d
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 self. At the first you stood alone; as much
alone as I. All these people were nothing to you. I was nothing to you.
But you must needs love them and me. You should have let them remain
nothing to the end. But you did not. What were they to you?--Shapes,
shadows on a sheet. They looked real. But were they--any one of them?
You will never see them again; you will never see me again; we shall be
all parts of a past of shadows. If you had been as I am, you could have
looked back upon them unmoved or could have forgotten.... But you ...
'you only loved' and you will have no more ease. And, even now, it is
only yourself that matters. It is because you broke; because you were
false to your standards at a supreme moment; because you have discovered
that your honour will not help you to stand a strain. It is not the
thought of the harm you have done the others.... What are they--what is
Churchill who has fallen or Fox who is dead--to you now? It is yourself
that you bemoan. That is your tragedy, that you can never go again to
Churchill with the old look in your eyes, that you can never go to
anyone for fear of contempt.... Oh, I know you, I know you."

She knew me. It was true, what she said.

I had had my eyes on the ground all this while; now I looked at her,
trying to realise that I should never see her again. It was impossible.
There was that intense beauty, that shadowlessness that was like
translucence. And there was her voice. It was impossible to understand
that I was never to see her again, never to hear her voice, after this.

She was silent for a long time and I said nothing--nothing at all. It
was the thought of her making Fox's end; of her sitting as Fox had sat,
hopelessly, lifelessly, like a man waiting at the end of the world. At
last she said: "There is no hope. We have to go our ways; you yours, I
mine. And then if you will--if you cannot forget--you may remember that
I cared; that, for a moment, in between two breaths, I thought of ... of
failing. That is all I can do ... for your sake."

That silenced me. Even if I could have spoken to any purpose, I would
have held my tongue now.

I had not looked at her; but stood with my eyes averted, very conscious
of her standing before me; of her great beauty, of her great glory.

* *