“That is so. I agree.”
“Well, can’t you see? Never to come back. Never to come back.”
“Miriam. Remember I am no more that man. I was in suffering and in ignorance. It would have been better otherwise. I agree with you. But that is all past. I am no more that man.”
“Can’t you see that there is no past?”
“I confess I do not understand this.”
“It is crowding all round you. I felt it. Don’t you remember? Before I knew. It comes between us all the time. I know now. It’s not an idea; or prudishness. It’s more solid than the space of air between us. I can’t get through it.”
“Remember I was suffering and alone.” Somewhere within the vibrating tones was the careless shouting of his boyhood; that past was there too; and the eager lifting voice of his earlier student days, still sometimes alive in the reverie of his lifted singing brows. The voice had been quelled. In his memory as he stood there before her was pain, young lonely pain. Within the life thrown open without reservation to her gaze, she saw, confronting her determination to make him suffer, the image of unhealed suffering, still there, half stifled by his blind obedience to worldly ignorant advice, but waiting for the moment to step forward and lay its burden upon her own unwilling heart, leaving him healed and free. Tears sprang to her eyes, blotting him out, and with them she sprang forth into a pathless darkness, conscious far away behind her, soon to be obliterated on the unknown shores opening ahead, but there gladly in hand, of a debt, signed and to be honoured even against her will, by life, surprised once more at this darkest moment, smiling at her secretly, behind all she could gather of opposing reason and clamourous protests of unworthiness. “Poor boy” she gasped, gathering him as he sank to his knees, with swift enveloping hands against her breast. The unknown woman sat alone, with eyes wide open towards the empty air above his hidden face. This was man; leaning upon her with his burden of loneliness, at home and comforted. This was the truth behind the image of woman supported by man. The strong companion was a child seeking shelter; the woman’s share an awful loneliness. It was not fair.
She moved to raise and restore him, at least to the semblance of a supporting presence. But with a sudden movement he bent and caught a fold of her dress to his lips. She rose with a cry of protest, urging him to his feet.
“I know now,” he said simply, “why men kneel to women.” While in her heart she thanked heaven for preserving her to that hour, the dreadful words invested her in yet another loneliness. She seemed to stand tall and alone, isolated for a moment from her solid surroundings, within a spiral of unconsuming radiance.
“No one ought to kneel to anyone,” she lied in pity, and moved out restlessly into the room. We are real. As others have been real. There is a sacred bond between us now, ratified by all human experience. But oh the cost and the demand. It was as if she were carrying in her hands something that could be kept safe only by a life-long silence. Everything she did and said in future must hide the sacred trust. It gave a freedom; but not of speech or thought. It left the careless dreaming self behind. Only in ceaseless occupation could it hold its way. Its only confidant would be God. Holding to it, everything in life, even difficulties, would be transparent. But seen from the outside, by the world, an awful mysteriously persistent commonplace. It was not fair that men did not know the whole of this secret place and its compact. Why was God in league only with women?