“Hugh, dear! I’ve already lived. Had a life. My adorable children! They have satisfied the maternal in me. Filled my cup to overflowing. And I am deeply satisfied. I wouldn’t want more children, even if I married. That side of me is finished. Perfected. Do you see? Wouldn’t it be better for you—far better—if you could fall in love with a wholesome, healthy girl who still wants and needs all that for her development? I don’t say Brenda. I see she wouldn’t do. She’s not quite wonderful enough.... But some one quite wonderful.... If you could find her.... Don’t you think it would be kinder of me, even if I loved you, to give you up once and for all? Today! Now! For your sake?”
She was looking at the smoothed plateau where the trench had been between them. If Doctor Steiner had been there, actually in the body and not merely hovering in the background of Joan’s obsessed imagination, would he have noticed a contradiction between what Joan’s hands had just done in so ruthlessly destroying Hugh’s trench and the noble womanly kindness of Joan’s words? And supposing he had noticed the work of Joan’s hands, would he have called it the outward sign of an inward conflict; or would he—for even a psychoanalyst, no matter how bigoted, cannot be totally ignorant of human nature—have thought privately that here hypocrisy of a very simple order had accidentally symbolized itself? Perfectly self-conscious hypocrisy, at that?
She was looking at the smoothed plateau and not at Hugh, yet she felt that his dark gaze was raised, burningly, to her face. But she was wrong. Hugh was looking neither at her nor at the plateau her beautiful fingers were still smoothing and smoothing. He was looking into space. And he asked, with as grave a voice as she had used, and every bit as quietly, “Do you really and finally mean this, Joan? Are you telling me to give up hope of you? And would you be glad if I could find some one—wonderful—and she would be so simple and dear as to marry me, and we should have children? Do you mean this?”
There was something of a pause. Joan lifted her gaze from the sand with a slight surprise in it. But Hugh’s face was averted. She guessed the pain in his eyes. Well, perhaps pain was what she had asked for, more than passion, in what she had just conveyed to him. She said with an intended beautiful frankness, “No, my dear. I’m quite normally selfish. Every one is, you know, but most people are capable of rationalizing their selfishnesses into looking like nobilities. Well, being psychoanalyzed destroys in one, if he coöperates with the discipline, the possibility of this comforting variety of self-deceit. It has destroyed it in me, at any rate. So I cannot say to you what would only be a lie. I cannot be so dishonest, Hugh, as to tell you that your falling in love and marrying and having children by some one you thought very wonderful—more wonderful than me—would make me glad. How could it? It’s very pleasant to be adored. And I love your love. This is true of me emotionally, you understand, my dear. But one cannot act in harmony with his emotions all the time unless he has the facility, which I, thank God, have not, of rationalizing them eternally. No, Hugh, dear. It is the findings of my sane, free mind that I would share with you in this. And that mind says, ‘He would be far happier married to almost any one than to you, Joan Nevin. He needs the great experience of having children of his own, and of being adored, as he adores you.... If you are generous, you will help him to this deliverance, Joan Nevin.’”
She paused. She put her hand near his hand on the sand. She looked at it, and finished in a low, quite beautiful intonation, “Dear boy. I love you enough to be frank with you. And I do believe if you could find such a woman, and make such a marriage, that our friendship would be only deepened by it. I love you, in my own way. But, frankly, it is not a way that is good enough for you. That love, such as it is, you can never lose. Your marriage with some wonderful person—only she must be wonderful, Hugh, or I should be unreconcilable—might even deepen it. I think, Hugh, I could love the very children she gave you, for your sake.”
“I don’t understand the distinctions you make, Joan, between your sane mind and your emotions. But you are saying that you want me to give you up? You are advising it?”
Joan did not hesitate. Although their hands were not touching, she sensed the vibration of some passionate emotion through his whole body. And now she was ready for climax. She had built up her scene. She had used her sane mind in the way that Doctor Steiner admired so much in her, that beautiful detachment and frankness of which so few women are capable. Already Doctor Steiner had encored her performance, in her imagination, and would certainly do so again in actuality when she told him the whole story to-morrow afternoon. But now she was a little tired of all that. Life is many-sided. The ideal life is one lived on all its sides. Rhythm is the fundamental law of life. So now let come emotion. She would feel again. The sun and the salt air on her lips was not quite enough of sensuous comfort. She would invite Hugh’s hard, passionate, bitter kiss. Her veins were hungry for it.
“Yes, Hugh darling. I want you to give me up once and for all. Only I want it—it would break my heart if you failed to understand this!—because I do truly love you.”
She bent her head and waited for the storm. But it held off. Hugh had sat up and was looking out to sea. He said in an even tone—iron control, Joan thought he was showing—“That is the way you love me? Yes?”
“But it’s a very dear love, Hugh, isn’t it, to put your happiness ahead of my own?”