“It’s your woman,” Mary-Clare began with a sharp catching of her breath as if she had been running. “Your woman is not real.”
Northrup flushed. He was foolishly and suddenly angry. If the book must be brought in, he would defend it. It was all that was left to him of this detached interlude of his life. He meant to keep it. It was one thing to live along in his story and daringly see how close he could come to revealment with the keen-witted girl who had inspired him, but quite another, now that he was going, beaten from the field, to have the book, as a book, assailed. As to books, he knew his business!
“You put your words in your woman’s mouth,” Mary-Clare was saying.
“And whose words, pray, should I put there?” Northrup asked huskily.
“You must let her speak for herself.”
“Good Lord!”
Mary-Clare did not notice the interruption. She was doing battle for more than Northrup guessed. She hoped he would never know the truth, but the battle must be fought if all the beautiful weeks of joy were to be saved for the future. The idealism that the old doctor had desperately hoped might save, not destroy, Mary-Clare was to prove itself now.
“There are so many endings in life, that it is hard, in a book, to choose just one. Why should there be an end to a book?” she asked.
The question came falteringly and Northrup almost laughed.