d. I chose to forget them at once. But
Hohenhauer----" She shuddered. "Well, although I was infuriated with
him at the time--what he said was true. Every word. I must go
forward. I cannot--cannot go back."

"He appealed to your ambition, your love of power, I suppose----"

"He showed me to myself for exactly what I am," she said emphatically.
"No appeal would have made the slightest impression on me if I had
really and finally returned to my Mary Ogdenhood up there in the woods
of my real youth. My God! What incredible folly! What powers of
self-delusion! But we both have that memory. Let us be grateful. I
at least shall hold it apart from all memories as long as I live."

"Are you going to marry that man?"

"That is so purely incidental that it is not worth talking about. I
came away to think out my own problem. I love you and I believe that I
shall always love you--but I don't see any way out. I have killed once
and for all that fatal talent for self-delusion that I had thought was
as dead--well, as dead as my love for Moritz Hohenhauer; and nothing
could be more dead than that. My brain feels like a crystal house
illuminated by searchlights, strong enough to penetrate every corner
but not strong enough to blind. I could never, if I would, deceive
myself again, nor make another mistake, so far as human prescience will
serve me."

He looked at her hands. Her gloves were black suede and they made
those hands look smaller, but he had an idea that if he lifted one it
would fall of its own rigid weight.

He made no comment and she said in a moment: "Perhaps you may have an
inspiration. If there is any solution for us, believe me when I say
that it would make me as happy as it could make you."

But her hands did not relax.

"What is the solution, Lee?"

He had buried his face in his hands. "There is none, I suppose.
Unless you have the courage to drive down to the City Hall and marry
me . . . and"--he lifted his head with a faint gleam of hope--"remember
that you are young again. You have many years to live. You are a
woman. Can you go through life without love?"

"Far better than with it. Love is a very old story to me," she said
deliberately. "It could never be to me again the significant thing it
is even to the woman of middle age, much less to the young. And
now--with a world falling to ruins--in the most critical period of its
history--to imagine that love has any but a passing si