We seemed to see into the soul of each other, through the very heart of that frail woman between us, that slender creature in the bridal dress, who sank down before us, as if the colliding passions of two strong men had killed her.
It was he who raised her up. His hands placed her in my arms. No need to say that she was blameless. I knew all that.
It was only Fate after all, that I blamed, yet the fatalist is human. He suffers in living like other men—sometimes more, because he refuses to struggle in the clutches of Chance!
As I gazed down into her white face, I heard the steps of my friend, even above the roaring of the river, as he strode down the hillside, out of my life! And I know not even to-day which was the bitterest grief, the loss of my faith in being loved, or the passing from my heart of that man!
Of the pain of the night that followed, only the silence and our own hearts knew.
Love and passion are so twinned in some hours of life that one cannot distinguish in himself the one from the other.
Into my keeping "to have and to hold," the law had given this beautiful woman, "until death should us part." I loved her! But, out of her heart, at once stronger and weaker than mine, my friend had barred me.
It is not in hours like these, that all men can be sane.
I thought of what might have been, if they had not met that night, and my ignoble side craved ignorance of that Chance, or the brutality to ignore it.
I looked down into that cold face as I laid her from the arms that had borne her down the hill—laid her on what was to have been her nuptial couch—and closed the door between us and all the world.