"Not yet? Some time, then? Some time that you already foresee?"
At that she raised her clearest eyes. "I promise you: not as long as
you hold out. Not as long as we can look straight at each other like
this."
He dropped into his chair. What her answer really said was: "If you
lift a finger you'll drive me back: back to all the abominations
you know of, and all the temptations you half guess." He understood
it as clearly as if she had uttered the words, and the thought kept
him anchored to his side of the table in a kind of moved and sacred
submission.
"What a life for you!--" he groaned.
"Oh--as long as it's a part of yours."
"And mine a part of yours?"
She nodded.
"And that's to be all--for either of us?"
"Well; it _is_ all, isn't it?"
At that he sprang up, forgetting everything but the sweetness of her
face. She rose too, not as if to meet him or to flee from him, but
quietly, as though the worst of the task were done and she had only
to wait; so quietly that, as he came close, her outstretched hands
acted not as a check but as a guide to him. They fell into his, while
her arms, extended but not rigid, kept him far enough off to let her
surrendered face say the rest.
They may have stood in that way for a long time, or only for a few
moments; but it was long enough for her silence to communicate all she
had to say, and for him to feel that only one thing mattered. He must
do nothing to make this meeting their last; he must leave their future
in her care, asking only that she should keep fast hold of it.
"Don't--don't be unhappy," she said, with a break in her voice, as she
drew her hands away; and he answered: "You won't go back--you won't go
back?" as if it were the one possibility he could not bear.
"I won't go back," she said; and turning away she opened the door and
led the way into the public dining-room.
The strident school-teachers were gathering up their possessions
preparatory to a straggling flight to the wharf; across the beach lay
the white steam-boat at the pier; and over the sunlit waters Boston
loomed in a line of haze.