For, freeing herself
from my embrace and speaking almost mechanically, she said:
"Karl! I must tell you. I cannot marry you."
I pleaded, I prayed, I argued, I demanded. It was in vain; I always
came up against the immovable "I cannot."
And then I crashed over the precipice towards whose edge I had been
blindly going. I had said for the hundredth time, "But you know you
love me," when with a sob she abandoned all reserve, and, flinging her
arms round my neck, implored me to take her. Then, as I caught my
breath, she quickly said, as if frightened that she had gone too far,
"But I cannot marry you."
I looked down into those beautiful eyes, and for the first time I
understood. For perhaps ten seconds I battled for my soul and the
purity of our love; then, tearing my sight from those eyes which would
lure an archangel to destruction, I was once more master of my body. As
my resolution grew, I hated her for doing this thing that had wrecked
in an instant the hopes of months, the ideals on which I had begun to
build afresh my life.
She felt the change, and left me.
As she went out by the door she gave me one last look, a look in which
love struggled with shame, a look which no man has ever earned the
right to receive from any woman.
But I was as a statue of marble, dazed by this calamity.
As the door closed upon her, I started forward--it was too late.
Had she waited another instant--but there, I write of what has happened
and not what might have been.
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