“Well, in different ways,” he said. “Some because you are near and others because you won’t be.”
His voice was colourless. His hand still passed across her hair.
“Don’t you see,” she said, after a moment, “that it couldn’t have been. Try to see that and to accept it. Not you and me. Not Barney’s friend and Barney’s wife. In every way it couldn’t have done, really. It makes no difference for me. I’m a déracinée, as I said. A wanderer. But what would have become of you, all full of roots as you are? You can live it down without me. You never could have with. And how could you have wandered with me? For that must be my life.”
“You know, it’s no good trying to comfort me,” said Oldmeadow. “What I feel is that any roots I have are in you.”
“They will grow again. The others will grow again.”
“I don’t want others, darling,” said Oldmeadow. “You see, my heart is broken, too.”
She lifted her head at last and he saw her marred and ravaged face.
“It can’t be helped,” he tried to smile at her. “You weren’t there to be recognized when I first met you and now that you are there, I’ve come too late. I believe that if I’d come before Barney, you’d have loved me. It’s my only comfort.”
“Who can say,” said Adrienne. Her gaze, as she looked at him, was deep with the mystery of her acceptance. “Perhaps. It seems to me all this was needed to bring us where we are—enmity and bitterness and grief. And my love for Barney, too. Let me tell you. It’s in the past that I think of him. As if he were dead. It’s something over; done with for ever; yet something always there. How can one be a mother and forget? Even when he is Nancy’s husband and when she is a mother, I shall not cease to feel myself his wife. Perhaps you think that strange, after Meg and what I believed right for her. But it is quite clear to me, and simple. It isn’t a thing of laws and commandments; only of our own hearts. If we can love again, we may. But for me it would be impossible. With me everything was involved. I couldn’t, ever, be twice a wife.”
Silence fell between them.