"Margaret, don't make it harder for both of us. I must go. There is no question. I don't suppose that any one can see any one else's spiritual experiences—one must be alone in that. Margaret dear, if I stayed with you now—if we married—the Pursuit would begin again. God would hold me at last—and then one day you would find that I had gone away—I would have been driven—there would be terror for both of us then."
She slipped on to her knees and caught his hands.
"This is all unreal—utterly unreal. But our love for each other, that is the only thing that can matter for either of us. You have lived in your thoughts these weeks, imagined things, but think of what you do if you leave me. You are all I have—you have become my world—I can't live, I can't live, Olva, without you."
"I must go. I must find what God is."
"But listen, dear. You come to me to confess something. You find that what you have done matters nothing to me. You say that you love me more than ever, and, in the same moment, that you are going to leave me. Is it fair to me? You give no reason. You do not know where you are going or what you intend to do. You can give no definite explanation."
"There is no explanation except that by what I did in Sannet Wood that afternoon I put myself out of touch with human society until I had done something for human society. God has been telling me for many days that I owe a debt. I have tried to avoid paying that debt. I tried to escape Him because I knew that he demanded that I must pay my debt before I could come to you. I see this as clearly as I saw yesterday the high white clouds above the football field. God now is as real to me as you are. It is as though for the rest of my life I must live in a house with two persons. We cannot all live together until certain conditions are granted. I go to make those conditions possible. Because I have broken the law I am an outlaw. I am impelled to win my way back to citizenship again. God will show me."
"But this is air—all nerves. God is nothing. God does not exist."
"God does exist. I must work out His order and then I will come back to you."
She began to be frightened. She caught his coat in her hands, and desperately pleaded. Then she saw his white set face, and the way that his hands gripped the chair, and it was as though she had suddenly found herself alone in the room.
"Olva, don't leave me, don't leave me, Olva. I can't live without you. I don't care what you've done. I'll bear everything with you. I'll come away with you. I'll do anything if only you will let me be with you."