“I want to talk to you,” she repeated, helplessly.
“Yes, yes,” he said, with a sudden feeling of contrition for the intemperance of the emotion which had carried him away. “I am sorry, I couldn’t help it. Let’s talk to each other, then, but facing things as they are, as we should have talked to each other long ago.”
“Oh, yes—please.”
All at once a presentiment of the finality of her decision came over him and with it a longing to preserve this one spot so garnished with the memories of what they had been to each other, free from the memory of what might come between them.
“Very well,” he said, “but not here. I don’t want—you understand—not here, Inga.”
“I understand,” she said, and without looking at him moved over to the door.
He joined her and because they did not wish any one to see their faces at that moment they did not call the elevator, but went slowly and darkly down the stone descent. In the street he held out his arm to her with a longing to feel again the intimate clinging pressure of her body.
“Take my arm,” he said.
She hesitated and then slipped her hand into its protection and thus they returned to their apartment.
When they had come into these outer surroundings which represented all that was recent in their existence together, he felt that not only outwardly but inwardly, they had passed from one life into another. He saw all at once what he had refused to see—how utterly out of place she was against the formal correctness of his new home, this gilded cage into which he had imprisoned her, and perceiving this, all at once he felt, too, how helpless he would be before the logic of her plea.