We may not live together. We shall not die apart.
As she rose from the typewriter she looked again, because she could not help it, at the letter, and in the lower part of the page that lay open before her she saw clearly the words "your Jean."
She did not need these words to tell her what she already knew, that the letter was from the woman with whom Jimmie had promised to have nothing to do. For she had already seen, in the first moment, a flash of the woman's dark, handsome, discontented face.
But the written words, the written claim, roused in her a swelling, choking anger.
She would not go away! She would stay and fight that women to the death for her love!
Yet all the time she knew that she would go. It was inevitable, as her heart had always somehow told her that this hour would inevitably come.
Except for his broken promise—That was unanswerable—she had no heart to blame Jimmie. She would not go in anger. In her heart she had sworn that, if this day should come, she would free him completely, and without bitterness.
She was going.
Her love was spoiled, tarnished; another had touched it. She could never again have the glory of it. Dear heart of life, how beautiful it had been! And she must go, lest in her weakness she should grovel and bring that one beautiful thing of life down into dust with her.
As she passed the stable, Donahue whinnied lovingly at the sound of her step. But she dared not stop. For she knew that if she stopped now, and broke down and cried with her pet and friend, the miserable end would be that she would run to where Jimmie was and throw herself on her knees to him and beg weakly for his love. And—the shame of it!—he would talk, and talk, and talk, and in the end she would live on with him, to hate herself and him.