“I don’t think it would work now. I’d hoped it would; for a long time I’ve thought about you, about our living together. But you don’t want to.”
He had tried to deny this but he could not deny what he felt.
Her voice came back to him now, a sad thin echo; there was no vibrancy in the remembered voice. She was whispering in an empty room.
“You’re going to accept a pattern and I can’t stop you. I can’t bring out the capacity for love in you. You have it, I know, but I’m not enough to make you aware....”
Again the denial and again the sad voice whispering.
“No, I was wrong to try to change your life. It’s very selfish to do things for people they don’t want done. I wanted you so much. You’re the one I’m not supposed to have, though, and that’s sad for me.”
He had talked to her then and explained that he could not take the risk of living with her, that he must be within the pattern. But he could not make any of these things sound convincing. Somehow everything got confused as he tried to explain himself to her. He tried to tell her that he did love her but that he couldn’t live with her. She had listened and when he had finished she had talked again. Now her voice entered his room; it was a shadow’s voice murmuring in his ear.
“I don’t think I’d better see you again, Bob. It’s very hard for me but I’m going to control myself. I am going to forget all the things I had dreamed about since Florence. I shall find a new object and that’s a hard thing to do. It’s hard to change but I will.”
That was true, of course. There was also more.
She walked with him to the door; she let him go free to his chosen prison.