"You're beginning to come back from this minute," he reminded her, forcing a smile. "As soon as ever the train moves you're on your way home!"
"Yes," she smiled. "Yes, Ashley." But the charm of that conceit was gone; the tone was doubtful, sad, with only a forced recognition of how he meant to cheer her. Her eyes were more eloquent and more sincere, more outspoken too in their reproach. "You're sending me away," they said.
So she went away, looking back out of the window so long as she could see him; not crying now, but with a curious, wistful, regretful, bewildered face, as though she did not yet know what he had done to her, what had happened, what change had befallen her. This was the last impression that he had of her as she went to encounter the world again without the aid to which he had let her grow so used, without the arm on which he had let her learn to lean.
But he seemed to know the meaning she sought for, to grasp the answer to the riddle that puzzled her. As he walked back through the empty town, back to the work that must be done and the day that must be lived through, it was all very clear to him, and seemed as inevitable as it was clear.
It was an end, that was what it was—an utter end.
For if it were anything but an end, he had done wrong. And he had no hope that he had done wrong. The chilling sense that he knew only too well the truth and the right of it was on him; and because he had known them, he was now alone. Would not blindness then have been better?
"No, no; it's best to see," said he.