ld not alter. For even
conflict wears itself out; even indecision has this measure set to its
miserable powers of torture, that any issue in the end is better than the
hell of indecision itself. Once or twice in those last days even death
had seemed to him quite tolerable; but now that his head was clear and he
had come to grips, death passed out of his mind like the shadow that it
was. Nothing so simple, extravagant, and vain could serve him. Other
issues had reality; death--none. To leave Sylvia, and take this young
love away; there was reality in that, but it had always faded as soon as
it shaped itself; and now once more it faded. To put such a public and
terrible affront on a tender wife whom he loved, do her to death, as it
were, before the world's eyes--and then, ever remorseful, grow old while
the girl was still young? He could not. If Sylvia had not loved him,
yes; or, even if he had not loved her; or if, again, though loving him
she had stood upon her rights--in any of those events he might have done
it. But to leave her whom he did love, and who had said to him so
generously: "I will not hamper you--go to her"--would be a black
atrocity. Every memory, from their boy-and-girl lovering to the desperate
clinging of her arms these last two nights--memory with its innumerable
tentacles, the invincible strength of its countless threads, bound him to
her too fast. What then? Must it come, after all, to giving up the
girl? And sitting there, by that warm fire, he shivered. How desolate,
sacrilegious, wasteful to throw love away; to turn from the most precious
of all gifts; to drop and break that vase! There was not too much love
in the world, nor too much warmth and beauty--not, anyway, for those
whose sands were running out, whose blood would soon be cold.

Could Sylvia not let him keep both her love and the girl's? Could she
not bear that? She had said she could; but her face, her eyes, her voice
gave her the lie, so that every time he heard her his heart turned sick
with pity. This, then, was the real issue. Could he accept from her such
a sacrifice, exact a daily misery, see her droop and fade beneath it?
Could he bear his own happiness at such a cost? Would it be happiness at
all? He got up from the chair and crept towards her. She looked very
fragile sleeping there! The darkness below her closed eyelids showed
cruelly on that too fair skin; and in her flax-coloured hair he saw what
he had nev