“No.”
“Jane—there are a thousand things I want to say to you, but they’ve all got to go unsaid—except one. Wherever I am—wherever you are—it will be the same with me. There’ll be no one else—there never can be, now. I wanted you to know—if you didn’t know already.”
“Yes.”
“Haven’t you a word to say to me—Jane?”
She shook her head, trying to smile. “What is there to say? Except—good-bye.”
“I wish I could put words into your lips,” cried Robert Black, under his breath. “I want to hear you say them so. At least—Jane—I can’t go without—once more——”
She was silent. It was somehow as if her will were in shackles, and held her so she could neither move nor speak. When they had been together at the seashore it had been she who had said the more, she who had forced the issue. Now—she was like a dumb thing, suffering without power to free herself. It seemed to her that her heart must break if he did not take her in his arms, and yet she could not show him that heart. The whole day had seemed to build a barrier mountains high between them, which she could do nothing to lower. Her hands, pressed close to her sides as she stood before him, made themselves into fists, the nails pressing into the firm pink palms until they all but cut the flesh.
Suddenly he reached down and seized the hands in his, then looked at them in amazement, as he drew them up to view, because they did not relax.
“What does this mean?” he asked her quickly. “Are you—as unhappy—as that?”
She lifted her eyes then, and let him see—what he could not help seeing. It was as far beyond what she had let him see on that other day as this day in their lives was greater than that.