a child! Perhaps, on her wedding-day, I should be miserable at last.
. . . "How tragic, how terrible it is to long for the impossible!"
We were sitting out, on the balcony. Freddy was in the ballroom, dancing. He was an excellent dancer.
"Impossible?" she said; and I thought she looked at me rather strangely. "But you don't really, really———"
"Love you?" I exclaimed, lyrically. "But with all my soul! My life is blighted for ever, but don't think of me. It doesn't matter in the least. It may kill me, of course; but never mind. Sometimes, I believe, people do live on with a broken heart, and———"
"My dance, I think," and a tiresome partner claimed her.
Even that night, I couldn't believe, try as I would, that life held for me no further possibilities of joy. . . .
About half-past one the next day, just as I was getting up, I received a thunderbolt in the form of a letter from Alice.
Would it be believed that this absurd, romantic, literal, beautiful person wrote to say she had actually broken off her engagement with Freddy? She could not bear to blight my young life; she returned my affection; she was waiting to hear from me.
Much agitated, I hid my face in my hands. What! was I never to get away from success—never to know the luxury of an unrequited attachment? Of course, I realised, now, that I had been deceiving myself; that I had only liked her enough to wish to make her care for me; that I had striven, unconsciously, to that end. The instant I knew she loved me all my interest was gone. My passion had been entirely imaginary. I cared nothing,absolutely
