“When we had quarrels—which we should, as we are both human—they wouldn’t be over and done with in an hour. They would stick in your mind and rankle, because, you see, they might be proofs that I didn’t really love you. And then when I seemed happy with you, you would wonder if I was acting. I know all this sounds morbid and exaggerated, but it isn’t. What have you got to go on, as regards me? What do you really know of me? If something like this had happened after we had been married half a dozen years and really knew each other, we could laugh at it. But we are strangers. We came together and loved each other because there was something in each of us which attracted the other. We took that little something as a foundation and built on it. But what has happened has knocked away our poor little foundation. That’s all. We don’t really know anything at all about each other for certain. It’s just guesswork.”
She broke off and looked at the clock.
“I had better be packing your bag if you’re to catch the train.”
He gave a rueful laugh.
“You’re throwing me out!”
“Yes, I am. I want you to go while I am strong enough to let you go.”
“If you really feel like that, why in Heaven’s name send me away?”
“How do you know I really feel like that? How do you know that I am not pretending to feel like that as part of a carefully prepared plan?”
He made an impatient gesture.
“Yes, I know,” she said. “You think I am going out of my way to manufacture unnecessary complications. I’m not, I’m simply looking ahead. If I were trying to trap you for the sake of your money, could I play a stronger card than by seeming anxious to give you up? If I were to give in now sooner or later that suspicion would come to you. You would drive it away. You might drive it away a hundred times. But you couldn’t kill it. In the end it would beat you.”
He shrugged his shoulders helplessly.
“I can’t argue.”
“Nor can I. I can only put very badly things which I know are true. Come and pack.”
“I’ll do it. Don’t you bother.”
“Nonsense. No man knows how to pack properly.”
He followed her to his rooms, pulled out his suitcase, the symbol of the end of all things, watched her as she flitted about, the sun shining on her fair hair as she passed and repassed the window. She was picking things up, folding them, packing them. Bill looked on with an aching sense of desolation. It was all so friendly, so intimate, so exactly as it would have been if she were his wife. It seemed to him needlessly cruel that she should be playing on this note of domesticity at the moment when she was barring forever the door between him and happiness. He rebelled helplessly against the attitude she had taken. He had not thought it all out, as she had done. It was folly, insanity, ruining their two lives like this for a scruple.
Once again he was to encounter that practical strain in the feminine mind which jars upon a man in trouble. She was holding something in her hand and looking at it with concern.
“Why didn’t you tell me!” she said. “Your socks are in an awful state, poor boy!”
He had the feeling of having been hit by something. A man has not a woman’s gift of being able to transfer his mind at will from sorrow to socks.
“Like sieves!” She sighed. A troubled frown wrinkled her forehead. “Men are so helpless! Oh, dear, I’m sure you don’t pay any attention to anything important. I don’t believe you ever bother your head about keeping warm in winter and not getting your feet wet. And now I shan’t be able to look after you!”
Bill’s voice broke. He felt himself trembling.
“Elizabeth!”
She was kneeling on the floor, her head bent over the suitcase. She looked up and met his eyes.
“It’s no use, Bill, dear. I must. It’s the only way.”
The sense of the nearness of the end broke down the numbness which held him.
“Elizabeth! It’s so utterly absurd. It’s just—chucking everything away!”
She was silent for a moment.
“Bill, dear, I haven’t said anything about it before, but don’t you see that there’s my side to be considered too? I only showed you that you could never possibly know that I loved you. How am I to know that you really love me?”
He had moved a step toward her. He drew back, chilled.
“I can’t do more than tell you,” he said.
“You can’t. And there you have put in two words just what I’ve been trying to make clear all the time. Don’t you see that that’s the terrible thing about life, that nobody can do more than tell anybody anything? Life’s nothing but words, words, words, and how are we to know when words are true? How am I to know that you didn’t ask me to marry you out of sheer pity and an exaggerated sense of justice?”
He stared at her.
“That,” he said, “is absolutely ridiculous!”
“Why? Look at it as I should look at it later on, when whatever it is inside me that tells me it’s ridiculous now had died. Just at this moment, while we’re talking here, there’s something stronger than reason which tells me you really do love me. But can’t you understand that that won’t last? It’s like a candle burning on a rock with the tide coming up all round it. It’s burning brightly enough
