“I don’t understand,” he muttered...
Suddenly his face softened. He bent his head and kissed her again quietly, and, releasing her, turned away.
“Good-bye,” he said, a little abruptly, and opened the door of the room and stepped into the corridor.
Pamela remained standing where he had left her, her arms hanging loosely at her sides, her face strained and curiously set; and in her eyes, glowing darkly in the white face, a shadowed look of suffering too deep for utterance or the relief of tears.
When we stand at the parting of the ways how difficult seems the road, how bitter the moment of farewell. But sorrow is no longer enduring than any other emotion. We take our lives again, and go on.
Chapter Thirty Four.
Some years later Dare sat in his room before an untidy desk with a letter spread out before him among the litter of papers and things lying about. The letter was from Pamela, between whom and himself, since the occasion when he had been present at her marriage in Pretoria, these regular but infrequent communications formed the sole link.
This letter in its quiet reflective tone differed from any other he had received from her. It breathed through every line of it a calm satisfaction, a resigned acceptance of the conditions of her life, that was in no wise morbid, that held, indeed, a note of hope, of quiet gladness even. Clearly for her the turbulent discontent was past. She had glided into some forgotten backwater, and discovered there beauties that lie unsuspected in these restful retreats of the mind.