"Look here, Ruth," he turned sharply to her after a little, "have you thought of the position this puts me in? Have you thought of the position you would put me in?" he contended hotly. "Do you know what people would say about me? You ought to know what they'd say! They'd say I was the one!—they'd say I didn't want to do it!"
There was a little catch something like a laugh as she replied: "Of course. They'll say men don't marry women of that sort, won't they?"
"Oh, you can't do this, Ruth," he went on quickly. "You see, it can't be done. I tell you it wouldn't be right! It just wouldn't be right—in any sense. Why can't you see that? Can't you see that we've got to vindicate the whole thing? That we've got to show them that it does last! That's the vindication for it," he finished stoutly, "that it's the kind of a love that doesn't die!
"And I'd like to know where under the sun you'd go!" he demanded hotly, irritated at the slight smile his last words had brought.
"What I will do, Stuart, after leaving you, is for me to determine, isn't it?"
"A nice way to treat me!" he cried, and threw himself down on the couch, elbows on his knees and his face buried in his hands. "After all these years—after all there has been—that's a nice way—" he choked.
She was quick to go over and sit beside him; she leaned a little against him, her hand on his arm, just as she had sat many times when he needed her, when she brought him comfort. The thought of all those times rose in her and brought tears to her eyes that had been burning dry a moment before. She felt the feeling this had whipped to life in him and was moved by it, and by an underlying feeling of the sadness of change. For his expostulations spoke of just that—change. She knew this for the last hurt she could help him through, that she must help him through this hurt brought him by this last thing she could do for him. Something about things being like that moved her deeply. She saw it all so clearly, and so sadly. It was not grief this brought him; this was not the frenzy or the anguish in the thought of losing her that there would have been in those other years. It was shock, rather—disturbance, and the forcing home to him that sense of change. He would have gone on without much taking stock, because, as he had said, it was the thing to do. Habit, a sense of fitness, rather than deep personal need, would have made him go on. And now it was his sense that it was gone, his resentment against that, his momentary feeling of being left desolate. She looked at his bowed head through tears. Gently she laid her hand on it. She thought of him as he stood before the automobile the other day lighting up in the gay talk with that girl. She knew, with a sudden wrench in her heart she knew it, that he would not be long desolate. She understood him too well for that. She knew that, hard as she seemed in that hour, she was doing for Stuart in leaving him the greatest thing she could now do for him. A tear fell to her hand in her clear knowing of that. There was deep sadness in knowing that, after all there had been, to leave the way cleared of herself was doing a greater thing than anything else she could do for him.
A sob shook her and he raised his face upon which there were tears and clutched her two wrists with his hands. "Ruth," he whispered, "it will come back. I feel that this has—has brought it back."
The look of old feeling had transformed his face. After barren days it was sweet to her. It tempted her, tempted her to shut her eyes to what she knew and sink into the sweetness of believing herself loving and loved again. Perhaps, for a little time, they could do it. To be deeply swayed by this common feeling, to go together in an emotion, was like dear days gone. But it was her very fidelity to those days gone that made her draw just a little away, and, tears running down her face, shake her head. She knew too well, and she had the courage of her knowing. This was something that had seeped up from old feeling; it had no life of its own. What they were sharing now was grief over a dead thing that had been theirs together. That grief, that sharing, left them tender. This was their moment—their moment for leaving it. They must leave it before it lay there between them both dead and unmourned, clogging life for them. She whispered to him: "Just because of all it has meant—let's leave it while we can leave it like this!"