“Then don’t dismiss your secretary. Then I’ll be there.”
“As secretary?”
“Of, of course.” She spoke impatiently. All else was at the end.
That only made it more impossible than ever. She was to be there—and not to be there. There, in his office where he would see her every day, where he had only to stretch out his hand to touch her, and where he was not to touch, where he was to forget that he had ever touched. He wanted her, all of her, the touch, the glow, the life of her, and she offered—what? A sexless wraith, a spiritual guide, her presence in asceticism.
“No,” he said. “No. I’d rather die than that.”
“Oh, death is a good arrangement, Sam, but well be brave.”
“There are limits even to bravery.”
“No,” said the realist. “There are none.”
So she sent him, though he did not know that the suggestion came from her, to gather strength in the peace of the everlasting hills. She sent him to Hartle Pike to think, to see that she was right. He would remember Ada there.
He did remember Ada, but it seemed to him, when he tried to sum up his recollections, that Ada was not the woman who counted in his life. The women who counted were before Ada and after Ada. They were Anne and Effie.