Part 22 (1/2)
She continued to speak, in a low unvarying voice. He felt his mind clear and his doubts dissipate, and impatiently he waited for her to end, to show her that his weakness of the moment was gone and that he was still the man of big vision who had awakened her.
”There are people who can put in order their love as they put in order their house. We are not of that kind, Ben. I am a woman who has lived on sensations. You, too, are a dreamer and a poet at the bottom. If I should give up the opera and become to you simply a housewife, if there was no longer any difficulty in our having each other, you would still love me--yes, because you are loyal--but the romanticism, the mystery, the longing we both need would vanish. Oh, I know. Well, you and I, we are the same. We can only live on a great pa.s.sion, and to have fierce, unutterable joys we must suffer also--the suffering of separation. Do you understand?”
”Yes, I do.”
”That is why I shall never give up my career. That is why I can bear the sadness of leaving you. I want you to be proud of me, Ben. I want you to think of me as some one whom thousands desire and only you can have. I want our love to be so intense that every day spent apart is heavy with the longing for each other; every day together precious because it will be a day nearer the awful coming of another separation.
Believe me, I am right. I have thought much about it. You have your diplomatic career and your ambitions. You are proud. I have never asked you to give that up to follow me. I would not insult you. In January you will have a leave of absence, and we will be together for a few wonderful weeks, and in May I shall return here. Nothing will be changed.” She extended her arm to where a faint red point still showed on the unseen water. ”And each night we will wait, as we have waited, side by side, the coming of our little boat,--_notre p't.i.t bateau_”
”You are right,” he said, placing his lips to her forehead. ”I was jealous. I am sorry. It is over.”
”But I, too, am jealous,” she said, smiling.
”You?”
”Of course--no one can love without being jealous. Oh, I shall be afraid of every woman who comes near you. It will be an agony,” she said, and the fire in her eyes brought him more healing happiness than all her words.
”You are right,” he repeated.
He left her with a little pressure of the hand, and walked to the edge of the veranda. A nervous, sighing breeze had come with the full coming of the moon, and underneath him he heard the troubled rustle of leaves in the obscurity, the sifting and drifting of tired, loose things, the stir of the night which awakened a restless mood in his soul. He had listened to her as she had proclaimed her love, and yet this love, without illusions, sharply recalled to him other pa.s.sions. He remembered his first love, a boy-and-girl affair, and sharply contrasting it with a sudden ache to this absence of impulse and illusions, of phrases, vows, without logic, thrown out in the sweet madness of the moment. Why had she not cried out something impulsive, promised things that could not be. Then he realized, standing there in the harvest moonlight, in the breaking up of summer, that he was no longer a youth, that certain things could not be lived over, and that, as she had said, he too felt that this was the great love, the last that he would share; that if it ended, his youth ended and with his youth all that in him clung to life.
He turned and saw her, chin in the flat of her palm, steadily following his mood. He had taken but a dozen steps, and yet he had placed a thousand miles between them. He had almost a feeling of treachery, and to dispel these new unquiet thoughts he repeated to himself again:
”She is right.”
But he did not immediately return. The memory of other loves, faint as they had been in comparison with this all-absorbing impulse, had yet given him a certain objective point of view. He saw himself clearly, and he understood what of pain the future had in store for him.
”How I shall suffer!” he said to himself.
”You are going so far away from me,” she said suddenly, warned by some woman's instinct.
He was startled at the conjunction of her words and his moods. He returned hastily, and sat down beside her. She took his head in her hands and looked anxiously into his eyes.
”What is it?” she said. ”You are afraid?”
”A little,” he said reluctantly.
”Of what--of the months that will come?”
”Of the past.”
”What do you mean?” she said, withdrawing a little as though disturbed by the thought.
”When I am with you I know there is not a corner of your heart that I do not possess,” he began evasively.
”Well?”
”Only it's the past--the habits of the past,” he murmured. ”I know you so well, Madeleine, you have need of strength, you don't go on alone.
That is the genius of women like you--to reach out and attach to themselves men who will strengthen them, compel them on.”
”Ah, I understand,” she said slowly.