"This letter is not easy to write and you must realize that and forgive me if I have not put things properly. These last weeks have all made such a demand on me that I'm tired out....
"I said once, Francis dear, that I would not write to you until I meant to come to you. Now I have broken my word—This is to tell you that everything, anything, that we have felt for one another must be ended, now and for ever.
"Don't think that I am angry with you for writing to me. Perhaps I should have been, but I understood—Only now all my life must be always, entirely, devoted to my husband. That is now all that I live for. I feel as though in some way I had been responsible for the disaster; at any rate his bravery and pluck are wonderful and it is a small thing that I can do to make his life as easy as I can, but it will take the whole of me.
"Perhaps after a time we shall meet—one day be friends—I can't look ahead or look back; I only know that I am now absolutely, entirely, my husband's—
"Don't hate me for this—it was taken out of our hands. I've asked Lizzie Rand to give you this. She knows everything and it would make me happy to think that you two had become great friends."
They had crossed the little bridge, left behind them the strange birds that chattered beneath it, and had passed into the wide green spaces, often given up to cricket or football, now empty of any human being—the Zoological Gardens, a deserted bandstand, a fringe of trees on which the first tiny leaves were showing; above them the grey sky had broken into blue and white, the cloud shaped with ribs and fleecy softness like a huge wing stretching above them from horizon to horizon.
Over the two of them, so tiny on that broad expanse, this wing brooded tenderly, gravely—
Breton had crushed the letter in his hand and stood looking in front of him, but seeing nothing. His one thought was that he had been brutally treated,—she had simply, without a thought, without a care, flung him aside.
He had, of course, known that this accident to her husband must, for a time, hold her, but now, in this fashion, she had passed on without hesitation—leaving him anywhere, anyhow; was it so long ago that she had said to him that, whether she came to him or no she would always love him? Had she already forgotten that kiss, that moment when she had clung to him, held to him?
He stood there, filled with self-pity. This restraint, this self-discipline all done for her and now all useless. It was not wanted; he was not wanted....
Had she only preserved some relationship, told him to wait, assured him that he meant something to her, anything but this—
But there was greater pain at Breton's heart than thought of Rachel brought him. To every man comes in due time the instant of revelation; it had flashed before Breton now.
He saw that his relationship with Rachel was at an end, utterly—However he might delude himself that, in his soul, he knew. There had been a moment when they had met and the moment had passed. But he saw more than this. He saw that he was a man to whom life had always been a succession of moments—moments flashing, stinging, flying, gone—he, always, helpless to grasp and hold.
Had he, on that day, been strong, held Rachel, conquered her, made her his.... He was weak through the fine things in him as surely as through the base—His ideals forced his purpose to tremble as often as his regrets....