“Believe in me, Mildred.”
“Why, I do believe in you!”
“Above all else ... above all others.”
“Why? Why must it be only you?”
“Because that is love, Mildred. Because I could not bear it any other way. Because the death of not having you would be as nothing beside the death of sharing you even with another’s thought. Because only in the unity, in the solitary oneness of two souls can love live.”
Mildred shook her head, and her gold curls rang about her ears.
“You talk like someone else. Yes,” she faced me, “someone who loves me, too, and wants me whole and for always and can’t bear any other eyes but his own looking upon me. Someone else whose wishes I’d obey reasonably, John, as I obeyed yours, when you said: ‘Give me a kiss.’” Her eyes were cool and happy despite their problem. “But he doesn’t ask reasonable things. He wants me forever and ever. How can I promise him that? And how can I promise him what I can’t give him at once?”
“Who is he, Mildred?” I forced the words and they came like gray ghosts out of my mouth.
“Oh, you don’t know him. I’ve known him long. And he’s wonderful, too. Like you are. But different. In every way, different. You don’t,” she smiled, “encroach on each other at all. He’s big and dark, and rather slow. And you are wonderfully quick. He is a poet and smells always of pipe tobacco. His hands are gnarled....”
“He loves you.”