knew she would come to hate him if that were the chief bond.
“I don’t want to stay till I hate him. I cannot stay till I hate him. It would ruin it all. But is that what I have to do? And why should I ever hate him? What is the matter with me? Why can’t I just stay, and stay, and wait—oh, why?”
The fact that he had told her to go did not help her at all. He could look at her and say go, but his eyes and his spirit chained her there. And she could not face the actual packing up and going out of the gate for the last time. Kissing him for the last time. Eating the last meal. Impossible! Good Lord! How did people ever get away from each other? And she was not thinking of herself then. She could see him left alone, lying alone in his hammock, wishing she were there to play to him, looking for her to come through the study door. She could see him pacing the verandah and the garden alone with those terrible despairs of his. She could see him sitting down with his knees drawn up to his chin and the dogs licking his face and hands. The lost child. She wished he had never told her that story of his boyhood; she always saw him like that when she thought of leaving him, that forlorn boy deserted by his father. And she knew she could never bear herself again in life if she deserted him.
And so after all, as she walked, she decided again as she had decided before. She would not leave him so long as his eyes could light up when she went through the study door, as long as anything she could do helped him to write, as long as he counted for something among people who were helped by the thing he was still able to do.
Sacrifice, was it? That bogy of her free and independent youth. That Frankenstein foe of individuality.
