“You are first,” I asserted. “You always have been, if you had only realized it.”
She gazed up at me dreamily.
“If you had only realized it! If you had only realized that all I wanted of you was to be yourself. It wasn't what you achieved. I didn't want you to be like Ralph or the others.”
“Myself? What are you trying to say?”
“Yourself. Yes, that is what I like about you. If you hadn't been in such a hurry—if you hadn't misjudged me so. It was the power in you, the craving, the ideal in you that I cared for—not the fruits of it. The fruits would have come naturally. But you forced them, Hugh, for quicker results.”
“What kind of fruits?” I asked.
“Ah,” she exclaimed, “how can I tell what they might have been! You have striven and striven, you have done extraordinary things, but have they made you any happier? have you got what you want?”
I stooped down and seized her wrists from behind her head.
“I want you, Nancy,” I said. “I have always wanted you. You're more wonderful to-day than you have ever been. I could find myself—with you.”
She closed her eyes. A dreamy smile was on her face, and she lay unresisting, very still. In that tremendous moment, for which it seemed I had waited a lifetime, I could have taken her in my arms—and yet I did not. I could not tell why: perhaps it was because she seemed to have passed beyond me—far beyond—in realization. And she was so still!