He spoke more freely of the struggle outside in order to make her feel her own sweet security—here where the grime of trade and the reek of politics never came.
At last he rose to go, smiling a little as if in apology for his dark mood. He looked down at her slender body robed so daintily in gray and white; she made him feel coarse and rough.
Her eyes appealed to him, her glance was like a detaining hand. He felt it, and yet he said abruptly:
"Good night."
"You'll come to see me again!"
"Yes," he answered very simply and gravely.
And she, looking after him as he went down the street with head bent in thought, grew weak with a terrible weakness, a sort of hunger, and deep in her heart she cried out:
"Oh, the brave, splendid life he leads out there in the world! Oh, the big, brave world!"
She clinched her pink hand.
"Oh, this terrible, humdrum woman's life! It kills me, it smothers me. I must do something. I must be something. I can't live here in this way—useless. I must get into the world."