He stood in the center of the room, his head bowed slightly, his eyes upon the wall. He was ill, bewildered, his mind turning here and there only to find fresh distress.... Suddenly he remembered that he had not told her of his drinking.... That must be it. Some one else had told her, and she was hurt and broken.
“I meant always to tell you,” he said. “Only it really did not seem to signify by the time you came back. And when I was with you—oh, I seemed very far from that. I don’t understand it now——”
She did not know what he meant; did not care, could not ask. It was something he clutched—in the disintegration.... He looked less death-like in his thinking of it.
“It doesn’t greatly matter,” she said. “I have to go west.... Won’t you come with me to get the tickets?”
“I can’t go out into the street yet. If there is anything more I have done—won’t you let me know?”
Suddenly he realized her side, that he was detaining her; that it wasn’t easy for her to speak. It was not his way to impose his will upon anyone; his natural shyness now arose, and he fingered his hat.
“Dear John Morning—you haven’t done anything. You have made me happy. I must go away to my work—and you, to yours.... It is hard for me, but I see it as the way. I have promised to write——”
The words came forth like birds escaping—thin, evasive, vain words. That which she had seen so clearly the night before, (and which she seemed utterly to have lost the meaning of) was a lock upon every real utterance now. She had not counted upon this tragedy of her mother instinct—this slaying of the perfect thing in him, which she had loved to life.
He arose, and sat down; he swallowed, started to speak, but could not. He was like a boy—this man who had seen so much, just a bewildered boy, his suffering too deep for words—the sweetest part of him to her, dying before her eyes. And the dream of their service together, their hand-in-hand going out to the world, their poverty and purity and compassion together—these were lost jewels.... It was all madness, the world—all madness and devilishness. Beauty and virtue and loving kindness were gone, the world turned insane.... The thought came to tell him she was insane; a better lie still, that she was not a pure woman. She started to speak, but his eyes came up to her.... She tried it again, but his eyes came up to her. He fingered his hat boyishly. The mother in her breast could not.