She had started running along the path, but he easily overtook her. All at once their arms were about each other, Edith’s wet cheek against his, and all their pain, their bitterness, lost in a passion of tenderness and remorse.
IV
Still Hardy went about the office, magnificent as ever, very well aware of being a remarkable young fellow, who was to be made assistant buyer at twenty-three, a man talked about, admired, and envied. He was still proud of himself, still sure of himself, but some of the magic had gone out of it, some of the zest. He couldn’t look forward to that trip to Europe with unmixed joy now.
Indeed, all the joys he had at this time were so mixed with anxiety and impatience that he could scarcely recognize them. He dreaded leaving Edith. He imagined all sorts of misfortunes that might befall her in his absence. Sometimes he even resented his splendid future, because it so burdened and harassed the present. He wanted to live now, not to wait.
Worst of all was the humiliation he endured from their furtive and hasty meetings. He had never before in his life been furtive, or even cautious. He had lived boldly and rashly, in the light of day, and it hurt and angered him to do otherwise. He wanted to love boldly and rashly. He wanted to be proud of his love.
Well, he wasn’t proud; he was ashamed.
He couldn’t understand Edith’s viewpoint. Her life had been so repressed, so weighted down by unjust and inordinate demands upon her, that she was thankful for the briefest minutes of happiness. If she could meet Hardy for ten minutes on a street corner, she was joyous for those ten minutes—when he would let her be. He tried to let her. He would watch her coming toward him—such a gallant little figure!—and he would make up his mind to be tender and considerate; but when she was with him, when he saw her ill dressed and ill nourished, and couldn’t help her, when he saw her glance at her watch even when he was speaking, his good resolutions only too often vanished, and he reproached her bitterly.
She didn’t endure his reproaches meekly. He wouldn’t have loved her, if she had. On the contrary, she replied to him vigorously, and so many, many times they had left each other in anger, to be paid for later by hours of remorse.
Neither of them was quarrelsome by nature, nor was there any lack of real harmony between them. They were both generous, quick to forgive, eager to understand, passionately loyal to each other. Every one of their disagreements would have been quickly adjusted and forgotten, if they had had time; but they never did have time, and neither did this fellow of twenty-three and this girl of twenty have any greater amount of patience and ripe wisdom than others of their age.
Sometimes a sort of panic seized them, and they felt it necessary to “explain.” They had fallen into the habit of taking a little more than the allotted hour for lunch. Though Edith had been solemnly warned[Pg 155] by her superior, she found it impossible to leave Joe in the middle of a speech. He was so unreasonable about her always being in a hurry.