If that be the case, I should like to ask you what is about to happen;
for I am tormented with a strong foreboding that, were I to return
even so soon as to-morrow morning, I should find everything changed.
Have you any impressions of this nature?"
"Ah, no," said Priscilla, looking at me apprehensively. "If any such
misfortune is coming, the shadow has not reached me yet. Heaven
forbid! I should be glad if there might never be any change, but one
summer follow another, and all just like this."
"No summer ever came back, and no two summers ever were alike," said
I, with a degree of Orphic wisdom that astonished myself. "Times
change, and people change; and if our hearts do not change as readily,
so much the worse for us. Good-by, Priscilla!"
I gave her hand a pressure, which, I think, she neither resisted nor
returned. Priscilla's heart was deep, but of small compass; it had
room but for a very few dearest ones, among whom she never reckoned
me.
On the doorstep I met Hollingsworth. I had a momentary impulse to
hold out my hand, or at least to give a parting nod, but resisted
both. When a real and strong affection has come to an end, it is not
well to mock the sacred past with any show of those commonplace
civilities that belong to ordinary intercourse. Being dead
henceforth to him, and he to me, there could be no propriety in our
chilling one another with the touch of two corpse-like hands, or
playing at looks of courtesy with eyes that were impenetrable beneath
the glaze and the film.
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