nd
you won't really love her, but only just so much of her as may become
the incarnation of you. Well, I'm not that kind of woman. I might have
been, had you been different. I'm not at all sure. Certainly I'm not
that kind now, even though I know in my heart that the sort of career
you have made for yourself, and that I intend to make for myself is all
dross. But now I can't do without it."

"And yet you are going to marry Hambleton Durrett!" I said.

She understood me, although I regretted my words at once.

"Yes, I am going to marry him." There was a shade of bitterness, of
defiance in her voice. "Surely you are not offering me the--the other
thing, now. Oh, Hugh!"

"I am willing to abandon it all, Nancy."

"No," she said, "you're not, and I'm not. What you can't see and won't
see is that it has become part of you. Oh, you are successful, you will
be more and more successful. And you think I should be somebody, as your
wife, Hugh, more perhaps, eventually, than I shall be as Hambleton's.
But I should be nobody, too. I couldn't stand it now, my dear. You must
realize that as soon as you have time to think it over. We shall be
friends."

The sudden gentleness in her voice pierced me through and through. She
held out her hand. Something in her grasp spoke of a resolution which
could not be shaken.

"And besides," she added sadly, "I don't love you any more, Hugh. I'm
mourning for something that's gone. I wanted to have just this one talk
with you. But we shan't mention it again,--we'll close the book."...

At that I fled out of the house, and at first the thought of her as
another man's wife, as Hambleton Durrett's wife, was seemingly not to
be borne. It was incredible! "We'll close the book." I found myself
repeating the phrase; and it seemed then as though something within me
I had believed dead--something that formerly had been all of me--had
revived again to throb with pain.

It is not surprising that the acuteness of my suffering was of short
duration, though I remember certain sharp twinges when the announcement
of the engagement burst on the city. There was much controversy over the
question as to whether or not Ham Durrett's reform would be permanent;
but most people were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt; it
was time he settled down and took the position in the community that was
to be expected of one of his name; and as for Nancy, it was generally
agreed that she had done well for herself.