A new idea struck me—luminously, overwhelming. I grew reckless. “You—you are growing considerate,” I taunted. “You are not so sure, not so cold. I notice a change in you. Upon my soul ...”
Her eyes dilated suddenly, and as suddenly closed again. She said nothing. I grew conscious of unbearable pain, the pain of returning life. She was going away. I should be alone. The future began to exist again, looming up like a vessel through thick mist, silent, phantasmal, overwhelming—a hideous future of irremediable remorse, of solitude, of craving.
“You are going back to work with Churchill,” she said suddenly.
“How did you know?” I asked breathlessly. My despair of a sort found vent in violent interjecting of an immaterial query.
“You leave your letters about,” she said, “and.... It will be best for you.”
“It will not,” I said bitterly. “It could never be the same. I don’t want to see Churchill. I want....”
“You want?” she asked, in a low monotone.
“You,” I answered.
She spoke at last, very slowly:
“Oh, as for me, I am going to marry Gurnard.”