She threw herself on the couch, her face in the pillows—the ache in her heart keener than any physical pain. Was it hopeless—the fight she was making? Could she never win back the love she had lost?
“There she sat, with her head bending low, thinking, thinking, thinking.”
And she had never known how she had lost it—unless it was because she had grown to care too much and to show it too plainly. Could it be that? Had he cared only for the uncertainty—the love of pursuit? And without that—being sure of his conquest—his interest had died?
Ah, no—no! passionately she denied that. The man she loved was bigger, finer than that! He could not have stooped to a merely cheap desire for conquest. If he had ceased to love her, it was some fault of hers, some failing, some lack within herself of which she was unconscious.
She had spent long hours of torturing self-analysis trying to find where she had failed—what it was that in the beginning he might have thought she possessed—and then found she did not. So great was her love for him that she felt she could almost make of herself what he wanted—just by the sheer strength of willing it!
If only she could be with him enough! If she could but have the chance to make him care for her again! He used to come almost every day—and now—now, sometimes many days would pass.
She knew it was a mistake to ask him when he was coming—to try to name any particular time. He seemed to resent that now. If only she could let him go without a word! But the thought of the long, silent absence that might follow always terrified her. Once, for two weeks, she had not heard from him; and the memory of those two weeks’ suffering always weakened her to the point of trying to make some definite engagement to escape the sickening uncertainty of the days to come.
Oh, she was so helpless—so pitiably helpless! Wholly dependent on him for her happiness, yet powerless to break down this wall he was placing between them!
She slowly arose and threw herself into a chair. There she sat, with her head bending low, thinking, thinking, thinking.