She divined the
tempest, in this man of profound and concentrated feeling; but she had not
dared to watch it.
"Marcia--is it really true? Couldn't I make you happy? Couldn't I lead you
to look at things as I do? As you say, I am older, I have had more time
to think and learn. If you love me, wouldn't it be right, that--I should
influence you?"
"It might be," she said, sadly. "But it wouldn't happen. I know more of
myself--now. This has made me know myself--as I never did. I should wound
and distress you. And to struggle with you would make me hard--and bad."
Another silence. But for both it was one of those silences when the mind,
as it were, reaps at one stroke a whole harvest of ideas and images
which, all unconsciously to itself, were standing ready to be reaped; the
silences, more active far than speech, which determine life.
At the end of it, he came to sit beside her.
"Then we must give it up--we must give it up. I bless you for the happiness
you gave me--this little while. I pray God to bless you--now and forever."
Sobbing, she lifted her face to him, and he kissed her for the last time.
She slipped off her engagement ring and gave it to him.
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