"Better to suffer on in this cloudy world than to make others suffer," he murmured.
"Don't talk! I am so tired—so tired."….
From the hillside below came a whistled note, then the bar of a song, like a bird call. Some workman on the place going to his work, Vickers thought. It was repeated, and suddenly Isabelle took her arms from his neck,—her eyes clear and a look of determination on her lips.
"No, Vick; you don't convince me…. You did the other thing when it came to you. Perhaps we are alike. Well, then, I shall do it! I shall dare to live!"….
And with that last defiance,-the curt expression of the floating beliefs which she had acquired,—she turned towards the house.
"Come, it is breakfast time."
She waited for him to rise and join her. For several silent moments they lingered to look at Dog Mountain across the river, as if they were looking at it for the last time, at something they had both so much loved.
"You are dear, brother," she murmured, taking his hand. "But don't lecture me. You see I am a woman now!"
And looking into her grave, tear-stained face, Vickers saw that he had lost. She had made her resolution; she would "dare to live," and that life would be with Cairy! His heart was sad. Though he had tried to free himself of his old dislike of Cairy and see him through Isabelle's eyes, it was useless. He read Tom Cairy's excitable, inflammable, lightly poised nature, with the artist glamour in him that attracted women. He would be all flame—for a time,—then dead until his flame was lighted before another shrine. And Isabelle, proud, exacting, who had always been served,—no, it was hopeless! Inevitable tragedy, to be waited for like the expected motions of nature!
And beneath this misery for Isabelle was the bitterest of human feelings,—personal defeat, personal inadequacy. 'If I had been another!' "Don't lecture me!" she had said almost coldly. The spiritual power of guidance had gone from him, because of what he had done. Inwardly he felt that it had gone. That was part of the "marrow of the man" that had been burned out. The soul of him was impotent; he was a shell, something dead, that could not kindle another to life.