t of any man.
And I want to come to you now. He is too strong for me. Is it really
two years ago? Surely not! I seem still to hear his speech, and
still to see him fall into your arms. I should always hear him, and
always see that. I'm afraid you won't understand me, least of all
when I say I don't feel sure that I want him back. That would mean
the fear and the shame again. But he was so marvellous. How right he
was! They followed the lead he gave them at Henstead; and even you,
dear recluse, know that there was a change of Government last year.
And I am quite rich out of the Alethea. For he was right and the
poor Professor, who was supposed to know all about it, was
absolutely, utterly, hopelessly wrong. And the Crusade's come to
nothing, and--and so on.

I wish I was convincing you; but I never did. You didn't understand
why I married him, why in face of everything I behaved pretty well
to him, why his death left everything blank to me. Nobody quite
understood, except old Aunt Maria who just quietly died as soon as
he was gone. And you'll understand me no better now. I resent the
way the world forgets him. There seems nothing of him left. My
little girl is all Gaston; she lives with Gastons, she has the
Gaston face and the Gaston ways. She's not a bit Quisante; she's
nothing of him, nothing that he has left behind. If we'd had a son,
a boy like him, I might feel differently. But, as it is, what's
left? Only me. I am left, and I am not altogether a Gaston now,
though it's the Gaston and nothing else that you like. No, I'm not
all Gaston now. I've become Quisante in part--not in every way, or I
shouldn't have felt as I did when I found the Professor's report.
But he has laid hold of me, and he doesn't let go. I can't help
thinking that he needn't have died except on my account. You feel
sore that I don't love you, not as you want me to. He was sore too
because I didn't love him; and since he couldn't make me love him,
he had to make me wonder at him; he was doing that when he died. So
I feel that I can't do anything to blot him out, and that I must
stay Quisante, somebody bearing his name, representing him, keeping
him in a way alive, being still his and not anybody else's.

For I still feel his and I still feel him alive. You can love
people, and then forget them, and love so