Page:The Dial (Volume 73).djvu/759

Rh chance it had been made a kind of public affair. I suppose it would have turned out the same way had we two been alone in the house. We were very young. Sometimes I think all the people in the world are very young. They cannot carry the fire of life when it flashes to life in their hands.

"And in the room, behind the closed door, the woman must have been having, at just that moment, some such feeling as myself. She had raised herself up and was now sitting on the edge of the bed. She was listening to the sudden silence of the house as my friend and I were listening. It may be an absurd thing to say, but it is nevertheless true that my friend’s mother and sister, who had just come into the house, were both, in some unconscious way, affected also as they stood with their coats on, down stairs, also listening.

"Just then, at that moment, in the room in the darkness, the woman began to sob like a broken-hearted child. There had been a thing quite tremendous come to her and she could not hold it. To be sure the immediate cause of her weeping that way, the way in which she would have explained her grief, was shame. That was what she thought had happened to her, that she had been put into a shameful ridiculous position. She was a young girl. I dare say that thoughts had already come into her mind concerning what all the others would think. At any rate I know that at the moment and afterwards I was more pure than herself.

"The sound of her sobbing rang through the house and down stairs my friend's mother and sister, who had been standing and listening as I have said, now ran to the foot of the stairway leading up.

"As for myself, I did what must have seemed to all the others a ridiculous, almost a criminal thing. I ran to the door leading into the bedroom and tearing it open ran in, slamming the door behind me. It was by this time almost completely dark in the room, but without hesitation I ran to her. She was sitting on the edge of the bed and as she sobbed her body rocked back and forth. She was, at that moment, like a slender young tree, standing in an open field, without any other trees to protect it. She was shaken as by a great storm, that's what I mean.

"And so you see, I ran to her and threw my arms about her body.

"The thing that had happened to us before happened once again, for the last time in our lives. She gave herself to me, that's what I am trying to say. There was another marriage. For just a moment