“And now it has all dropped from you,” he said.
“Yes, all—the love, the regret certainly, even the shame. The ambition, certainly not; but in that ugly form of a loveless marriage it’s no longer a possible temptation for me. My disappointment hasn’t driven me to worldly materialism. It’s a sane thing in nature, that outgrowing of griefs, though it’s bad for one’s pride to see them fade and one’s heart mend, solidly mend, once more.”
“They do go, when one really sees them.”
“Some do.”
“All, when one really sees them,” he repeated unemphatically. “I know all about it, Eppie. I’ve been through the fire, too. Now that it’s gone, you see that it’s only a dream, that love, don’t you?”
Eppie gazed before her into the mist, narrowing her eyes as though she concentrated her thoughts upon his exact meaning, and she received his casual confidence with some moments of silence.
“That would imply that seeing destroyed feeling, wouldn’t it?” she said at last. “I see that such love is a dream, if you will; but dreams may be mirrors of life, not delusions; hints of an awakened reality.”
He showed only his unmoved face. This talk, so impersonal, with all its revealment of human pathos and weakness, so much a picture that they both looked at it together,—a picture of outlived woe,—claimed no more than his contemplation; but when her voice seemed to grope toward him, questioning in its very clearness of declaration, he felt again the flitting fear that he had already recognized, not as danger, but as discomfort. It flitted only, hardly stirred the calm he showed her, as the wings of a flying bird just skim and ruffle the surface of still, deep waters. That restless bird, always hovering, circling near, its shadow passing, repassing over the limpid water—he saw and knew it as the water might reflect in its stillness the bird’s flight. Life; the will to live, the will to want, and to strive, and to suffer in striving. All the waters of Eppie’s soul were broken by the flight of this bird of life; its wings, cruel and beautiful, furrowed and cut; its plumage, darkly bright, was reflected in every wave.
He said nothing after her last words.
“You think all feelings delusions, Gavan?”