this welter, like a thing fated and altogether
beyond our control, parting came to Marion and me.

I hardened my heart, or I could not have gone. For at the last it came
to Marion that she was parting from me for ever. That overbore all other
things, had turned our last hour to anguish. She forgot for a time
the prospect of moving into a new house, she forgot the outrage on her
proprietorship and pride. For the first time in her life she really
showed strong emotions in regard to me, for the first time, perhaps,
they really came to her. She began to weep slow, reluctant tears. I came
into her room, and found her asprawl on the bed, weeping.

"I didn't know," she cried. "Oh! I didn't understand!"

"I've been a fool. All my life is a wreck!

"I shall be alone!...MUTNEY! Mutney, don't leave me! Oh! Mutney! I
didn't understand."

I had to harden my heart indeed, for it seemed to me at moments in those
last hours together that at last, too late, the longed-for thing had
happened and Marion had come alive. A new-born hunger for me lit her
eyes.

"Don't leave me!" she said, "don't leave me!" She clung to me; she
kissed me with tear-salt lips.

I was promised now and pledged, and I hardened my heart against this
impossible dawn. Yet it seems to me that there were moments when it
needed but a cry, but one word to have united us again for all our
lives. Could we have united again? Would that passage have enlightened
us for ever or should we have fallen back in a week or so into the old
estrangement, the old temperamental opposition?

Of that there is now no telling. Our own resolve carried us on our
predestined way. We behaved more and more like separating lovers,
parting inexorably, but all the preparations we had set going worked on
like a machine, and we made no attempt to stop them. My trunks and boxes
went to the station. I packed my bag with Marion standing before me. We
were like children who had hurt each other horribly in sheer stupidity,
who didn't know now how to remedy it. We belonged to each other
immensely--immensely. The cab came to the little iron gate.

"Good-bye!" I said.

"Good-bye."

For a moment we held one another in each other's arms and
kissed--incredibly without malice. We heard our little servant in the
passage going to open the door. For the last time we pressed ourselves
to one another. We were not lovers nor enemies, but two human souls in a
frank community of pain. I tore myself from he