And just at this moment old Anne Sheckleton joined them. "She's coming with more tea," she said, as the maid emerged with a little tray, "and we'll place our cups on the window-stone when we don't want them. Now, Mr. Verney, is not this a charming little spot just at this light?" "I almost think it is," said Cleve, relenting. The golden light of evening was touching the formal poplars, and the other trees, and bringing out the wrinkles of the old bricks duskily in its flaming glow. "Yes, just for about fifteen minutes in the twenty-four hours, when the weather is particularly favourable, it _has_ a sort of Dutch picturesqueness; but, on the whole, it is not the sort of cottage that I would choose for a permanent dove-cot. I should fear lest my pigeons should choke with dust." "No, there's no dust here; it is the quietest, most sylvan little lane in the world." "Which is a wide place," said Cleve. "Well, with smoke then." "Nor smoke either." "But I forgot, love does not die of smoke or of anything else," said Cleve. "No, of course, love is eternal," said Margaret. "Just so; the King never dies. Les roix meurent-ils? Quelquefois, madame. Alas, theory and fact conflict. Love is eternal in the abstract; but nothing is more mortal than a particular love," said Cleve. "If you think so, I wonder you ever wished to marry," said Margaret, and a faint tinge flushed her cheeks. "I thought so, and yet I did wish to marry," said Cleve. "It is perishable, but I can't live without it," and he patted her cheek, and laughed a rather cold little laugh. "No, love never dies," said Margaret, with a gleam of her old fierce spirit. "But it may be killed." "It is terrible to kill anything," said Cleve. "To kill love," she answered, "is the worst murder of all." "A veritable murder," he acquiesced, with a smile and a slight shrug; "once killed, it never revives." "You like talking awfully, as if I might lose your love," said she, haughtily; "as if, were I to vex you, you never could forgive." "Forgiveness has nothing to do with it, my poor little woman. I no more called my love into being than I did myself; and should it die, either naturally or violently, I could no more call it to life, than I could Cleopatra or Napoleon Bonaparte. It is a principle, don't you see? that comes as direct as life from heaven. We can't create it, we can't restore it; and really about love, it is worse than mortal, because, as I said, I am sure it has _no_ resurrection--no, it has no resurrection." "That seems to me a reason," she said, fixing her large eyes upon him with a wild resentment, "why you should cherish it _very_ much while it lives."