“Yes.... Oh, you must not mind. We are road people. We have been wonderfully happy. You must not look so tragic——”
It wasn’t like her at all. “We are not road people,” he thought.... “You must not look so tragic,”—that was just like a thing road people might say.
He sat down. The weakness of his limbs held his mind. It seemed to him, if he could forget his body, words might come. At first the thought of her going away was intolerable, but that had dwindled. It was the change in her—the something that had happened—the flippancy of her words.... He looked up suddenly. It seemed as if her arms had been stretched toward him, her face ineffably tender. So quickly it had happened that he could not be sure. He wanted this very thing so much that his mind might have formed the illusion. He let it pass. He did not want her to say it was not so.
Words of her letter came back to him. Neither the letter nor yesterday had anything to do with this day.... “You are drawing closer all the time. I have been so happy to-day that I had to write. You must know that I sent you away because I could not bear more happiness....”
Where was it? What had happened? He was fevered. Something was destroying him.... Betty Berry did not suffer for herself—it was with pity for him. The mother in her was tortured. It was her own life—this love of his for her—the only child she would ever have. She had loved its awakenings, its diffidences, the faltering steps of its expression. The man was not hers, but his love for her was her very own.... She had not thought of its death, when Fallows talked the night before. She had thought of her giving up for his sake, but not of the anguish and the slaying of his love for her. And this was taking place now.
“You will let me write to you?” he said, still thinking of the letter.
“Oh, yes.”
“And you will write to me?”
She remembered now what she had written.... The fullness of her heart had gone into that. She could not write like that again. Yet he was asking for her letters, as a child might ask for a drink.... She could not refuse. It wasn’t in nature to see his face, and refuse.... Surely if she remained apart it was all any one could ask.
“Yes, I will write sometimes.”