The Purchase Price Part 45

"Oh, I might have told you then. Perhaps it would have been braver if I had. I tried it a dozen times, but couldn't. I don't pretend to say whether it was selfishness or cowardice, or just kindness to--her. If I ever loved her, it was so faint and far away--but it isn't right to say that, now."

"No. Do not. Do not."

"I don't know. There are a heap of things I don't know. But I knew I loved you. It was for ever. That was what was meant to be.

It seemed to me I owed debts on every hand--to the world--to you: I tried--tried to pay--to pay you fair, ache for ache, if I could, for the hurts I'd given you. And you wouldn't let me. You were wonderful. Before the throne of G.o.d--here--now, I'll say it: I love you! But now it's over."

"It is easier now," she said again. "You must not give way. You are strong. You must not be beaten. You must keep your courage."

"Give me a moment," he said. "Give me a chance to get on my feet again. I want to be game as I can."

"You have courage--the large courage," she answered quietly.

"Haven't you been showing it, by your very silence? You will be brave. You are just beginning. You have changed many things in your life of late. You were silent. You did not boast to me.

Sometimes things seem to be changed for us, without our arrangement."

"Isn't it true?" he exclaimed, turning to her quickly; "isn't it the truth? Why, look at me. I met you a year ago. Here I sit now. Two different men, eh? No chance, either time. No chance."

"Maybe two different women," said she.

"No, we are not different," he went on suddenly. "We are something just the same,--for my part, at least, I have never changed very much in some ways."

"You have suffered a great deal," she said simply "You have lost very much. You are no longer a boy. You are a man, now. You've changed because you are a man. And it wasn't--well, it wasn't done for--for any reward."

"No, maybe not. In some ways I don't think just the way I used to.

But the savage--the brute--in me is there just the same. I don't want to do what is right. I don't want to know what is right. I only want to do what I want to do. What I covet, I covet. What I love, I love. What I want, I want. That is all. And yet, just a minute ago you were telling me you would be a friend! Not to a man like that! It wouldn't be right."

She made no answer. The faces of both were now turned toward the gray dawn beyond the hills. It was some moments before once more he turned to her.

"But you and I--just you and I, together, thinking the way we both do, seeing what we both see--the splendid sadness and the glory of living and loving--and being what we both are! Oh, it all comes back to me, I tell you; and I say I have not changed. I shall always call your hair 'dark as the night of disunion and separation'--isn't that what the oriental poet called it?--and your face, to me, always, always, always, will be 'fair as the days of union and delight.' No you've not changed. You're still just a tall flower, in the blades of gra.s.s--that are cut down. But wasted! What is in my mind now, when maybe it ought not to be here, is just this: What couldn't you and I have done together?

Ah! Nothing could have stopped us!"

"What could we not have done?" she repeated slowly. "I've done so little--in the world--alone."

Something in her tone caught his ear, his senses, overstrung, vibrating in exquisite susceptibility, capable almost of hearing thought that dared not be thought. He turned his blackened face, bent toward her, looking into her face with an intensity which almost annihilated the human limitations of flesh and blood. It was as though his soul heard something in hers, and turned to answer it, to demand its repet.i.tion.

"Did you say, _could_ have done?" he demanded. "Tell me, did you say that?"

She did not answer, and he went on. "Listen!" he said in his old, imperious way. "What couldn't we do together an the world, for the world--even now?"

For a long time there was silence. At last, a light hand fell upon the brown and blistered one which he had thrust out.

"Do you think so?" he heard a gentle voice reply.