“Yes. And you'll always be something fine and good for me anyhow. I know
things about you,--qualities--no mere act can destroy them.. .. Well, I
can tell you, you're doing wrong. You're going on now like a man who is
hypnotised and can't turn round. You're piling wrong on wrong. It was
wrong for you two people ever to be lovers.”
He paused.
“It gripped us hard,” I said.
“Yes!--but in your position! And hers! It was vile!”
“You've not been tempted.”
“How do you know? Anyhow--having done that, you ought to have stood the
consequences and thought of other people. You could have ended it at the
first pause for reflection. You didn't. You blundered again. You kept
on. You owed a certain secrecy to all of us! You didn't keep it.
You were careless. You made things worse. This engagement and this
publicity!--Damn it, Remington!”
“I know,” I said, with smarting eyes. “Damn it! with all my heart! It
came of trying to patch.... You CAN'T patch.”
“And now, as I care for anything under heaven, Remington, you two ought
to stand these last consequences--and part. You ought to part. Other
people have to stand things! Other people have to part. You ought to.
You say--what do you say? It's loss of so much life to lose each other.
So is losing a hand or a leg. But it's what you've incurred. Amputate.
Take your punishment--After all, you chose it.”
“Oh, damn!” I said, standing up and going to the window.
“Damn by all means. I never knew a topic so full of justifiable damns.
But you two did choose it. You ought to stick to your undertaking.”
I turned upon him with a snarl in my voice. “My dear Britten!” I cried.
“Don't I KNOW I'm doing wrong? Aren't I in a net? Suppose I don't go!
Is there any right in that? Do you think we're going to be much to
ourselves or any one after this parting? I've been thinking all
last night of this business, trying it over and over again from the
beginning. How was it we went wrong? Since I came back from America--I
grant you THAT--but SINCE, there's never been a step that wasn't forced,
that hadn't as much right in it or more, as wrong. You talk as though I
was a thing of steel that could bend this way or that and never change.
You talk as though Isabel was a cat one could give to any kind of
owner.... We two are things that change and grow and alter all the time.
We're--so interwoven that being parted now will leave us just misshapen
cripples.... You don't know the motives, you don't know the rush and
feel of things, you don't know how it was with us, and how it is with
us. You don't know the hunger for the mere sight of one another; you
don't know anything.”
Britten looked at his finger-nails closely. His red face puckered to
a wry frown. “Haven't we all at times wanted the world put back?” he
grunted, and looked hard and close at one particular nail.
There was a long pause.
“I want her,” I said, “and I'm going to have her. I'm too tired for
balancing the right or wrong of it any more. You can't separate them.
I saw her yesterday.... She's--ill.... I'd take her now, if death were
just outside the door waiting for us.”
“Torture?”