"And what right had you to be so sure all this time that I would marry you whenever you asked me? What right had you to take it for granted that whenever you were ready, I would be?"The hot flush of shame dyed his face that she could deal herself such a wound and not even know it.
He drew himself up again, sparing her:
"I loved you.I could not love without hoping.I could not hope without planning.Hoping, planning, striving,--everything!--it was all because Iloved you!" And then he waited, looking down on her in silence.
She began to grow nervous.She had stooped to pick up the thread of flax and was passing it slowly between her fingers.When he spoke again, his voice showed that he shook like a man with a chill:
"I have said all I can say.I have offered all I have to offer.I am waiting."Still the silence lasted for the new awe of him that began to fall upon her.
In ways she could not fathom she was beginning to feel that a change had come over him during these weeks of their separation.He used more gentleness with her: his voice, his manner, his whole bearing, had finer courtesy; he had strangely ascended to some higher level of character, and he spoke to her from this distance with a sadness that touched her indefinably--with a larger manliness that had its quick effect.She covertly lifted her eyes and beheld on his face a proud passion of beauty and of pain beyond anything that she had ever thought possible to him or to any man.She quickly dropped her head again; she shifted her position; a band seemed to tighten around her throat; until, in a voice hardly to be heard, she murmured falteringly:
"I have promised to marry Joseph."
He did not speak or move, but continued to stand leaning against the lintel of the doorway, looking down on her.The colour was fading from the west leaving it ashen white.And so standing in the dying radiance, he saw the long bright day of his young hope come to its close; he drained to its dregs his cup of bitterness she had prepared for him; learned his first lesson in the victory of little things over the larger purposes of life, over the nobler planning; bit the dust of the heart's first defeat and tragedy.
She had caught up the iron shears in her nervousness and begun to cut the flaxen thread; and in the silence of the room only the rusty click was now heard as she clipped it, clipped it, clipped it.
Then such a greater trembling seized her that she laid the shears back upon the table.Still he did not move or speak, and there seemed to fall upon her conscience--in insupportable burden until, as if by no will of her own, she spoke again pitifully:
"I didn't know that you cared so much for me.It isn't my fault.You had never asked me, and he had already asked me twice."He changed his position quickly so that the last light coming in through the window could no longer betray his face.All at once his voice broke through the darkness, so unlike itself that she started:
"When did you give him this promise? I have no right to ask...when did you give him this promise?"She answered as if by no will of her own:"The night of the ball--as we were going home."She waited until she felt that she should sink to the ground.
Then he spoke again as if rather to himself than to her, and with the deepest sorrow and pity for them both:
"If I had gone with you that night--if I had gone with you that night--and had asked you--you would have married me."Her lips began to quiver and all that was in her to break down before him--to yearn for him.In a voice neither could scarce hear she said:
"I will marry you yet!"
She listened.She waited, Out of the darkness she could distinguish not the rustle of a movement, not a breath of sound; and at last cowering back into herself with shame, she buried her face in her hands.
Then she was aware that he had come forward and was standing over her.He bent his head down so close that his lids touched her hair--so close that his warm breath was on her forehead--and she felt rather than knew him saying to himself, not to her:
"Good-bye!"
He passed like a tall spirit out of the door, and she heard his footsteps die away along the path--die slowly away as of one who goes never to return.
