He was silent, trying to take in her words. But the old difficulty persisted—she was too near, he was too much submerged by her nearness. “You don’t see—” he began.
She interrupted passionately: “But I do—I do. How can you think I don’t. Can’t you see that I know it’s different with you—perhaps always must be? All I want is that we should try to renew our friendship … that you should let me help you as I used to. … Don’t you think I could make Laura Lou understand that?”
The sound of the name shook him abruptly out of his trance. “Laura Lou? She’s dead,” he said.
Halo Tarrant moved back a step and stood staring at him in dumb bewilderment. Then she began to tremble. Her face twitched, and she lifted her hands to hide it. Vance saw that she was crying; and presently her tears broke into sobs. She was suffering terribly; he saw that she was horrified and did not know how to express her dismay. He supposed that she thought him to blame for not telling her at once—perhaps regarded him as brutal, unfeeling. But he could not imagine why. All that belonged to another plane, to another life, almost … his mind refused to relate it to what he and she had in common. But how explain this to her, if she could not feel for herself the difference between that shadow and this burning reality?
“Vance—Vance—you ought to have told me,” she sobbed reproachfully.
“I know,” he said. “I was going to. …”
“What must you think of me? How could you let me go on talking like that?”
“I liked just to listen to your voice. …”
“Don’t—don’t say such things to me now!” She broke off to ask in a whisper. “How long ago was it?”
He had to make an effort of the memory. “It was a week ago yesterday.”
“Only a week ago—oh, what must you think of me?”
“I wish you wouldn’t cry,” he pleaded.
“Oh, Vance—can you ever forgive me?”
“Yes.”
“It seems so dreadful—but how was I to know?”
“You couldn’t have known.”
“Oh, poor little Laura Lou! I shall never forgive myself—but you must say that you forgive me!”
It was curious: he had to reason with her as if she were a child. It was almost as if he were reasoning with Laura Lou. He felt himself calling upon the same sort of patience—as if he were sitting down on the floor to comfort a child that had hurt itself. … And when at last he drew her arm through his and walked beside her in the darkness to the corner where she had left her motor, he wondered if at crucial moments the same veil of unreality would always fall between himself and the soul nearest him, if the creator of imaginary beings must always feel alone among the real ones.
Colophon
Hudson River Bracketed
was published in 1929 by
Edith Wharton.
This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
Erin Endrei,
and is based on a transcription produced in 2004 by
Don Lainson
for
Project Gutenberg Australia
and on digital scans from the
Internet Archive.
The cover page is adapted from
Autumn—On the Hudson River,
a painting completed in 1860 by
Jasper Francis Cropsey.
The cover and title pages feature the
League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by
The League of Moveable Type.
The first edition of this ebook was released on
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