Page:The Inheritors, An Extravagant Story.djvu/335

 wonder, as you wondered before the gates of Nineveh. I had to sound the knell of the old order; of your virtues, of your honours, of your faiths, of. . . of altruism, if you like. Well, it is sounded. I was forever on the watch; I foresaw; I forestalled; I have never rested. And you. . ."

"And I . . ." I said, "I only loved you." There was a silence. I seemed for a moment to see myself a tenuous, bodiless thing, like a ghost in a bottomless cleft between the past and the to come. And I was to be that forever.

"You only loved me," she repeated. "Yes, you loved me. But what claim upon me does that give you? You loved me. . . . Well, if I had loved you it would have given you a claim. . . . All your misery; your heart-ache comes from . . . from love; your love for me, your love for the things of the past, for what was doomed. . . . You loved the others too . . . in a way, and you betrayed them and you are wretched. If you had not loved them you would not be wretched now; if you had not loved me you would not have betrayed your—your very