she knew she could no more bear to stay and helplessly watch that descent than she could have borne to stand on a beach and watch a gallant ship going to pieces on the rocks. For that was the most tragic thing about it, it was a gallant ship. If he would only degenerate comfortably as her father had done! But he was dying hard. And he was only forty. She could not stand it. And the war, which was remaking so many men, could do nothing now for him.
But when was she to go from him? How was she to go from him?
She could not forget the pledge she had given him in her own mind, her determination to be fair, to give him what she owed him. But there was the rub. What exactly did she owe him when it came to considering concrete things? How was she to decide when she had reached that obscure boundary line, that elusive boundary line, that disconcertingly wavering boundary line where consideration for him must end and consideration for herself begin? Could fairness and loyalty be computed in so many months or years of one’s company, in carefully modulated tones and carefully regulated moods? How many hours and nights of sleepless struggle were to be endured before one came to the last? What was endurable? What was unendurable? How many chances should one give a person? How many times should one renew one’s hope, how many times make the effort to forget?
And there was the strange fact that she still cared, that when he came to a high mood (he had not had one for weeks, she remembered) he could still carry her with him. But she could not bear to think that sex was the best she could do for him now. She did not realize how much, apart from that, her company still meant to him. And she was afraid of being chained to him by that alone. She
