She
had become one flesh with the rest of common humanity; the softness
had gone from her voice and manner, the dusky magic of her presence had
gone. I saw these things with perfect clearness, and they made me sorry
for them and for her. But they altered my love not a whit, abated it
nothing. And when we had talked awkwardly for half a dozen sentences, I
came dully to my point.
"And now," I cried, "will you marry me?"
"No," she said, "I shall keep to my life here."
I asked her to marry me in a year's time. She shook her head.
"This world is a soft world," I said, "in spite of my present disasters.
I know now how to do things. If I had you to work for--in a year I could
be a prosperous man."
"No," she said, "I will put it brutally, I shall go back to Carnaby."
"But--!" I did not feel angry. I had no sort of jealousy, no wounded
pride, no sense of injury. I had only a sense of grey desolation, of
hopeless cross-purposes.
"Look here," she said. "I have been awake all night and every night. I
have been thinking of this--every moment when we have not been together.
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