“I could help you—I would help you, of course.”
They sat silent, both looking at the lake.
It was agreed, when they parted, that he should rejoin her six weeks later in Venice. There they were to talk about the book.
III
Lago d’Iseo, August 14th.
When I said good-by to you yesterday I promised to come back to Venice in a week: I was to give you your answer then. I was not honest in saying that; I didn’t mean to go back to Venice or to see you again. I was running away from you—and I mean to keep on running! If you won’t, I must. Somebody must save you from marrying a disappointed woman of—well, you say years don’t count, and why should they, after all, since you are not to marry me?
That is what I dare not go back to say. You are not to marry me. We have had our month together in Venice (such a good month, was it not?) and now you are to go home and write a book—any book but the one we—didn’t talk of!—and I am to stay here, attitudinizing among my memories like a sort of female Tithonus. The dreariness of this enforced immortality!
But you shall know the truth. I care for you, or at least for your love, enough to owe you that.
You thought it was because Vincent Rendle had loved me that there was so little hope for you. I had had what I wanted to the full; wasn’t that what you said? It is just when a man begins to think he understands a woman that he may be sure he doesn’t! It is because Vincent Rendle didn’t love me that there is no hope for you. I never had what I wanted, and never, never, never will I stoop to wanting anything else.
Do you begin to understand? It was all a sham then, you say? No, it was all real as far as it went. You are young—you haven’t learned, as you will later, the thousand imperceptible signs by which one gropes one’s way through the labyrinth of human nature; but didn’t it strike you, sometimes, that I never told you any foolish little anecdotes about him? His trick, for instance, of twirling a paper-knife round and round between his thumb and forefinger while he talked; his mania for saving the backs of notes; his greediness for wild strawberries, the little pungent Alpine ones; his childish delight in acrobats and jugglers; his way of always calling me you—dear you, every letter began—I never told you a word of all that, did I? Do you suppose I could have helped telling you, if he had loved me? These little things would have been mine, then, a part of my life—of our life—they would have slipped out in spite of me (it’s only your unhappy woman who is always reticent and dignified). But there never was any “our life;” it was always “our lives” to the end....