She ceased and he was silent. The might-have-been came up before him with intolerable vividness. If one could but begin over again!
“And now,” she gently moved the hand that all this time had lain in his as they crouched close together over the fire, “and now here we are--all the years of hard work, so successful that we need not worry any more, behind us--nothing really important to do except to sit hand in hand and dream over the happy past, an old Darby and Joan who have lived their lives----”
“Christine! Christine!” he cried. “Let us make it true! Let us forget--forget all the bad dream--go on again together just as if what you said were true!”
She looked up at him, a strange and awful fear coming into her eyes, the face that had gained colour going ashen once more.
“Oh, Harry!” she said, in a tone of infinite reproach. “You’ve broken it! You’ve let go my hand!”
He ignored this infantile remark, went straight to his point in the brutally over-riding manner characteristic of him.
“Let us forget it, Christine, forget that you ever went away from me. I’ll never remind you of it. We won’t argue past responsibilities. We’ll start afresh. Christine, I’m a lonely old man--I want you. I want you to sit by the fire with me, to talk over, if you like, the might-have-beens that we threw away, I as much as you. I want you, anyway. I can’t bear loneliness any more--not now, after you have come back to me!”
She rose to her feet also, shivering, her eyes closing, biting at her lower lip as though in suppressed pain. She shook her head.
“No, Harry, not now. I--I must go away now, go back.”
She turned and moved, with a curious detachment from him that reminded him somewhat of a sleep-walker, toward the door.
“You shall not go, Christine! You have come back--and you shall not go again!”
“Harry,” she said in a tone of profound melancholy, “you know you cannot keep me like that. Remember the last time you tried to hold me caged behind a closed door!”
He did remember--the day when, disapproving of some intended excursion, he had, in a cold passion, turned the key upon her--the day he had come back to find a broken lock and curt note. He had learned his lesson. He stood aside from her path, entreated instead of dictating.