Page:HG Wells--secret places of the heart.djvu/247

235 yours will be first of all in the work he does for the world. And you will leave your work—to be just a lover. And the work that I might do—because of my father’s wealth; all that would vanish too. We should leave all of that, all of our usefulness, all that much of ourselves. But what has made me love you? Just your breadth of vision, just the sense that you mattered. What has made you love me? Just that I have understood the dream of your work. All that we should have to leave behind. We should specialize, in our own scandal. We should run away just for one thing. To think, by sharing the oldest, simplest, dearest indulgences in the world, that we had got each other. When really we had lost each other, lost all that mattered....”

Her face was flushed with the earnestness of her conviction. Her eyes were bright with tears. “Don’t think I don’t love you. It’s so hard to say all this. Somehow it seems like going back on something—something supreme. Our instincts have got us.... Don’t think I’d hold myself from you, dear. I’d give myself to you with both hands. I love you—— When a woman loves—I at any rate—she loves altogether. But this thing—I am convinced—cannot be. I must go my own way, the way I have to go. My father is the man, obstinate, more than half a savage. For me—I know it—he has the jealousy of ten husbands. If you take me—— If our secret be-