"Oh, but don't you see that I must," she cried despairingly. "I didn't close my eyes all night, thinking, thinking, thinking! It was agony. It's agony now. But my decision's been through the fire, Jack, and I know I'm right!"
"No decision counts for anything against all you mean to me!"
"Oh, Jack, I'm so sorry!" she moaned, looking at me without dissimulation and letting me see that her face was marked by a solemnity and tragedy that wrung my heart. "God," she whispered, putting her hand to my forehead, "how I suffer while I see your tortured eyes!"
"Then out of sorrow, pity, tell me what the fellow said," I implored, nearly beside myself. "Let me know the strength of your duty, so my own strength can have a chance. It isn't fair to make a beggar of me when I might be fighting for happiness! Let me see his weapons so I can strike back; then, if I lose, I'll lose standing up—and the future," I added, less impetuously, "isn't so gray to the man who loses standing up."
She had turned away with a quick gesture of anguish and seemed to be crying, but when she looked at me again there were no signs of tears.
"He says others have demands and rights, and the many must outweigh the few."
"That depends on the greatness of each side's claims," I began, when she interrupted by continuing:
"My conscience decided that—it had no choice; every claim has been weighed—accurately." Her voice trembled a little, and I thought she was trying to make it harsh. "He said that you and I were thrown out from separate spheres, opposite poles. By chance our orbits happened to cross, and you rendered me this tremendous service. But it was only a part of the foreordination—only to make my path easier to a greater duty ahead, a greater destiny to be fulfilled. Now this commands—he says. The call of my birthright has come, and I must answer. He says that neither of us will mind it in a little while, as memories pa—pass." She wavered at last, and again turned away her face.
"But you don't believe that stuff?" I cried.
"Oh, his words are so unanswerable—when he speaks them! Then he has the authority to command me!"