I listened, and heard nothing but the brittle shuddering of icicles as boughs strained up to free themselves. Stealing back round the bend, I came upon her standing fixed and silent; as I approached her, she spread her hands before her eyes in a gesture of terror.
“Vi, Vi,” I whispered, “it’s Dante.”
She muttered to herself in choking, babbling fashion.
When I had put my arms about her, she ceased to speak, but her body was shaken with sobbing. She made no sound, but a deep convulsive trembling ran through her. I talked to her soothingly, trying to convince her I was real. Slowly she relaxed against me sighing, and trusted herself to look up at me, letting her fingers wander over my face and hands. I had brought her the bitterness of remembrance. Stooping, I kissed her mouth. “Just once,” I pleaded, “after all these months of loneliness. I’m going to-morrow.”
“You must,” she said, freeing herself from my embrace and clasping her arms about my neck; “oh, it’s wrong, but I’ve wanted you so badly.”
I led her to the edge of the pond and removed her skates. The moon had now sailed above the spear-topped firs and the ice was a silver mirror. Walking through the muffled woods I told her of my coming to Sheba, of the window from which I had watched her, and of all that had happened. From her I learnt that she also had been going through the same struggle between duty and desire ever since we parted.
“Sometimes I felt that it was no use,” she said; “I couldn’t fight any longer—I must write or come to you. Then something would happen; I would read or hear of a woman who had done it, and in the revulsion I felt I realized how other people would feel about myself. And I saw how it would spoil Randall’s life, and especially what it would mean to Dorrie. You can’t tell your personal excuses to the world; it just judges you wholesale by what you do, and I couldn’t bear that. It’s so easy to slip into temptation, Dante, especially our kind of temptation; because we love one another, anything we might do seems good. You can only see what sin really is when you picture it in the lives of others.”
We were walking apart now; she had withdrawn her arm from mine. “I shall always love you,” I said.
“And I you.”
“I shall never marry any other woman,” I told her; “I shall wait for you.”