"I don't believe it," I protested. "You are just ready to live."
She gave me a smile for my compliment, and shook her head.
"No, I don't deceive myself. Most women do. I know when I have reached the end of my chapter.... So I have followed you, step by step—oh, you don't know how closely! And I have sucked in all the joy of your success, of your power, of you—a man! I have lived a man's life."
"But you went away?" I said accusingly.
"Yes, I went away—because that would help! It was the only thing I could do—I could go away."
For the first time her voice shook with passion. I was answered.
"Now I have come back to find that my hands are tied more than ever. I can help you no more. Believe me, that is the hardest thing yet. I can help you no more! My husband—you understand? No, you need not understand. A woman is bound back and across by a thousand threads, which do not always show to the eye.... I may yet keep my husband from throwing you over, but that is no matter—the truth is I count no longer to you. If the world had been other than it is, my friend, I should have been by your side, fighting it out daily for you, with you. As it is—"
She threw up her arms in a gesture of disgust and remained silent, brooding. It was not necessary to complete the words. Nor could I speak. Something very wonderful and precious was passing before my eyes for the last time, something that had been near was floating off, would never come back. And life was so made that it was vain, useless, to try to hold it, to cry out, to do anything except to be still and feel the loss. My hands fell beside hers upon the polished surface of the desk, and we sat looking into one another's eyes, without fear. She was feeling what I was feeling, but she was looking deeper into fate than I could look. For she was wiser as a woman than I was as a man. We were the two in the world most near, and between us there was a gulf that could not be crossed. The years that are to come, my heart said to me then, will be longer than those that have passed.
"Listen," she whispered, as though she were reading my thoughts. "We shall never need more than this. Remember! Nothing more than this. For I should be a hindrance, then, not a help. And that would be the end of me, indeed. You have your will to work, which is more than any woman could give you. And I have the thought of you. Now I must go away again—we have to live that way. It makes no difference: you and I think the same thoughts in the same way. What separation does a little distance put between you and me? I shall follow after you step by step, and when you have mounted to the broad level that comes after accomplishment, you will be glad that it has been as I say, not different. It is I that must long. For you need no woman to comfort and love you!"
It was finished, and we sat in the deepening twilight beyond words. The truth of what she had spoken filled my mind. There was nothing else for us two but what we had had: we had come to the top of ourselves to know this, to look it in the face, and to put it aside....