Poor Cosmo! there were points in which at this moment his was a hard case. He was obliged to look vexed and complain, though he was so fully convinced of the wisdom of this utterance. ‘You forget,’ he said tenderly, ‘that I have to go away, to return to my life of loneliness--perhaps to ask myself if Anne was only a heavenly dream, a delusion, and to find myself waking----’ ‘To what?’ she replied, in her enthusiasm, half angry, ‘to what?’ ‘If you have my heart with you and my thoughts, is not that the best part of me? The Anne that will be with you will be the true Anne, not the outside of her which must stay here.’ ‘But I want the outside too. Ah, Anne, if I were to stay here, if I could live at your gate like Charley Ashley (poor fellow!). But you forget that I must go away.’ ‘I don’t forget it. When must you go?’ She sank her voice a little and drew closer to him, and looked at him with a cloud rising over her face. He must go, there was no eluding that certainty, and to think of it was like thinking of dying--yet of a sweet death to be borne heroically for the sake each of each, and with a speedy bright resurrection in prospect; but it would be an extinction of all the delight of living so long as it lasted. Cosmo’s mind was not so elevated as Anne’s, nor his imagination so inspiring, but the look of visionary anguish and courage went to his heart. ‘I don’t deserve it,’ he cried with a broken voice; which was very true. Then recovering himself, ‘It would not do for me to linger after what has passed between your father and me. It will be a terrible wrench, and without knowing when we are to meet again. Love, it must be before Saturday,’ he said. They were standing close, very close together, clasping each other’s hands. Two tears came into Anne’s eyes, great lakes of moisture not falling, though brimming over. But she gave him such a smile as was all the sweeter reflected in them. ‘By Friday, then--we must make up our minds what we are to do.’ His fears and doubtfulness yielded for the moment to an impulse of real emotion. ‘How am I to live without you, now that I know you?’ he said. ‘You will not be without me, Cosmo! Did I not tell you the best of me would be with you always? Let us both think with all our might what will be the right thing for us.’ ‘I know what I shall feel to be the best, Anne.’ He said this with a little fervour, suddenly coming to see--as now and then a man does--by a sudden inspiration, entirely contrary to his judgment, what would be his only salvation. This answered his purpose far better than any cleverness he could have invented. She shook her head. ‘We must not insist on choosing the happiest way,’ she said. ‘We must wait--in every way, I feel sure that to wait is the only thing we can do.’