“Did he tell you so?”
“I think he would have if I had encouraged him.... I liked the way he spoke of you, and”—I hesitated, could not hold back the words—“and I am not easy to please there.” Those words were certainly far from confession, were the mildest form of indiscretion. Still, so determined was I to be square, and so guilty did I feel, that they sounded like a contemptible attempt stealthily to make love to her.
“Thank you,” she said gently. And her suddenly swimming eyes and tender voice reminded me how alone she was and how bitter her experience had been and how she deserved happiness.
I felt ashamed of myself. “I hope you will be happy,” I said, perhaps rather huskily. “Anyone who tried to prevent it would deserve to be killed.”
She looked at me with such a steady, penetrating gaze that I feared I had betrayed myself. In fact, I knew I had. I glanced at my watch, put out my hand. “I hate to go,” I said, in the tone of one man to another. “But I must.” And as we shook hands, I repeated, “I know you will be happy.”
She laughed nervously; she, too, had become ill at ease. “You make me feel engaged,” she said with an attempt at mockery.
As the launch touched the shore I looked back. She was leaning on the rail, Beechman beside her. He was talking, but I felt sure she was not listening. As I looked she waved her hand. I lifted my hat and hurried away. And I learned the meaning of that word desolation.
Do not think, because I have not raved, talked of the moon and stars, poetized about my soul states, that therefore I did not love her. The banquet of life spread so richly for me seemed a ghastly mockery. What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul? I had lost my soul. I had discovered how I might have been happy, and at the same time I had discovered that it could never be—never. And always before me she stood in her radiant youth—intelligent, so capable, splendidly sincere—the woman I loved, the woman I felt I could have made love me.
There was my temptation—the feeling, the conviction that I could win her love. She had confessed to a friendship for me different from any she had for anyone else in the world. If I were willing to take advantage of her trust, of her liking, of her longing for love and of my knowledge of it—if I were to let her see how utterly I loved her—I could surely win her. There were times when I said to myself: “You—even as you are—can make her happier than anyone else could. She would prefer what you can give her to what she will get from Beechman. Your love gives you the right to make her happy. You are letting foolish conventional notions blind you to what is really right. If you had acted in business in that fashion, you would not have got far. Yet in the supreme crisis of your life you let yourself be frightened off by a bogy of conventional morality.”
Perhaps I was giving myself sound advice there. I do not know. I only know that I put the temptation behind me and went to work. The sentimental readers will not forgive me. So be it. I am a plain man, rather old-fashioned—prim, I believe it is called—in my ideas, not at all the ladies’ man. And I did not want to harm her. I loved her.