"I can't see how. There is only one thing I can do for—my wife. And that is to keep away from her."
"Oh, Clive! How desperately sad! And, she is young and beautiful, isn't she? Oh, I am so sorry for you—for you both. Don't you see, dear, that I am not jealous? If you could be happy with her, and if she could understand me and let me be your friend,—that would be wonderful, Clive!"
He remained silent, thinking of Winifred and of her quality of "understanding"; and of the miserable matter of business which had made her his wife—and of his own complacent and smug indifference, and his contemptible weakness under pressure.
Always in the still and secret depths of him he had remained conscious that he had never cared for any woman except Athalie. All else had been but a vague realisation of axioms and theorems,—of premises that had rusted into his mind,—of facts which he accepted as self-evident,—such as the immutable fact that he couldn't marry Athalie, couldn't mortify his family, couldn't defy his friends, couldn't affront his circle with impunity.
To invite disaster would be to bring an avalanche upon himself which, if it wounded, isolated, even marooned him, would certainly bury Athalie out of sight forever.
His parents had so reasoned with him; his mother continued the inculcation after his father's death. And then Winifred and her mother came floating into his cosmic ken like two familiar planets.
For a while, far away in interstellar space, Athalie glimmered like a fading comet. Then orbits narrowed; adhesion and cohesion followed collision; the bi-maternal
pressure never lessened. And he gave up.
Of this he was thinking now as he sat there in her rose and ivory room, gazing at the grey silk carpet underfoot; and all the while exquisitely, vitally conscious of Athalie—of her nearness to him—to tears at moments—to that happiness akin to tears.