“I don’t think you realize, Helen. I wish you wouldn’t say things like that.”
“Like what?”
“About the roadster. I wish you would say ‘we’ sometimes. Last night at the minister’s you said, ‘I think I’ll buy a little farm and see what I can do with apricots.’ I know you didn’t realize how funny it sounded. It sort of hurts, you know.”
“Oh, my dear!” Her cry of pain, her words of miserable apology, made even more clear to her the chasm between them. How could she apologize for this, a thing she had done without knowing she was doing it? Gray desolation choked her like a fog.
“All right. It’s all right. I know you didn’t mean to,” he said cheerfully. He took one hand from the wheel to put an arm around her shoulders. “Never mind. You’ll learn.” His tone confidently took possession of her, and in a heartsickening flash she saw his hope of making her what he wanted his wife to be. She felt his hand upon her tastes, her thoughts, her self, trying to reshape them to his ideal of her. “You suit me, sweetheart. I know what you are, my wonderful girl!”
Her heart stopped, and she felt that her lips were cold under his forgiving kiss. He talked happily while they swept on through the gathering darkness, and she responded in tones that sounded strange to her. Mysterious darkness covered the wide level land, farmhouse windows glowed warmly yellow through it, and a great moon, rising slowly over the far hills, flooded the sky with pale light and put out the stars. At last they rode into Ripley, past the piles of raw lumber and stone that were to be their bungalow, and down the quiet street. The wheels crunched the gravel of the driveway. Paul’s warm hand clasped hers, and she stumbled from the running-board into his arms. His lips were close against his cheek.
“Love me, sweetheart? Tell me. It’s been a long, long time since you said it.” She stood rigid, voiceless. “Please?”
In a passion of pity and wild pain she held him close, lifting her face to his kiss in the darkness. She felt that her heart was breaking.
“You do,” he said in deep content. “My dear, my dear!”
When she could reach her room she turned on the full glare of the electric lights and went softly to the mirror. She stood for a long time, her hands tight against her breast, looking into the eyes that stared back at her. “He doesn’t love you,” she said to them. “He doesn’t want you. It’s someone else he wants—the girl you used to be. O Paul, how can I hurt him so! You’ll hurt him more cruelly if you marry him. You can’t be what he wants. You can’t. You’re someone else. You couldn’t stand it. You can’t make yourself over. After all these years. O Paul, my dear, my dear, I didn’t mean to hurt you!”
Some hours later she remembered that a boat sailed for the Orient on the twentieth. She would have to act quickly, and it was good that there was so much to do.
XXIV
Early on the morning of the nineteenth she climbed the steps to the little brown house on Russian Hill. She had traveled all night from Masonville, awake in her berth, and she was very tired. She was so tired that it seemed impossible to feel any more emotion, and she looked indifferently at the sunny, redwood-paneled room so full of memories. A score of disconnected thoughts worried her mind; her mother’s tearful face, the telegram to Washington for her passports, the steamer-trunk she must buy, Mabel looking at her enviously over the baby’s head.
Brushing a hand across her blurry eyes, she sat down at her desk. She must write to Paul. She must tell him that she was going away; make him understand that their smiling farewell at the Ripley station was her goodbye. She must try to show him that it was best, so that he would not hold her memory too long.
When she had finished, she folded the sheet carefully, slipped it into its envelope, and sealed the flap. It was done. She felt that she had torn away a part of herself, leaving a bleeding emptiness. Her brain, wise with experience of suffering, told her that the wound would heal, would even in time be forgotten, but her wisdom did not dull the pain.
A thousand memories rushed upon her, torturing, unbearable. She rose, trying to push them from her, reaching in agony for the anodyne of work. Her trunks must be packed; there were shelves of books to give away; she must telephone the tailor and the expressman. A horde of such details stretched saving hands to her, and a self-control strengthened by long use took her through them, with her chin up and a smile on her lips.
The luncheon table had never seen her gayer, amid the excited congratulations of the girls, and she rushed through an afternoon of shopping to meet them all for tea, and to spend a last intimate, warm, half-tearful evening with them around the fire.
“The old crowd’s breaking up,” they said. “Marian in France, and Dodo in Washington, and now Helen’s going. Nothing’s going to be the same any more.”
“Nothing ever is,” she answered soberly. “We can’t keep anything in the world, no matter how good it is. And hasn’t it been good—all this! The way we’ve cared for each other, and our happy times together, and all you’ve meant to me—I can’t tell you. I don’t think there’s anything in the world more beautiful than the friendship of women. It’s been the happiest year of my
