered.
“What are people to do who dream such dreams?” he said again, in the
same constrained voice.
“Forget them,” she whispered.
“And if they come back?”
“Forget them again.”
“And if they will not be forgotten?”
She turned and looked him full in the eyes.
“Die of them,” she said; “then they will be forgotten, or——”
“Or what, Beatrice?”
“Here is the station,” said Beatrice, “and Betty is quarrelling with
the flyman.”
Five minutes more and Geoffrey was gone.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE FLAT NEAR THE EDGWARE ROAD
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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