The Later Life Part 49

She drew a deep breath; there were people pa.s.sing. They were near the Ponds. She ceased speaking; and they walked on silently....

"I suggested to Henri," she repeated, at last, "that we should...."

The word died away on her lips, but he understood. They were both silent, both walked on without speaking. He led the way; and it seemed to her that they were making for a goal, she knew not where, which he would know....

At last, she said:

"I wanted ... as you are our friend ... to tell you...."

He was determined to make her say the word:

"You suggested what?"

"That we should be divorced...."

They walked on for some minutes. Suddenly, round about her, she saw the dunes, the distant sea, the sea which she had divined the night before, over which the pale gleams, the lightning-flashes had revealed themselves. Now, the sky overhead was revealed, a vague opal, with white clouds curling like steam....

"I suggested that we should be divorced," she repeated.

He drew a breath, in the salt breath of the sea, even as he had breathed in the Alps, when contemplating those ice-bound horizons. And he remembered ... that vision ... and the yearning ... for the one soul ... the meeting with which would have been a consolation amid the constant disappointment encountered with the many souls, the thousands.... And a swift, keen hope seemed to flash before him ... not only of having found at last ... in silence ... but of venturing to utter it ... once; and so keen, so dazzling was the hope that at first he did not hear her say:

"But Henri ... thinks it is better ... not...."

"What?" he asked, as though deaf, as though blind.

She repeated:

"Henri thinks it is better not.... Because of our boy ... of Addie...."

The keen hope had flashed for only a second, swiftly, with its dizzying rays....

Uttered it would never be.... To have found in silence: alas, that was all illusion ... a dream ... when one is very young....

"He is right," he said, in a low voice.

"Is he right?" she asked, sadly. And, more firmly, she repeated, "Yes, he is right...."

"I should have been sorry ... for Addie's sake," he said.

"Yes," she repeated, as though in a trance. "I should have been sorry for Addie's sake. But I had thought that I should be able to live at last--my G.o.d, at last!--in absolute truth and sincerity.... and not in a narrow ring of convention, not in terror of people and what they may think absurd and cannot understand ... and ... and...."

"And...?" he asked.

"And ... in that thought, in that hope ... I had forgotten my boy. And yet he is the reality!"

"And yet he ... is the reality."

"And now I am sacrificing ... the dream ... the illusion ... to him."

"Yes ... the dream ... the illusion," he said, with a smile that was full of pain.

"It hurts me!" she confessed, with a sob. "Yesterday--oh, only yesterday, last night!--I thought that the dream, the illusion ... was truth.... But what for young people can be a dream, an illusion ... which comes true...."

"Is at our age...."

"Absurd?" she asked, still wavering.

"Not absurd perhaps ... but impossible. We go bent under too heavy a burden of the past to permit ourselves youthful dreams and illusions. We no longer have any right ... even to memories...."

"I have some ... from my childhood," she stammered, vaguely.

"There are no memories left for us," he said, gently, with his smile that was full of pain.

"No, there are none left for us," she repeated. And she confessed, "I have dreamed ... and thought ... too late. I ... I have begun to live too late...."

"I," he said, "I thought ... that I had lived; but I have done nothing ... but seek...."

"You never found?"

"Perhaps ... almost. But, when I had found ... I was not allowed to put out my hand...."

"Because ... of the past?" she asked, softly.

"And of the present. Because of what is and has younger, fresher rights than mine ... which are no rights ... but the forbidden illusions of an old man...."

"Not old...."

"Older every day. He alone is in the prime of life ... who has found ... or thinks that he has found...."

"Yes, that is so," she said; and her voice sounded like a wail. "I have begun to live too late. I could have lived ... even now ... perhaps; but it is all too late. I once told you ... that I was abdicating my youth...."

"Once, months ago...."

"Since then, I have thought, dreamt, lived too much ... not to feel young ... for a few moments.... But it was all an illusion ... and it is all too late...."

They looked at each other. He bowed his head, in gentle acquiescence, with his smile that was full of pain:

"Yes, it is so," he said; and it was almost as if he were joking. "Come, let us be strong. I shall go on seeking ... and you...."

"Oh, I have my boy!" she murmured. "He has always comforted me."

They walked back slowly and took leave of each other at the door, a friends' leave-taking.

"Will you come again soon?" she asked.

"I don't know," he said. "You know, you no sooner see me than I am gone.... I may go to England in the autumn, to lecture on Peace. The world is full of mighty problems; and we ... we are pigmies ... in the tiny worlds of our own selves...."

"Yes ... we are nothing...."