"
"But what could she have said?"
"I don't know, I'm sure. I'm not familiar with ways feminine. But I
know--we know--that, if there had not been some reservation in her love,
some hesitation about you--unconscious, perhaps, but powerful enough to
make her yield--she would not have let you go as she did."
"But she did not realise, as I did not, how much our love meant to us."
"Perhaps--that sounds well. All I ask is, will she help you? Are you really
so much stronger than you were only four months ago? Or are you stimulated
by success? Suppose that days of disaster, of peril, come? What then?"
"But they will not. I have won a position. I can always command a large
salary--perhaps not quite so much but still a large salary."
"Perhaps--if you don't trouble yourself about principles. But how would it
be if you would do nothing, write nothing, except what you think is honest?
Would you ask her to face it? Tell me, tell yourself honestly, have you the
right to assume a responsibility you may not be able to bear, to invite
temptations you may not be able to resist?"
There was a long silence. At last Howard stood up and flung his cigar into
the sea. His face was drawn and his eyes burned.
"God in heaven!" he cried, "am I not human? May I not have companionship
and sympathy and love? Must I be alone and friendless and loveless always?
That is not life; that is not just.
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