“You have spoken.” she said, “of money—and of love. Oh, I wish you had n't!”
Then she must have read my feelings on my face, for she put her hand on my arm and added—
“I did not mean to hurt you. It has been beautiful. You don't know—even you, you don't know. You almost made life mean something again. Nothing that I could ever do would pay you back for that. It made me almost happy—just to be useful. All my life I have wanted to be that. And they have made a toy of me. Or they have wanted me to do something I could n't do. You have helped me to do what I can do.”
“It has been beautiful,” I thought. Or perhaps I said it aloud, for she inclined her head again.
“It has been like a dream,” she said. “I know it could n't be so, but oh, how I have clung to it! I have blundered so with my life... but this seemed real.”
“It is real,” said I.
She looked away.
Again for a time we stood silently there, and looked out over the curving tile roofs.
And again I felt that she was slipping away from me. It was good that I had spoken my love.
That would stay in her thoughts. Perhaps it would grow there. Perhaps the magic that was stirring wonderfully in my heart would touch and stir her heart. I knew at that moment that I loved her more than all the world—more than my work, more than my life. I knew, with exultation, that I was plunging out into uncharted ways, where lives are as often wrecked as not. And I did not care. I was glad.