And that will make me absurd in your eyes when I tell you that my whole life is wrapped up in a sense which I cannot see or feel that you have at all.

You have much--oh, a great deal--outside of it, and I have nothing.
My life is swayed in obedience to laws that you do not even know of.

You can hardly be my friend, completely.
As your wife I should suffer and you would suffer, in a false position which could never be altered." She paused and looked at him seriously, and he felt that she believed what she had said.

She had, at all events, given him full permission to go.

And he was as far from being able to avail of himself of it as he had been before--further, for every moment those slender fingers rested in his made it more impossible to relinquish them, for always.