“By making me suffer,” he said quietly. “Oh, I needed it! It was right. It came, I suppose, with that letter. If it hadn’t,” he added, smiling, “I suppose I should have gone on dreaming—for the dreaming was sweet—with you, Inga.”
“Yes, I see,” she said, nodding.
“What do you see, I wonder?” he said curiously.
“You don’t need me any more,” she said, looking not at him but at the work.
“I have gotten above myself,” he said pensively. “I am not afraid of life—in its completeness now. The bitter as well as the sweet—they are both good, both vital.”
“You see in a way that makes one feel strange things—even to a sense of time.”
“It’s impersonal, isn’t it?”
“Very.”
“For the first time?”
“Yes.”