“Perhaps not.”
“I am sorry.”
“I do not deserve that you should be sorry for my sake.”
“I cannot think that.”
Gabriel mastered self with a grimness that would have served him well on certain other occasions had he been more the man. In negative fashion this girl gave him strength to adjudicate against his own dreams. She inspired and condemned by the same pure ravishment of beauty.
“I would have you know,” he said, “that I am a man bound by chains of my own forging. The blame is mine; I accept it. I may not say, ‘Lo, here is my heart; I may surrender it into the hand of her whose head touches the stars.’ My eyes must remain mute, my soul untongued. I am no longer myself. Think over these words and you may understand in measure.”
Joan Gildersedge did not answer him for several minutes.
“I understand,” she said; “and yet you are not happy.”
“That is the mockery of life. Men think I have everything; I have nothing.”
“Then we are both lonely.”