“Good God! And what do you think I feel!”
“Try to forgive me—if not now, a little later. I accuse myself bitterly. Don’t—don’t show me how I have hurt you.”
“Bernoline! Bernoline! Don’t say such things.”
I looked away, at the world that grew blurred, and at the sky and water, which ran together before my eyes. Everything was against me—the minutes even, dwindling away as we moved inexorably towards the final parting. At one moment I rebelled against the needless insensate pain of it all. Something in me called out: “She is a woman—a woman that suffers as you do. Clasp her in your arms—beat down all opposition—still all her doubts and fears with the thing that is above reasoning. Be cruel. It is the only way. Be cruel now, to be happy always.”
But at the next moment, at the thought of all it must have cost her to have said what she had said; at the struggle I had seen in her eyes, just to spare her this one added touch of pain, I was ready to accept everything she asked as she asked it. So, I stood, struggling with many impulses. At the end, I raised my head, and said:
“Bernoline, you are right: it can be no question of friendship between us. You have done a very brave thing. I wish I could do as big a thing. I cannot. There is no earthly reason which I can conceive of that can come between us. Do you think, now, after what you have shown me, I could go away without an explanation and not be haunted by the thought of what might have been!”
“Monsieur Littledale, you do not realize the difference between our positions. I am come here to this world to earn my living, as governess, nurse, companion, in whatever way God will show me.”
“Good heavens, what difference does that make to me?”
“It does, to me: it is a question of pride. I have chosen my way, and I must do as others do. Are you going to make it harder?”
“Bernoline, that is not the real reason,” I said sternly.