"But why? Does it strike you as improbable?"
We were sitting in the porch, waiting for Dick to come by the white
path across the field.
"No," answered Robina. "It all sounds very probable. I wish it
didn't."
"You must remember," I continued, "that I am an old playgoer. I have
sat out so many of this world's dramas. It is as easy to reconstruct
them backwards as forwards. We are witnessing the last act of the
St. Leonard drama: that unsatisfactory last act that merely fills
out time after the play is ended! The intermediate acts were
probably more exciting, containing 'passionate scenes' played with
much earnestness; chiefly for the amusement of the servants. But the
first act, with the Kentish lanes and woods for a back-cloth, must
have been charming. Here was the devout lover she had heard of,
dreamed of. It is delightful to be regarded as perfection--not
absolute perfection, for that might put a strain upon us to live up
to, but as so near perfection that to be more perfect would just
spoil it. The spots upon us, that unappreciative friends and
relations would magnify into blemishes, seen in their true light:
artistic shading relieving a faultlessness that might otherwise prove
too glaring. Dear Hubert found her excellent just as she was in
every detail. It would have been a crime against Love for her to
seek to change herself."
"Well, then, it was his fault," argued Robina.
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