Sommers walked on slowly. The stiff cape slipped back from Alves's head, revealing in the blue electric light the marble-white pallor of the flesh, the closed eyes. Sommers stopped to kiss the cold face, and with the movement Alves's head nestled forward against his hot neck. Tears rose to his eyes and fell against her cheek; he started on once more, tracing carefully the windings of the path.
* * * * *
So this was the end! The little warmth and love of his cherishing arms about her cold body completed the pittance of happiness she had craved.
The story was too dark for him to comprehend now—from that first understanding moment in St. Isidore's receiving room to this. Here was his revolt, in one cold burden of dead love. She had left him in some delusion that it would be better thus, that by this means he would find his way, free and unshackled, back to the world of his fellows. And, perhaps, like a creature of love, she had blindly felt love's slow, creeping paralysis, love's ultimate death. Even now, as he staggered along the lighted avenue of the park, in the silence of death and of night, that pregnant reproach oppressed his heart. He had not loved her enough! She had felt a wall that was building impalpably between them, a division of thought and of feeling. She had put her arms against his man's world of secret ambition and desire and had found it cold.
She had struggled for her bit of happiness, poor, loving woman! She had suffered under her past error, her marriage with Preston, and had endured, until, suddenly relieved, she had embraced her happiness, only to find it slowly vanishing in her warm hands. He had suspected her of grasping this happiness without scruple, clamorously; but her sweet white lips spoke out the falseness of this accusation. It was bitter to know that he had covered her with this secret suspicion. He owed her a sea of pardons!
So he labored on into the dark stretches of the park, among the debris of the devastated buildings, up the little sandy hills, out of the park to the lonely temple. Already his self-reproach seemed trivial. He knew how little his concealed suspicions had to do with bringing about this catastrophe. That misunderstanding was but a drop in the stream of fate, which was all too swift for her strength. He paused at the last turn of the road and rested, settling his burden more closely in his arms, drawing her to him in the unavailing embrace of regret. Another kind of life, he said,—some average marriage with children and home would have given her more fully the human modicum of joy. But his heart rejected also this reproach. In no other circumstance could he place her justly. She was so amply made for joy—so strong to love, to endure; so true to the eternal passions. But not mere household love, the calm minutes of interlude in the fragments of a busy day! They would not satisfy the deep thirst for love in her heart. He had given the best he had—all, nearly all, as few men could give, as most men never give. He must content himself there.
He started again and strode on to the end of the journey. Within the temple he placed her on their bed, taking off her stiff clothes and preparing her for sleep. Then he remade the fire, and opening a window for the low night wind to draw across her face as she liked to have it, he sat down for his vigil.
Yes, it was the end! It was the end of his little personal battle with the world, the end of judging and striving, the end of revolt. He should live on, strangely enough, into many years, but not as they had tried to live in self-made isolation. He should return to that web of life from which they had striven to extricate themselves. She bade him go back to that fretwork, unsolvable world of little and great, of domineering and incompetent wills, of the powerful rich struggling blindly to dominate and the weak poor struggling blindly to keep their lives: the vast web of petty greeds and blind efforts. He should return, but humbly, with the crude dross of his self-will burnt out. They had rebelled together; they had had their wills to themselves; and that was ended. It could not have been otherwise. They could never have known each other in the world; they had to withdraw themselves apart. He looked at her afresh, lying on the pillow by his side, her hair twining carelessly about the white arm. She was infinitely greater than he,—so undivided and complete a soul! She had left him for the commoner uses of life. And all the stains of their experience had been removed, washed out by the pure accomplishment of her end.
Already so cold, so sweetly distant, that face,—so done with life and with him! He leaned over it and burst into tears. The dream of the summer night had passed away.