Her eyes came very slowly from within her world, came to this gentle clumsy lover of hers, rested upon him. He was there, broken into deep shadow, sudden light by the sharp flicker of the open fire.
“None of us could answer any of your questions. Why should I be able to?”
“You more than most of us.”
“When I came to New York, my coming meant one thing. Without that meaning my coming to New York, my leaving my home and my child were simple horror. All my life was a hideous jest unless my coming to New York meant one meaning.”
“What was that meaning?”
“When I know, I won’t be any longer where you are.”
He bowed his head: a jet of flame touched his brow livid like a gash above his grey-shadowed face.
“When I came to New York I fought against that meaning. For all that I had given up, for all the saying to myself You are dead, You are a sacrifice and knowing it, there was in me a self that wanted to live, wanted the good things I had given up. That is why you found me as you did. Resist you? I hungered for you, Dear. You meant, for a while, a Home, Love, a child,—you are such a child, such a dear good child—you meant all I had lost. You took from my coming to New York its meaning. You were a substitute, see? for what I had lost. And that makes it all a hideous jest, all my life. I did not come to seek an exchange, to build on the same charred ground where my life was burned away. That I know. But O I could not resist you. You forgive me, Jonathan? I was so sick, so weak. My arms needed so to hold my child, they were so empty. You were a lie, but O you were good. Forgive me, Jonathan. I knew all along. I needed to drug myself to be peaceful in my peace with you. The City ... work ... our flat ... they drugged me. Stealing some of your linen to mend it, nursing your cold just for a couple of days, taking the problem of your life and suffering by it, trying to help solve it ... O it was drunkenness, it was ecstacy, Dear, it was wrong. I couldn’t stay drugged. So it was wrong for you. Unfair, perhaps. Have I hurt you? Have I ... O God ... have I returned evil for evil after all? I have been hurt. And in the anger and the pain, I have understood why the world injures the world. I have understood how from evil received, from injury done, comes the irresistible impulse to return evil, to injure. I did not want that. I have done it! Yes. I have hurt you. Good tender man ... victim already of two selfish women. I have come with the poison of my wounds, and poisoned you.”
He shook his head. “No, Fanny. You have healed me.”
“If you knew how you said that ... how weak your voice was. You were strong, bursting, bubbling.”