“No, it wouldn’t. Stella, it will break me if you go. My only comfort during the last six hellish months has been that at least you’re not so very far from me in space, that I can see you, meet you, talk to you now and then....”
“But, Peter, that’s what I can’t bear. That’s why I’m going away.”
Her voice was small and thin with agitation. This was worse, a hundred times worse, than anything she had dreaded five minutes ago. She prayed incoherently for strength and sense.
“If that’s what you feel, you’ve got to stay,” Peter was saying. “Stella, you’ve shown me—Stella, you still care.... Oh, I’ll own up, I’ll own that I’ve been a fool, and a blackguard to you. But if you still care, I can be almost happy. We’ve still something left. Only you’ll have to stay.”
“You mustn’t talk like this.”
“Why not—if you still care? Oh, Stella, say it’s true—say you still care ... a little.”
She could not deny her love, even though she was more afraid of his terrible happiness than she had been before of his despair. To deny it would be a profaning of something holier than truth. All she could say was—
“If I love you, it’s all the more necessary for me to go away.”
“It’s not. If you love me, I can be to you at least what you are to me. But if you go away, you’ll be as wretched as I shall be without you.”
“No ... if I go away, we can forget.”