Not an intonation of reproach towards himself on her account, only on his own, as if she had said, “Why did you leave me—your haven of refuge when the storm came upon you? Why did you leave me, who would have cleaved to you in adversity—who would have clung to you through evil report a hundred times closer than through good?”
“Yes—why did I?”
He had removed his glasses, and stood before her his old self—but such a shadow of it! She was horrified.
“What have you been doing with yourself?” she said. “Have you been trying to die?”
Then he laughed—a harsh, bitter laugh. It rang back from the cliffs in weird, mocking echo.
“Oh, no. The Fates are not so kind. Why did I leave you, you say? Everything was against us. Your father would not listen to me, even when I had my head above water—how could I expect him to when it was below, with no prospect of ever rising to the surface again? You, yourself, would never have acted contrary to his wishes, even if I had been in a position to urge you to—and for this I should be the last to blame you, understand that, well. But for me, an utterly ruined man, to hold you bound to me for life, was just the one thing I could not do.”
“Go on.”
“Well, we never saw each other again after that informal parting in Wandsborough street,” he went on. “I hoped—I mean I tried to hope—you would forget me and be happy again. After all, why should you not? Only three or four short months—a summer dream.”
His voice was harsh and grating. At times it seemed that he would choke.
“A summer dream! My whole life was lived within that summer dream,” she whispered, more to herself than to him. “Roland, you will not leave me again!”