"It's terrible to have to keep it up."
"Ah, but if you don't _for_ her? If it all comes on herself?"
"It doesn't," Guy Brissenden presently said. "I do--'for' her--help to
keep it up." And then, still unexpectedly to me, came out the rest of
his confession. "I want to--I try to; that's what I mean by being kind
to her, and by the gratitude with which she takes it. One feels that one
doesn't want her to break down."
It was on this--from the poignant touch in it--that I at last felt I had
burnt my ships and didn't care how much I showed I was with him. "Oh,
but she won't. You must keep her going."
He stood a little with a thumb in each pocket of his trousers, and his
melancholy eyes ranging far over my head--over the tops of the highest
trees. "Who am _I_ to keep people going?"
"Why, you're just the man. Aren't you happy?"