"Oh
no," she declared; "it's nothing of that sort. You've been right."
Yet he couldn't help asking himself if she weren't, thus pressed,
speaking but to save him. It seemed to him he should be most in a
hole if his history should prove all a platitude. "Are you telling
me the truth, so that I shan't have been a bigger idiot than I can
bear to know? I HAVEN'T lived with a vain imagination, in the most
besotted illusion? I haven't waited but to see the door shut in my
face?"
She shook her head again. "However the case stands THAT isn't the
truth. Whatever the reality, it IS a reality. The door isn't
shut. The door's open," said May Bartram.
"Then something's to come?"
She waited once again, always with her cold sweet eyes on him.
"It's never too late." She had, with her gliding step, diminished
the distance between them, and she stood nearer to him, close to
him, a minute, as if still charged with the unspoken. Her movement
might have been for some finer emphasis of what she was at once
hesitating and deciding to say. He had been standing by the
chimney-piece, fireless and sparely adorned, a small perfect old
French clock and two morsels of rosy Dresden constituting all its
furniture; and her hand grasped the shelf while she kept him
waiting, grasped it a little as for support and encouragement.
Pages:
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78