Thomas Hardy: The Woodlanders

26. CHAPTER XXVI. (continued)

"Well?"

"I kissed them," he rejoined, rather shamefacedly.

"But you had hardly ever seen me except in the dusk?"

"Never mind. I was young then, and I kissed them. I wondered how I could make the most of my trouvaille, and decided that I would call at your hotel with them that afternoon. It rained, and I waited till next day. I called, and you were gone."

"Yes," answered she, with dry melancholy. "My mother, knowing my disposition, said she had no wish for such a chit as me to go falling in love with an impecunious student, and spirited me away to Baden. As it is all over and past I'll tell you one thing: I should have sent you a line passing warm had I known your name. That name I never knew till my maid said, as you passed up the hotel stairs a month ago, 'There's Dr. Fitzpiers.'"

"Good Heaven!" said Fitzpiers, musingly. "How the time comes back to me! The evening, the morning, the dew, the spot. When I found that you really were gone it was as if a cold iron had been passed down my back. I went up to where you had stood when I last saw you---I flung myself on the grass, and--being not much more than a boy--my eyes were literally blinded with tears. Nameless, unknown to me as you were, I couldn't forget your voice."

"For how long?"

"Oh--ever so long. Days and days."

"Days and days! ONLY days and days? Oh, the heart of a man! Days and days!"

"But, my dear madam, I had not known you more than a day or two. It was not a full-blown love--it was the merest bud--red, fresh, vivid, but small. It was a colossal passion in posse, a giant in embryo. It never matured."

"So much the better, perhaps."