neck and drew me to her and kissed me. I disentangled them very gently, and took each wrist and kissed it, and the backs of her hands.
“Good-night,” I said. There came a little pause. “Good-night, Margaret,” I repeated, and walked very deliberately and with a kind of sham preoccupation to the door.
I did not look at her, but I could feel her standing, watching me. If I had looked up, she would, I knew, have held out her arms to me....
At the very outset that secret, which was to touch no one but Isabel and myself, had reached out to stab another human being.
7
The whole world had changed for Isabel and me; and we tried to pretend that nothing had changed except a small matter between us. We believed quite honestly at that time that it was possible to keep this thing that had happened from any reaction at all, save perhaps through some magically enhanced vigour in our work, upon the world about us! Seen in retrospect, one can realise the absurdity of this belief; within a week I realised it; but that does not alter the fact that we did believe as much, and that people who are deeply in love and unable to marry will continue to believe so to the very end of time. They will continue to believe out of existence every consideration that separates them until they have come together. Then they will count the cost, as we two had to do.
I am telling a story, and not propounding theories in this book; and chiefly I am telling of the ideas and influences and emotions that have happened to me—me as a sort of sounding board for my world. The moralist is at liberty to go over my conduct with his measure and say, “At this point or at that you went wrong, and you ought to have done”—so-and-so.