She looked up at him very quietly, but still flushed.
"Why do you wish me to try--make any effort to develop this--thing?"
"So that--if you could see him again--and if, perhaps, he had
anything to say to me--"
"I understand."
"Will you try, Athalie?"
"I'll try--if you wish it. And if I can learn how to try."
Had he asked her to strip her gown from her shoulders under his steady
gaze, it had been easier than the promise she gave him.
* * * * *
And now the hour had come for him to bid her good-bye. He said that he
and his mother would not remain abroad for more than the summer. He
said he would write often; spoke a little more vaguely of seeing her
as soon as he returned; drew her cool, white hands together and kissed
them, laid his cheek against them for a moment, eyes closed wearily.
The door remained ajar behind him after he had gone. Lingering, her
hand heavy on the knob, she listened to the last echo of the elevator
as it dropped into lighted depths below.
Then, very far away, an iron grille clanged. And that ended it.
But she still lingered. There was one more shape to pass through the
door which she yet held open;--the phantom of her girlhood. And when
at last, it had passed across the threshold, never to return, she
shut the door softly, sinking to her knees there, her pale cheek
resting against the closed panels, her eyes fixed on vacancy.
* * * * *
So departed those twain out of the room and out of her life,
together--her lover by brevet, and her lingering girlhood,--leaving
behind them a woman in a world of men suddenly strange and menacing
and very still.
But Clive went back into a familiar world--marred, obscured, distorted
for the moment by shock and sorrow--but still a familiar world.
Because neither his grief nor his love--as he had termed it--had made
of him more than he had been,--not yet a man, yet no longer a boy, but
something with all the infirmities of both and the saving graces of
neither.
In that borderland where he still lingered, morally and spiritually,
the development of character ceases for a while until such time as the
occult frontier be crossed. What is born in the cradle is lowered into
the grave, but always either in nobler or less noble degrees. For none
may linger in that borderland too long because the unseen boundary
moves for him who will not stir when his time is up--moves slowly,
inexorably nearer, nearer, passing beneath his feet, until it is lost
far in the misty years behind him.