“Won’t you tell me that dream?”
“If you promise to wake up and forget it.”
“Tell me first.”
And so, rather haltingly, but with growing confidence, Eve told the stranger of her hopes:
“I can see clearly now, it was a companion Wynne needed, that’s all—a mental companion. Had I been a man I might have entered more deeply into his life. You see, we fought to rise out of this rut, and now he has begun to rise he finds that I am part of the rut—something to be left behind. I believe a man and woman were not intended to live together as we have—there was no fire, you see—we were just partners. The marriage link cannot be welded without fire. I wonder—do you understand what I mean?”
He nodded gravely.
“Wynne’s was all mental fire. The embers of his love for me have never glowed into a flame.” She laughed to smother a sob. “They are out—out altogether—dead and cold! At least it seems so. I have been like a book to him—an information bureau and debating society in one. Ever ready to supply the thoughts that were not self-revealing. And now I have been read from cover to cover, and it’s foolish, I suppose, to expect a place in the new library.”
“What a damnable story!” said Quiltan, with sudden fierceness. “I feel like—kicking him.”
“Don’t feel like that. Everybody has wanted to kick Wynne. It was the first thing which drew me toward him. And when you look at it all from his point of view, you can see.”
“You find excuses for him?”