Falkner's lean face grew hard with the lines of hunger,—repressed but not buried,—the lines of inner strife. In a dry voice he said:—
"I thought that we had settled all that once, Margaret."
"One cannot settle such things so…. It has come to me—the light—slowly, so slowly. And it is not all clear yet. But I see a larger segment of the circle than we could see two years ago." …
Without more words they began to descend towards the village. The hills that compassed their view were rimmed with the green and saffron lights of the afterglow. Their summits were sharp edged as if drawn by a titanic hand against a sea of glowing color. But within the forests on the slope there was already the gloom of night. Slowly the words fell from his lips:—
"I will never believe it! Why should a man and a woman who can together make the world brave and noble and full of joy be parted—by anything? A sacrifice that gives nothing to any one else!"
That cry was the fruit of the man's two years' battle alone with his heart. To that point of hunger and desire he had come from the day when they parted, when they made their great refusal….
Both remembered that evening, two years before, when they had sailed back to the land—to part. They remembered the Portuguese ship that was weighing anchor for a distant port. As they looked at it wistfully, he had said, "And why not?" And she had replied with shining eyes, "Because we love too much for that." Then he had accepted,—they had found the heights and on them they would remain, apart in the world of effort, always together in their own world which they had created. Then he had understood and gone away to his struggle. Now he could live no longer in that shadowy union: he had come back to possess his desire.
With her it had been different, this separation…. How much more she loved now than then! Her love had entered into her these two years, deeper to the depths of her being, stronger as she was stronger in body, more vital. It had given her strength even for the great denial to him,—and this she realized miserably; their love had given her strength, had unfolded her soul to herself until she had come to large new spheres of feeling, and could see dimly others beyond. While with him it had burned away all else but one human, personal want. He thought to go back now to their island in the sea,—as if one could ever go back in this life, even to the fairest point of the past! …
She laid a caressing hand on his arm.
"Don't you see, dearest, that we could never come out again on the heights where we were?"