Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/999

Rh you were attracted to Daisy Bourne, and I was sure that she was to you. I've been unjust to her too, brave little girl, but, as I told you, that is all past; I don't have to look to jealousy for a reason; for just now all the vague thoughts and fancies that harassed me have crystallized into one certainty. My dear Harry, you are a boy and I am almost an old woman; your experiences are all to come, and I look back on most of mine. I don't doubt your loyalty—but I can't bear to make demands on it. Your nature will broaden, your character develop, your ideas progress, while I shall stay still a little time perhaps and then go down-hill. It's bound to be, Harry. I've thought it out. I've seen clearly the natural and just proportions of many things—while I stood here alone and looked across the sea."

She had turned from him and held out her slender hands to the East. "Don't let him make it too hard for me," she whispered, almost to some unseen and dimly comprehended presence.

Doane's voice recalled her. Its tone was excited, and the boy's face was flushed and troubled.

"Nanna, you don't mean one word of that; or if you think you do, you're morbid—you know it's easy for you to get morbid, and then you go off on a tangent. It's selfish of you, too—you talk only of how it affects you, and not one word of me. Of course you're older than I am in the matter of years, but you're terribly young in some ways—younger than I ever was. I do love you, I've told you so, I tell you so again, and that ought to be enough for any woman—a man's word."

He squared himself with a sudden sense of the masculine. Joanna's hand touched his arm.

"It isn't a question of your word, Harry," she said, "but of my clear, definite knowledge. Don't you see how it hurts me to say this to you? By stepping out of your life I am going back into emptiness and darkness; but better that than find you chafing under bonds that I have put upon you, and realizing, as I know you must, that you are held to me only by a loyalty that, as time goes on, will savor of pity, too. No; I refuse to hamper you. You are young, and all this will sink very soon into a background of experience. You'll have your work, and other interests will color your life. You'll never really forget me, Harry, for you will know some day that I did this for the best and that I loved you."

Harry's voice rose in reply. "No," he cried, almost roughly, with a touch of anger that startled her. "I don't believe you ever loved me. I think you promised to marry me just in a mood. I think you do everything in moods, and you plan your moods, too. I never saw any one who studied herself as you do. I believe you are glad to be rid of me, glad to go back to your old life with its dark rooms and candles on the luncheon-table. I believe that you want to fill up your time with your arts and crafts committees, and your Coptic designs in needlework, and your eternal tea-table with your everlasting lilies on it, and your friends who talk in whispers and twist their words. It's all of a piece—all false and morbid; the sort of thing that women cling to when they've missed the real point of life."

He caught the look of dumb pain in her eyes, and a wave of tenderness met his rising anger.

"Oh, Nanna, forgive me! I'm a cad to talk like this; forget that I've said it; forget what you've said to me. Let us start afresh!"

She felt again the vigorous youth of his nature, ready to forgive, as ready to condone; eager for its own way and apt to wound in the pursuit of its purpose perhaps, yet tender and penitent when it saw the hurt it had ruthlessly given. Had she listened, even for an instant, to the soft cry of her own nature heard vaguely at her breast, she would have met his eyes with her own, and in them he would have read his victory; but secure in the decision gained at such cost, and leaning still on the strength of the great ocean that had given her of its knowledge, she turned to the wide horizon.

"Harry, my dear, my love,—there is no fresh start for us together. You must go your way and I mine. We must each begin again, alone!"

She caught the quick sob that shook the young man's shoulders as he turned and strode across the sand. She ran to him and walked with him as they passed