Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/392

 myself, had I not believed it so soon after our meeting—do you think I would have shown you so much of my real self, happy or unhappy, for better or worse? Sides of my nature unknown to others? Traits that you like, along with traits that I see you do not like? Why, Oswald, you understand me—the real me!—better than anybody else that I have ever met. Because I wished it—I hoped it. Because I could not help it. Just that. But you see the trouble is that, in spite of all—you do not wholly understand me. And the worst of the reason is that I am the one most to blame for it! And I—I cannot better it now."

"When do we understand one another in this life of half-truths—of half-intimacies?"

"Yes, all too-often half … or less! And I am not easy (ah, howl have had to learn the way to keep myself so, to study it till it is a second nature to me!) I am not easy to know! But, Oswald, Oswald, ich kann nicht anders! nein, nein ich kann nicht anders!" And then, in his own language, dull and doggedly he added to himself—"Mit használ, mit használ az én nekem? [What matters it to me?]"

He took my hand now, that was lying on the settle beside his own, and held it while he spoke; unconsciously clasping it tighten, and tighter till it was in pain, or would have been so, had it not been, like his own, cold from sheer nervousness. He continued:

"One thing more. You seem to forget sometimes that I am a man, and that you too are a man. Not either of us a—woman. Forgive me—I speak frankly. We are both of us, you and I, a bit over-sensitive—high-strung—in type. Isn't that so? You often suggest a—a regard so—what shall I call it?—so romantic—heroic—passionate—a love indeed (and here his voice was suddenly broken) something that I cannot accept from anybody without warning him back, back! I mean back if coming to me from any man. Sometimes you have troubled me—frightened me. I cannot, I will not, try to tell you why this is so. But so it is. Our friendship must be friendship as the world of to-day accepts friendship! Yes, as the world of our day does. God! What else could it be to-day. Friendship? What else—to-day?"

"Not the friendship which is love, the love which is friendship? " I said in a low voice; indeed, as I now remember more than half to myself.

Imre was looking at the darkened sky, the gray lawn—into the vague distance—at whatsoever was visible save myself. Then his glance was caught by the ghostly marble of the monument to the young Z… heroes, at which I too was staring. A tone of appeal came as he continued: