In these circumstances of myself and Isabel were symbolized the lives of all men who give their devotions to lesser loves, who find their creations and their work imperfect or worthless when the planting season has passed.

As hollow as the words sounded, I nevertheless asked Isabel to be my wife.  And Isabel without changing her position and without opening her eyes said in the quietest of voices:  “You know I love you.  You know I have loved you in every way a woman can.  I love you as I loved Uncle Tom; for you are my friend, as he was.  But what will the future be?  I have been compelled all my life to center my thought upon books and music, friends, travel, and devotion to Uncle Tom.  I have developed this power of concentration and self-denial; but would you bring me to live over again what I lived with Uncle Tom?  Oh, my friend, no man can understand and fathom the maternal desire in a woman.  It is a mystery which she alone knows.”

What life remained in me sank down just as a stricken eagle falls into the thickets and is still; and breathes quietly and draws the film over its eyes.  I could not answer her.  The October air was mild.  The house was overheated.  A window was open.  An entering wind began to stir my hair.  I thought of how it must look to another, these beginnings of gray hair.  Age had come to me.  And I could see Isabel with my feelings alone, sitting beside me so pale, so tender, so sorrowful.

The clock strikes three.  Isabel arouses, turns slightly from me, and gradually sits up.  “That was three, wasn’t it?” she asked.  “Your train leaves early in the morning.  You must sleep a few hours.  I shall not see you at breakfast.  The maid will bring it to you.  Shall we have a glass of wine together?”

She poured wine for me and we drank.  She handed me a lighted candle.  Then she stood and searched my face.  She offered her lips to me, turned and walked away.

I stood with the candle in my hand, watching her until she passed through the shadows and darkness of the hall.  The house was without a sound.  No step of her came from the hall or the stair.  I still stood with the candle in that silence and fluttering darkness.  Then I went to my room.

CHAPTER LVI

But I did not retire.  I stood for a few moments looking through the window into the darkness.  Then I placed my belongings in my satchel, stole softly out of the room, down the great stairs, opened the great door of the main hallway and walked off the porch on to the gravel road, through the iron gate and into the highway leading to the village.  I looked back at Isabel’s mansion, at the roof dark between the dark trees.  Under that roof the most priceless heart I had found in life was beating—­but was it in sleep or in wakefulness?  I was numbed, stunned, hopeless.  I could never return here, never see Isabel again.  The Orphic metamorphosis