Page:Dorothy Canfield - Rough-hewn.djvu/313

 he saw from her eyes that she was no longer seeing him, but some inner vision.

She shivered and drew away from him. "Yes, there is something else … something we haven't … and it's what makes it all right," she said. "I'd rather have nothing at all … nothing … ever! than something that would make part of me shrink away from you. I couldn't stand that! I couldn't stand that!"

She had said the last words wildly, and she was back by the door now, as if ready for flight.

Neale sat down heavily in a chair, and hid his face in his hands. "All that this means," he said to himself as much as to Martha, "all that this means, any of it, is that I have not been man enough to make you love me."

At this she came flying back to him, incarnate tenderness, "No, no, Neale, I do love you. I know in my heart that even if I should ever marry any one else, I'll never feel for anybody the affection, the trust … I couldn't … it's not that. Loving you as I do only makes it more impossible, more utterly impossible. You mustn't think this is just the nervous reaction from any sudden shock of knowledge. I knew … I knew well enough what marriage is! But I hadn't felt it."

She moaned aloud in her bewilderment, "How can I tell you? How can I make you understand? I don't understand, myself. Why can't I give you what Margaret has to give?"

She was bending over him and now snatched his hand and caught it up to her breast, "Neale, I'd give anything to want to marry you! Anything! I've tried and tried. It's like a mountain between us … I can't reach you through it. Neale, perhaps we're too much alike. Perhaps that is what brought us together, but that is what keeps us apart! We can't unite! I thought of so many things! We're like two chemicals that can't combine. They can't! That's the way they're made!"

Neale found himself resisting her certainty, although it had been his own. He sat up, suddenly astounded at all that was being said, and cried roughly, "Martha, do you know what this means? You are sending me away. What can I do without