You know how
gladly, with what gratitude, I would have answered you, 'Yes, let the
marriage go on,' if I dared. If I dared! But I think--don't you?--that a
great trouble rather clears one's wits. I used to lie awake at Cairo and
think; and the unimportant trivial considerations gradually dropped
away; and a few straight and simple truths stood out rather vividly.
One felt that one had to cling to them and with all one's might,
because nothing else was left."
"Yes, that I do understand," Ethne replied in a low voice. She had gone
through just such an experience herself. It might have been herself, and
not Durrance, who was speaking. She looked up at him, and for the first
time began to understand that after all she and he might have much in
common. She repeated over to herself with an even firmer determination,
"Two lives shall not be spoilt because of me."
"Well?" she asked.
"Well, here's one of the very straight and simple truths. Marriage
between a man crippled like myself, whose life is done, and a woman like
you, active and young, whose life is in its flower, would be quite wrong
unless each brought to it much more than friendship. It would be quite
wrong if it implied a sacrifice for you.
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