Many emotions stirred Pamela while she waited through the sunny warmth
of the summer day for Dare's return. The horror of the morning had
passed. She was quite collected now, and able to dwell dispassionately
on the changed life that confronted her.
Dare had told her, and she had inclined to believe him, that only love
mattered. Now, while she sat alone, thinking quietly, and reviewing all
her past life as it stood in relation to the future, she realised that
love is not the principal factor in life; it is merely a beautiful
adornment, a quality which tends to gladden, and sometimes to ennoble,
life; but it is not the base on which the structure is supported. Love
is a separate emotion, a distinctly personal attribute. Of itself it is
frankly selfish. Only when it teaches self-abnegation can it be termed
a wholly beautiful thing. To sacrifice everything for love, is to lower
love to a purely physical emotion; and love stripped of its spiritual
element becomes an ephemeral passion, a thing of mean delights, an
excitement, a quality shorn of all fineness and dragged down to the
commonplace of physical necessity. That was the quality of the love she
had known in her married life; and that was why to-day, when she needed
the strength of love to support her, nothing of it remained but the
gaunt spectre of a long dead passion.
But to love warmly and intensely, in a quite human fashion--and to part!
... That was not easy. It made a greater demand on her fortitude than
anything she had yet been faced with. But difficulties met courageously
present the weapons for their own defeat. The power of conquest comes
of the determination to conquer.
When Dare returned, and came up to the balcony in search of her, he
discovered her, as he believed, asleep. She was sitting so still, with
closed eyes, and was so deeply plunged in thought that she did not hear
him until he was close upon her. Then her eyelids flashed open
abruptly, and a flush suffused the pallor of her cheeks.
"I've only got a minute," he said, pausing in front of her. "The taxi
is waiting. Come inside, Pamela. We can't part here."
She was seated outside the windows of her room, and she rose as he spoke
and entered the room without answering him. He followed her quickly.
"I've been seeing to things," he said. "I'll write you. There isn't
time to go into it now. But it will be all right. Don't bother your
head about anything until you hear from me." He held her by the
shoulders and looked steadily into her eyes. "It won't be long before
I'm back. But this is our real parting. This is the last time I shall
hold you so,--the last time I shall kiss your lips... my dear!"
She drew near to him. Her face as she lifted it to his was
transfigured. Never had he seen it so beautiful, so gravely tender. A
yearning light of love lit her eyes, made them melting and wondrously
soft. For a moment they remained looking at one another. Then he
gathered her close in his arms, crushed her to him, and kissed her mouth
again and again.
"We're parting," he muttered, drawing back his head, and staring at her
without releasing her. "I don't feel I can go somehow. I feel I'm a
fool to go. Why don't I stay and fight it out with you, Pamela? You
little woman, the strength that is in you! You don't answer. Your eyes
just tell me I must go. Well, I am taking part of you away with me--and
leaving the best of myself with you... We'll go on... We'll get used
to it in time, I daresay. But it hurts, Pamela."
"Yes." She touched his cheek softly with her hand. "These last few
days," she said, "they're something to remember..."
"Something," he said, "yes."
"We've been very close," she whispered. "Nothing--no bodily separation
can alter that. The memory of your love will remain with me always.
I'm glad we've talked of love, dear,--that we haven't tried to hide
things from each other."
"Oh! we've talked," he said. "But talking..."
He broke off, and caught her to him again. Then he held her a little
way off, and scrutinised her long and earnestly.
"I don't understand," he muttered...
Suddenly his face softened. He bent his head and kissed her again
quietly, and, releasing her, turned away.
"Good-bye," he said, a little abruptly, and opened the door of the room
and stepped into the corridor.
Pamela remained standing where he had left her, her arms hanging loosely
at her sides, her face strained and curiously set; and in her eyes,
glowing darkly in the white face, a shadowed look of suffering too deep
for utterance or the relief of tears.
When we stand at the parting of the ways how difficult seems the road,
how bitter the moment of farewell. But sorrow is no longer enduring
than any other emotion. We take our lives again, and go on.