But she knew she would not sleep until she had somehow sorted through her thoughts about the night before. She pulled a chair to the window, blew out the candle, and sat looking out onto the moonlit lawns and trees.
It is a rude awakening, is it not, to discover that people change, or that they have other facets to their character that we did not suspect?
What a dull and unadventurous life this is sometimes.
Whatever had he meant by it? And how dare he mean anything!
The branches of most of the trees were bare now. He had never minded bare trees. He could see the sky through them. He had often lain along a stout branch, gazing upward, dreaming of worlds beyond the one he inhabited.
All she could think of was crawling into bed and being left alone with her misery.
But she felt an unexpected stab of loneliness. Teddy was not there. If she were to reach out to where he had always lain beside her, he would not be there. He would never be there again. Not ever or ever or ever.
The only point that troubled me, I must confess, is that Miss Tallant dislikes being called Henrietta. But I thought people might be confused if I announced my betrothal to Henry Tallant. Some few might even be scandalized, do you not agree, Oliver?
It was almost as if she had been lulled into a sleep long ago and had been hovering on the brink of waking but had resisted doing so. Sometimes it was more comfortable to remain asleep than to be awake.
They had sparked a note of sympathy in each other. They had found it easy to talk about their deepest feelings and dreams.
If living were the right word. It had been a suspended life. She had worn black for Teddy inside and out. And somehow it had become a comfortable way of life. While part of her yearned for gaiety and a renewal of life, the other part clung to its cocoon. It was safer to remain inside it. It was less likely that she would have to experience again the pain of losing someone around whom her life had come to revolve.
Are you afraid of a healthy argument? Or is it that you are so convinced that you are right that my opinion is of no interest to you?
When they tell me things I wish to hear, I invariably believe them.
You offer emptiness and heartache and an endless search for pleasure with which to fill the emptiness.
She fled up the stairs to her room. But her room did not provide sanctuary enough. She needed to be quite alone. She needed to be somewhere where she could recollect herself and find some peace.
She did not want it. She did not want all this again. How she wished he had not come.
I always seem to be so cozy with my own company that I rarely think of going out.
Was the reality quite what he had been telling himself it was?
Life is always like that,” he said gently. “We are what we are because of what has happened to us in the past. We cannot change that and we should not wish to. I love you as you are, Elizabeth. Perhaps I would not love you as well if you had not met and loved and lost Hetherington. Perhaps the experience has given you the air of maturity and serenity that I so admire in you. Give me your future, my dear. I do not ask for the past.
We diminish ourselves too,” she said at last, “when feeling sorry for someone who has done a dreadful wrong leads us to excuse him and simply hope he will mend his ways. Feeling sorry for someone but acknowledging that justice ought nevertheless to be done is more appropriate to moral beings.
Are you afraid of the storm, by the way? I have two perfectly free arms with which to shelter you if you are.