future: less indulgent to pleasurable retrospections of the past.
"Of course, then," observed Miss Keeldar, "you only just tolerated him, in return?"
"Shirley, men and women are so different: they are in such a different position. Women have so few things to think about—men so many: you may have a friendship for a man, while he is almost indifferent to you. Much of what cheers your life may be dependent on him, while not a feeling or interest of moment in his eyes may have reference to you. Robert used to be in the habit of going to London, sometimes for a week or a fortnight together; well, while he was away, I found his absence a void: there was something wanting; Briarfield was duller. Of course, I had my usual occupations; still I missed him. As I sat by myself in the evenings, I used to feel a strange certainty of conviction I cannot describe: that if a magician or a genius had, at that moment, offered me Prince Ali's tube (you remember it in the Arabian Nights?), and if, with its aid, I had been enabled to take a view of Robert—to see where he was, how occupied—I should have learned, in a startling manner, the width of the chasm which gaped between such as he and such as I. I knew that, however my thoughts might adhere to him, his were effectually sundered from me."
"Caroline," demanded Miss Keeldar, abruptly, "don't you wish you had a profession—a trade?"
"I wish it fifty times a day. As it is, I often
