He wavered again; this was the world he was leaving forever, the world of soft things, the world of thought and pleasant speech, the world of art and books and music, the caressing world that praised pictures, and the makers thereof: the world of Eleanor Wyndwood. But the fight was over; in every sense, he told himself, the fight was over. He must go to Eleanor and tell her that happiness was not for either; she would be strong and fine, she would strengthen him in his obedience to the higher voice. But oh—and her face swam up vivid again—would not the very sight of her weaken him, shatter his resolve? And perhaps, too, the sight of him would weaken even her. No, they must never meet again; that was the simplest, the least painful for both.
He gave instructions that he was to leave by the first morning train; he mounted to his room and packed up; then he wrote to Eleanor.
Dearest Eleanor,—Forgive me that I must cause you pain. I can only hope it will prove to have saved you greater pain in the future. But, my dear, I must not pretend it is from any unselfish desire to save you from sacrificing yourself to my happiness, as you in your generous nobility have been ready to do, that I have resolved never to see you again. I am leaving Paris at once. When I tell you the reason I know that it will ease your pain, and that your noble nature will approve and forgive. I am going back to my wife. I have thought it over and see that I have no option. I have been forgetting that in return for her helping me to Art, I vowed to love, cherish, and protect her. If I cannot love her—if I can only love you, if the thought of you will always be like music to me, though I must never see you again in the flesh—I must at least do my best to make her happy. This is not only a farewell to you, it is a farewell to Art. Without you to inspire it, my Art is dead. I retire from the long contest broken-hearted.
Yours so truly,
Matthew Strang.
P.S.—I dared not trust myself to come and tell you this. It would have been a useless trial for both of us. You will be happier without me and all the suffering my selfish passion must have brought upon you. Forget me. God bless you.
He descended to the court-yard and dropped the letter into the box. Then he sat outside on his balcony and watched the great gleaming Boulevards as they woke to the new day.
He was too early at the station, and the train tarried. The porters leisurely wheeled in the luggage. Sleepy passengers straggled up, armed with gayly illustrated papers broad with Gallic buffoonery.
Oh, the agony of that last quarter of an hour, when Paris beckoned him with its finger of morning sunlight, when Art cried to him from a thousand happy ateliers, calling him to come back and be happy in the great work he felt he had been about to do at last; when Love shone like a purple haze veiling the world in poetic dream, and sang to him like an angel’s voice, and witched him back with the eyes and the hair and the lips of Eleanor Wyndwood!