But familiarity, the crucial intimacy of day by day companionship, only reveals to me in Yvonne the richer reasons for my reverence; while passion grows but the more poignant as it realizes the exhaustless depths of the nature which responds to it.
The mean poverty of these maxims I had half suspected even before I knew Yvonne. But one, more universally accepted, to the effect that “Anticipation beggars reality,” had ever caused me a certain fear, lest it might prove true. The husband of my dear love has fathomed its falsehood, and anticipation, in my case, was little moderate in its demands. If there be any germ of truth under that long-triumphant lie, then the reason we two have not discovered it must be sought in another life than this. This life cannot be the full reality. Even so, my confident faith is that the lying adage will but seem to lie the more shamelessly under a fuller revelation. Many times have I told Yvonne that to me one life seemed not enough for love of her.
As I conclude, I look across the room to where the beautiful, dark, proud head bends over her desk; for she has outstripped me in my own art of letters, and only my old achievements with the sword enable me to maintain that dominance which the husband, even of Yvonne, ought to have.
She will not approve these last few pages. She will demand their erasure, declaring them extravagant and an offence against the reticence of true art.
But not one line will I expunge, for they are true.
THE END.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
- Silently corrected typographical errors.
- Retained anachronistic and non-standard spellings as printed.