It seemed to me, at the time, that I had showed myself very weak in the conference in the taxi-cab. It seemed to me that my acquiescence in Fulton's proposals reflected on the strength of my love for Lucy. Perhaps it did. But in the clearer light of today it seems to me that to his questions I made the only answers possible; and that only a demented person could have found serious flaws in the logic of his position.
When we had parted, I walked for a long time in the most crowded streets, trying to reconcile myself to the long separation from Lucy, and to the weakness which I thought I had betrayed in agreeing to it.
Could I endure that separation? The world would be empty with no Lucy to go to, no Lucy even to hear from. I loved her too much to part with all but the thought of her. It did not seem possible that the mere passage of time could dull the edge of my passion. Yet cold memory blinked at this very possibility.
I had parted from other women, thinking that thoughts of them must fill the rest of my life to the exclusion of everything else; only to find that after a little lapse of time their images faded, and even the memory of what they had been to me had no power to think.
So might it be with Lucy. "You know it might," said cold memory. "Don't be a fool—you think it won't, but you know it might."
"But," I argued, "this is different. No other woman ever loved me as she does. I may be a fool, but her eyes have spoken, and I know the truth when I hear it."
"She does love you," said my other self, which I have called cold memory, "and she did love him, and before his time, others, if only briefly. Without the sight of you to feed on, her love will starve and die. It is almost always so."
"Almost."
"There are exceptions. Is it likely, considering your records, that you and she will be an exception? It is not likely."
It wasn't. John Fulton was probably right. He believed that time would cure us, and almost the whole of human experience agreed with him.