It _was_ dull;
but if I could have it all over again, I'd work my fingers to the bone.
I don't know how it would have been if you and I'd come together then,
and had it all as we planned; but now I'm a different woman. I can't
any more go back than you could turn Sudleigh River, and coax it to run
uphill. I don't know whether 't was meant my life should make me a
different woman; but I _am_ different, and such as I am, I'm his woman.
Yes, till I die, till I'm laid in the ground 'longside of him!" Her
voice had an assured ring of triumph, as if she were taking again an
indissoluble marriage oath.
Laurie had grown very pale. There were forlorn hollows under his eyes;
now he looked twice his age.
"I didn't suppose you kept a place for me," he said, with an
unconscious dignity. "That wouldn't have been right, and him alive. And
I didn't wait for dead men's shoes. But somehow I thought there was
something between you and me that couldn't be outlived."
Amelia looked at him with a frank sweetness which transfigured her face
into spiritual beauty.
"I thought so, too," she answered, with that simplicity ever attending
our approximation to the truth, "I never once said it to myself; but
all this year, 'way down in my heart, I knew you'd come back.
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