see… And now he's up and speaking in the House. Hope he'll
hold on to the thread. He'll have to plan his speeches to the very
end of his days-and learn the headings."
"Isn't she up in the women's gallery to hear him?"
"No. Unless it's by accident."
"She's there," she said.
"Well, by accident it happens. Not too many accidents, Isabel.
Never any more adventures for us, dear, now. No!… They play
the game, you know. They've begun late, but now they've got to.
You see it's not so very hard for them since you and I, my dear, are
here always, always faithfully here on this warm cliff of love
accomplished, watching and helping them under high heaven. It isn't
so VERY hard. Rather good in some ways. Some people HAVE to be
broken a little. Can you see Altiora down there, by any chance?"
"She's too little to be seen," she said.
"Can you see the sins they once committed?"
"I can only see you here beside me, dear-for ever. For all my
life, dear, till I die. Was that-the sin?"…
I took her to the station, and after she had gone I was to drive to
Dover, and cross to Calais by the night boat. I couldn't, I felt,
return to London. We walked over the crest and down to the little
station of Martin Mill side by side, talking at first in broken
fragments, for the most part of unimportant things.
"None of this," she said abruptly, "seems in the slightest degree
real to me. I've got no sense of things ending."
"We're parting," I said.
"We're parting-as people part in a play. It's distressing. But I
don't feel as though you and I were really never to see each other
again for years. Do you?"
I thought. "No," I said.
"After we've parted I shall look to talk it over with you."
"So shall I."
"That's absurd."
"Absurd."
"I feel as if you'd always he there, just about where you are now.
Invisible perhaps, but there. We've spent so much of our lives
joggling elbows."…
"Yes. Yes. I don't in the least realise it. I suppose I shall
begin to when the train goes out of the station. Are we wanting in
imagination, Isabel?"
"I don't know. We've always assumed it was the other way about."
"Even when the train goes out of the station-! I've seen you into
so many trains."
"I shall go on thinking of things to say to you-things to put in
your letters. For years to come. How can I ever stop thinking in
that way now? We've got into each other's brains."
"It isn't real," I said; "nothing is real. The world's no more than
a fantastic dream. Why are we parting, Isabel?"
"I don't know. It seems now supremely silly. I suppose we have to.
Can't we meet?-don't you think we shall meet even in dreams?"
"We'll meet a thousand times in dreams," I said.
"I wish we could dream at the same time," said Isabel… "Dream
walks. I can't believe, dear, I shall never have a walk with you
again."
"If I'd stayed six months in America," I said, "we might have walked
long walks and talked long talks for all our lives."
"Not in a world of Baileys," said Isabel. "And anyhow-"
She stopped short. I looked interrogation.
"We've loved," she said.
I took her ticket, saw to her luggage, and stood by the door of the
compartment. "Good-bye," I said a little stiffly, conscious of the
people upon the platform. She bent above me, white and dusky,
looking at me very steadfastly.
"Come here," she whispered. "Never mind the porters. What can they
know? Just one time more-I must."
She rested her hand against the door of the carriage and bent down
upon me, and put her cold, moist lips to mine.
CHAPTER THE THIRD
THE BREAKING POINT
1
And then we broke down. We broke our faith with both Margaret and
Shoesmith, flung career and duty out of our lives, and went away
together.
It is only now, almost a year after these events, that I can begin
to see what happened to me. At the time it seemed to me I was a
rational, responsible creature, but indeed I had not parted from her
two days before I became a monomaniac to whom nothing could matter
but Isabel. Every truth had to be squared to that obsession, every
duty. It astounds me to think how I forgot Margaret, forgot my
work, forgot everything but that we two were parted. I still
believe that with better chances we might have escaped the
consequences of the emotional storm that presently seized us both.
But we had no foresight of that, and no preparation for it, and our
circumstances betrayed us. It was partly Shoesmith's unwisdom in
delaying his marriage until after the end of the session-partly my
own amazing folly in returning within four days to Westminster. But
we were all of us intent upon the defeat of scandal and the complete
restoration of appearances. It seemed necessary that Shoesmith's
marriage should not seem to be hurried, still more necessary that I
should not vanish inexplicably. I had to be visible with Margaret
in London just as much as possible; we went to restaurants, we
visited the theatre; we could even contemplate the possibility of my
presence at the wedding. For that, however, we had schemed a
weekend visit to Wales, and a fictitious sprained ankle at the last
moment which would justify my absence…
I cannot convey to you the intolerable wretchedness and rebellion of
my separation from Isabel. It seemed that in the past two years all
my thoughts had spun commisures to Isabel's brain and I could think
of nothing that did not lead me surely to the need of the one
intimate I had found in the world. I came back to the House and the
office and my home, I filled all my days with appointments and duty,
and it did not save me in the least from a lonely emptiness such as
I had never felt before in all my life. I had little sleep. In the
daytime I did a hundred things, I even spoke in the House on two
occasions, and by my own low standards spoke well, and it seemed to