“It won’t be forever,” he doggedly persisted. “In the end I’m going to have you. I want you to remember that.”
“Ward, how perfectly foolish of you to talk that way! If we were to go on as we have been we wouldn’t be happy. Let’s just acknowledge that this is the last time.”
“No,” he protested. “It’s not going to be that way! You’ve lost your courage and I can’t blame you for seeing things black. If I had only myself to consider I’d run away with you tonight; but that would be a despicable thing for me to do. I love you too much for that!”
The protestation of his love brought her no ease. She was half angered by his stubborn refusal to face the truth, and his professed belief that sometime in some way they were to be reunited. He was trying to see the light of hope ahead where all was dark to her.
It was strange to be sitting there beside him, thinking already of their love with all its intimacies, that had seemed to bind them together forever, as something that had been swept into a past from which, in a little while, memory would cease to recall it. This was love! This was the thing that had been written of and sung of in all the ages; and it was a lure contrived only to bruise and break and destroy.
She touched the lowest depths of despair, snatched away her hand when he tried to possess it; thought of him for an instant with repulsion. The wistful tenderness of the night, the monotonous ripple of water beneath, the very tranquillity of the stars seemed to mock and taunt her.
He waited patiently, silent, impassive, as though he knew what she was thinking and knew, too, that such thoughts were inevitable and must run their course.
The silence fell upon her like a soothing hand. The tumultuous rush of her thoughts ceased; she was amazed at the serenity with which suddenly she viewed the situation.
He was finer than she, wiser, more far seeing. Something in his figure, in his dimly etched profile in the faint starlight touched her profoundly. It was selfish of her to forget that he too suffered. He was a man she had given herself to without reservation, and with all the honesty and fervor of her young heart, and to think harshly of him was to acknowledge herself a shameless wanton, no better than a girl on the street. She could not think ill of him without debasing herself. And she did love him; she had loved him from the first, and it was not the way of love to wound.
Perhaps he had been sincere in saying that he wished to protect her—this was like him, and it was cruel of her to question his love, to fail to help him when he sought with all kindness and consideration to find some hope in the future. They must part and it might be for the last time, but she would not send him away feeling that she had not appreciated all that his love had been and would continue to be to her. Without him, without some knowledge of his whereabouts and activities and the assurance of his well-being, life would be unbearable. She was all tenderness, all solicitude, wholly self-forgetful, as she softly uttered his name.