It was our last morning together, and we had met very early, about
sunrise, knowing that we were to part. No sun shone that day. The sky
was overcast, the morning chilly and lit by a clear, cold, spiritless
light. A heavy dampness in the air verged close on rain. When I think
of that morning, it has always the quality of greying ashes wet with
rain.
Beatrice too had changed. The spring had gone out of her movement; it
came to me, for the first time, that some day she might grow old. She
had become one flesh with the rest of common humanity; the softness had
gone from her voice and manner, the dusky magic of her presence had
gone. I saw these things with perfect clearness, and they made me sorry
for them and for her. But they altered my love not a whit, abated it
nothing. And when we had talked awkwardly for half a dozen sentences, I
came dully to my point.
“And now,” I cried, “will you marry me?”
“No,” she said, “I shall keep to my life here.”