"LOVE IS NOT LOVE THAT ALTERS."
"Do you remember the kind of love I said I had for you that first night after I came home?" She pressed my hand against her cheek again. "And the kind you said you'd never felt, but would give your life to feel?" Again I felt the pressure. "That kind which I told you of, and which I have had for you all the time, is that kind that Shakespeare told of when he said:
"'Love is not love that alters when it alteration finds.'
"That's the kind I have for you, Eloise—have always had; and do you remember the love you said you wanted, you'd give your life for, yourself, your soul and your body. 'I, who wish it so, to be widowed of it all my life'—those were your words. How they cut into my heart—that love, Eloise, can't you see? Don't you know that it is yours and you are widowed of it no longer?"
She put her arms around my neck and pulled my face down to hers, smothering her mouth in my kisses.
"Oh, Jack, why did you say it—see it? Why did you not let me fool myself—fool you? Why—and—oh, if you had only not seen it—not let me know you saw it! Love? Don't you know now that the kind I said I'd have is as I said it was? Worth life—worth death—worth all—worth all—then God help me, Jack, if I sin—God forgive me, but I'd rather hold it to my heart a helpless cripple that I am—hold it never to satisfy it—never to know what it means, helpless, bed-ridden cripple that I am than to be the well, strong thing I was without it. Oh, Jack, don't you know now what I mean?"
She kissed me again and again, holding my cheek to hers.
"Good-by, you'll not see me again, Jack, so good-by, Jack, forever. And in time, though you'll never forget me nor cease to love me, you will do as I said; for yours is youth and love and strength, and they must be mated. When you can think of me without tears, without sorrow or pity, but as one who has lived and is gone—only as the memory of a sweet dream that might have been—then, dear, dear Jack, remember the last request I made of you, remember to make Elsie happy; and in time—in time, Jack, oh, what a love-maker he is! be happy yourself. Hold me a moment, just a moment to your heart—then—kiss me again and say with me the little prayer Aunt Lucretia used to make us say, holding hands in the long ago."
Holding her face against mine, and with clasped hands as of old, we said: