He was fighting with the bonds of circumstance; and his impotence embittered him. The spectacle of these two wretched creatures—despairing, rebellious, and driven almost beyond the bounds of reason by their perplexity—walking along the side of the still and peaceful stream, was one to have awakened the compassion, or at least the sympathetic merriment, of the most careless of the gods. What a beautiful night it was! The deep olive shadows of the moonlight hid away the ragged and tawdry buildings that overhung the river; and the flood of yellow-tinged light touched only here and there on the edge of a bank or the stem of a tree, and then fell gently on the broad bosom of the stream. The gas-lamps of the nearest bridge glimmered palely in that white light; but deep in the shadows along the river, the lamps burned strong and red, and sent long quivering lines of fire down into the dark water beneath. Farther up the stream lay broad swathes of moonlight, vague and indeterminate as the grey continents visible in the world of silver overhead. In all this universe of peace, and quiet, and harmony, there seemed to be only these two beings restless—embittered, and hopeless. "Let us go home," he said, with an effort. "I can do nothing but frighten you, and myself too. I tell you there are other things pass before my eyes as well as the marriage-scene, and I don’t want to see any more of them. It will be time enough to think of what may happen when it does happen." "And whatever happens, Will, shall we not at least know that we sometimes—occasionally—think tenderly of each other?" "So you wish us to be lovers still!" he said. "The delusion is too difficult to keep up. Have you reflected that when once I am married, neither of us may think of each other at all?" "Will! Will! don’t talk like that! You speak as if somebody had cruelly injured you, and you were angry and revengeful. Nobody has done it. It is only our misfortune. It cannot be helped. If I am not to think of you—and I shall pray God to help me to forget you—so much the better." "My poor darling!" he said, "I am so selfish that I think less of what your future may be than of my own. You dare not confide your secret to any one; and I, who know it, must not see you nor try to comfort you. Is not the very confidence that prompted you to tell me, a proof that we are—that we might have been happy as husband and wife?" "Husband and wife," she repeated, musingly, as they once more drew near home. "You will be a husband, but I shall never be a wife." "And yet, so long as you and I live," he said, quite calmly, "you will have my whole love. It cannot be otherwise: we need not seek to conceal it. Whatever happens, and wherever we may be, my love goes with you." "And if mine," she whispered, "could go with you, and watch over you, and teach your heart to do right, it would lead your love back to the poor girl whom you are going to marry, and make her happy."