“A little farther—there—here we can be alone.”
We crossed and found a sheltered nook. I stood, staring down. All below me was ugliness, and I remember now how suddenly depressed it made me to be brought face to face with this sordid realism,—this muddy water, streaked with oil, the waste, refuse and litter of the city. The siren blew, once, twice, in shattering blasts. We moved onward, towards the river head.
“Monsieur, I have to thank you, and I do thank you deeply for your perfect courtesy towards me.” Her voice sank lower. “You have been loyal and considerate. It is a memory I shall always retain of an American gentleman. Now, I am going to appeal to that chivalry and to that loyalty.”
“You are going to ask me never to see you again.”
She hesitated before the shock of pronouncing the decision which must have been in her thoughts for days. Then, recovering herself, she said, calmly:
“That is exactly what I must ask of you.”
“I do not understand—must?”
“Must.”
All that I had thought out, every argument which I had built up victoriously to combat her resolution, all power of reasoning, left me. Intuition, which never fails at such times, told me that before this Bernoline nothing that I could say or do would avail. The woman who spoke was a soul in retreat, and the veil which barred the meeting of our eyes was the veil of renunciation. I blurted out:
“Why? Why do you ask such a thing, such an unnatural thing of me? What reason can there be?”