But it
also promised, when the term of his exile was up, and there were means of
shortening it, a certain competence, and very likely wealth; escaping those
other contingencies, marriage. There seemed no other way. The girl was
very young: there was no question of an early marriage; there was not even
a definite engagement. Garth would take no promise from her: only for
himself, he was her bound lover while he breathed; would keep himself
free to claim her, when he came back in five years, or ten, or twenty, if
she had not chosen better. He would not bind her; but I can imagine how
impressive his dark, bitter face must have made this renunciation to the
little girl with the violet eyes; how tenderly she repudiated her freedom.
She went out as a governess, and sat down to wait. And absence only
rivetted faster the chain of her affection: it set Garth more securely on
the pedestal of her idea; for in love it is most usually the reverse of
that social maxim, _les absents ont toujours tort_, which is true.
Garth, on his side, writing to her, month by month, while her picture
smiled on him from the wall, if he was careful always to insist on her
perfect freedom, added, in effect, so much more than this, that the
renunciation lost its benefit.
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