"The blue will never come back," said Jack.
He felt, as her hand tightened on his, that he would have liked to put his head down on her knees and sob like a little boy; but when she said, "And the green you cannot care for?" his own hand tightened as if they clutched some secret together, some secret that neither must dare look at. "You mustn't think that—you mustn't. And I mustn't." He said it with all the revolt and all the strength of his will and loyalty; with all his longing, too. "The real truth is that the green can't care for me unless I will see it back to blue again—and as I can't do that, and as it won't accept my present vision, there is a sort of dead-lock."
For a long moment her hand continued to grasp his, before, as if taking in the ambiguous comfort of his final definiteness, it relaxed and she drew it away.
"Perhaps she will care enough," she said.
"To accept my vision? To forego blue? To consent that I shall see her as green?"
"Yes, when she has taken up all the threads."
"Perhaps she will," said Jack.
XVI
It was a few days after this, just before Jack's return to Boston—and the parting now was to be until they met in Vermont—that he and Imogen had another walk, another talk together.
The mid-May had become seasonably mild and, at Jack's suggestion, they had taken the elevated cars up to Central Park for the purpose of there seeing the wistaria in its full bloom.