“Yes, but there is no happiness in it.”
“Must I always hurt you, Davy?” she said sadly, “I who only long to protect you? Dear friend, all I have done—believe me, though you cannot understand it—has been done for you.”
“Yes, Bernoline.”
I felt that the moment had come when the happiness of my whole life was there in my hands to fight for. We were no longer man and woman, but two atoms in the wavering sea of multitudes,—atoms gravitating towards each other, cleaving together despite opposition and circumstance, despite all the forces of society that laboriously and fruitlessly lay their inhibitions against the great sweeping instincts of race.
“Night and day, David, I have had you in my prayers. I have prayed that our meeting—our knowing each other—would leave no wound in you. Ah, mon ami, if I do this strange thing, to be here alone with you, it is because I must know that I am not to carry that remorse through all my life.” She stopped, as though dreading what she might be led to say, and then, staring down at the stars that swam in the dark waters below us, she added slowly: “I shall never be sure—never—until I know that you are in your own home, married and happy.”
Then I broke out.
“Bernoline, are you quite honest with yourself?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that is not the true reason. Bernoline, if you are here, to-night, alone at my side, it is because you cannot help it—because you love me. Oh, why hide from ourselves what is?”
“No, no! Don’t say that!”