But when we were alone we had little or nothing to say. I recall that quarter of an hour as a period of emotional paralysis. I knew and he knew that each second ticked off an instant that all the rest of our lives we should long for in vain; and yet we didn't know how to make use of it.
We began to wander slowly up the slope. We did it aimlessly, stopping when we were only a few yards away from the steps. We talked about the money. We talked about his going to Canada. We talked about the breaking off, so far as we knew, of all intercourse between Mr. Grainger and Mrs. Brokenshire. But we said nothing about ourselves. We said nothing about anything but what was superficial and trite and lame.
Once or twice Larry Strangways took out his watch and glanced at it, as if to underscore the fact that the sands were slipping away. I kept my face hidden as much as possible beneath the rose-colored parasol. So far as I could judge, he looked over my head. We still had said nothing—there was still nothing we could say—when, beneath the bank of the lawn, and moving back in our direction, we saw the crown of Hugh's Panama.
"Good-by!" Larry Strangways said, then.
"Good-by!"
My hand rested in his without pressure; without pressure his had taken mine. I think his eyes made one last wild, desperate appeal to me but if so I was unable to respond to it.
I don't know how it happened that he turned his back and walked firmly up the lawn. I don't know how it happened that I also turned and took the necessary steps toward Hugh. All I can say is—and I can say it only in this way—all I can say is, I felt that I had died.
That is, I felt that I had died except for one queer, bracing echo which suddenly come back to me. It was in the words Mildred Brokenshire had used, and which, at the time, I had thought too deep for me to understand:
"Life is not a blind impulse working blindly. It is a beneficent rectifying power."