"Thank you for it. In this life a man must stand pretty much alone, win or lose. I have always found it so—except when you and I have talked things over. That hasn't been often. This is a tight place I find myself in now. But there is a way out, or if there isn't—well, I have played the game better than most."
"Even that thought doesn't give happiness," she mused. "I know, because, my friend, I, too, have stood alone all my life."
She gave me this confidence simply, as a man might.
"I suppose a woman counts on happiness," I said awkwardly in response. "But I have never counted much on that. There have always been many things to do, and I have done them, well or ill I can't say. But I have done them somehow."
It was a clumsy answer, but I could find no proper words for what I felt. Such things are not to be said. There followed another of those full silences which counted with this woman for so much more than words. Again it was she who broke it:—
"For once, only once, I want to speak out plainly! You are younger than I, my friend,—not so much in years as in other things. Enough, so that I can look at you as—a friend. You understand?"
She spoke gently, with a little smile, as if, after all, all this must be taken between us for a joke.
"From the beginning, when you and Sarah first came into our lives, I saw the kind of man you were, and I admired you. I wanted to help you—yes, to help you."
"And that you did!"
"Not really. Perhaps no one could really help you. No one helps or hinders. You work out your fate from the inside, like all the powerful ones. You do what is in you to do, and never question. But I longed for the woman's satisfaction of being something to you,—of holding the sponge, as the boys say. But a mere woman, poor, weak creature, is tied with a short rope—do you know what that means? So the next best thing, if one can't live one's self, is to live in another—some strong one. When you are a woman and have reached my age, you know that you can't live for yourself. That chance has gone."