And to do that she must be free.

For an instant he looked full at this, his heart flooded with glory.  And then the light went out.

He was there in the blackness again, unhappy beyond any suffering he had thought he could bear.

He lay still, feeling Marise beside him, the slow, quiet rhythm of her breathing.  Was she awake or sleeping?  What would happen if he should allow the fear and suffering which racked him to become articulate?  If he should cry out to her, she would not turn away.  He knew Marise.  She would never turn away from fear and suffering.  “But I can’t do that.  I won’t work on her sympathy.  I’ve promised to be true to what’s deepest and truest in us both.  I have been, by God! and I will be.  If our married life has been worth anything, it’s because we’ve both been free and honest . . . true with one another.  This is her ordeal.  She must act for herself.  Better die than use my strength to force her against her own nature.  If I decide . . . no matter how sure I am I’m right . . . it won’t be her decision.  Nothing would be decided.  I must go on just as before . . .” he groaned, “that will take all the strength I have.”

It was clear to him now; the only endurable future for them, such as they were to each other, would come from Marise’s acting with her own strength on her own decision.  By all that was sacred, he would never by word or act hamper that decision.  He would be himself, honestly.  Marise ought to know what that self was.

He had thought that this resolve would bring to him another of these terrible racking instants of anguish, but instead there came almost a calm upon him, as though the pain had passed and left him in peace, or as though a quiet light had shone out in the darkness.  Perhaps the dawn had come.  No, the square of the window was still only faintly felt in the blacker mass of the silent room.

Then he knew why the pain had left him.  It had been driven away by the certainty that there was a worse fear than any he knew, or ever would know.  No matter what risk or catastrophe lay before them, Marise would never look at him out her clear eyes and act a thing that was not true.  Marise would always be Marise.  Why then, whatever came he could bear it.

Life might be cruel and pitiless, but it was not base, when it had among its gifts such a certainty as that, rock-like under his feet, bearing him up in his pain.

He moved to her in the bed, felt for her hand and put it gently to his lips.

Then, holding it in his, on his breast, he turned his eyes towards the window, waiting for the dawn.

CHAPTER XIX

MR. WELLES LIGHTS THE FUSE

July 2.