“Oh, no, Henry; I won't let you say that—”
“No! And you won't say it yourself. But we both know it is true. I see it—the whole thing. You've had your girlish fling here in the Village. You were honest and natural. And you were maddeningly beautiful. We men have crowded about you, disturbed you, pressed you. Zanin was crazy about you. So was Peter. So were a lot of the others. So was I.”
He felt her shoulders stir under his strong hands. Her eyelids were drooping. But he could not stop. “Everybody let it out but me. Do you know why I didn't? Because I was a coward. I haven't made love to women. Why? because I wasn't attractive to them. And I was timid. I stayed with my books and let life go by. Then I found myself drawn into the circle about you. And I lost my head, too. I gave up my books—-my 'library.' Do you know where that 'library' is now, Sue? At the bottom of the North River. Every book! I carried them over there myself, in parcels, with a weight in every parcel, and dropped 'em off the ferry boat. I tried to go in for reality, for what is called life. I had Peter's tailor make me some good clothes. I got a newspaper job. Held that about two weeks. Tried to ask you to marry me. Oh, yes, I did. But couldn't get away with it. Sue, I never managed even to ask you. I talked marriage—almost talked you into it—but couldn't manage to talk about myself. Until now, just when you're worn out with work, with the pressures of men, with all the desperate confusions of life, when your soul is sick for peace—that's it, isn't it?”.
Very slowly her head moved. “Yes, Henry, that's it.”
“Why, then, I come along. And I'm the last straw. Stirring up the old turbulence just when you need my friendship most. I'm doing it now—this minute. I'm hurting you. I'm making you feel that you've lost me.”
“Henry”—he saw the effort it cost her to speak and winced—“I can't bear to seem unsympathetic with you. But it's so hard. I can't see any way—except this of giving up self.”
He let go her shoulders, swung away, and said: “There's just one thing to do. I'll call a taxi.” He moved to the telephone, rummaged through the directory, still talking, the flood of feeling that had for months been impounded within his emotionally inarticulate self rushing now past all barriers, sweeping every last protesting reticence before it. “I do understand, Sue. What you feel now is as deep an urge, almost, as this old sex impulse that muddles life so for all Of us. It is what has driven millions of women into nunneries—to get away from life. Just as our Village freedom is a protest against, unhealthy suppression and rigidity, so these fevers of self-abnegation are inevitable uprushings of protest against animalism.” He had found the number now. He lifted the receiver. “It's Puritan against Cavalier—both right and both wrong! What number—Oh, I beg your pardon! Bryant six thousand. It's the Greeks against the Greatest of Jews—both right—both wrong! Taxi, please! Right away. Two-thousand-twenty-six Tenth Street. All right. Good-by. Beauty against duty—the instinct to express against the instinct to serve—both right, both wrong!”
He confronted her again; caught up her two hands and gripped them within his own. “You've had your little fling at expression, Sue. You were wonderful. You've set flowers growing in our hearts, and thank God for flowers! But life has trapped, you. You've swung over to service. And now you've got to go through, work your way out of it. God knows where you'll land. But if you've counted on my steadiness, by God, you may continue to count or it!”
He pressed her hands to his lips; kissed her knuckles, her fingers, her palms; then dropped them.
Sue sank into the armchair, very white. The tears ran down her cheeks. The Worm could not look at her; after a moment of aimless pacing, he went out to the front steps of the building and, bareheaded, still coatless, watched for the taxi. He helped carry out the big trunk. On the ride to the ferry he spoke only trivialities, and Sue spoke not at all. He did not cross the river with her; merely, there in the ferry house, gripped her hand—smiling after a fashion, limp of spirit (for the first great emotional uprush of his life seemed to have passed like a wave) and said: