She would not consent to the final alternative, and the struggle lasted for a week, through their daily meetings--the dream-like, deft meetings under the eyes of others,--and while they rode alone over the hills--long, sad rides, when both, often in a moody silence, showed at once their hope and their resistance.
Her fear won at last. “And I can’t even pretend that it’s goodness,” she said, her voice trembling with self-scorn. “You’ve abased me to the dust, Gavan. Yes, it’s true, if you like--my fear is greater than my love.” Irony, a half-felt anger, helped her to bear the blow, for, to the end, she could not believe that he would find strength to leave her.
The parting came suddenly. Wringing her hands, looking hard into her face, where he saw still a fawning hope and a half-stupefied despair, he left her, and felt that he had torn his heart up by the very roots.
And he had sacrificed her and himself, to what? Gavan could ask himself the question at leisure during the following year.
Yet, from the irrational sacrifice was born a timid, trembling trust, a dim hope that the unbannered combat had not been in vain, that even the blind holding to the ambiguous right might blossom in a better life for her than if he had taken the joy held out to him. The trust was as irrational as the sacrifice, but it was dear to him. He cherished it, and it fluttered in him, sweet, intangible, during all the desolate year. Then, at the year’s end, he met Alice, suddenly, unexpectedly, and found her ominously changed. Her girlhood was gone. A hard, glittering surface, competent, resourceful, hid something.
The strength of his renouncement was so rooted that he felt no personal fear, and for her, too, he no longer felt fear in his nearness. What he felt was a new pity--a pity suffocating and horrible. Whispers of discreet scandal enlightened him. Alice was in no danger of what she most shrank from--a public pillory; but she was among those of whom the world whispers, with a half-condoning smile and shrug.
Gavan saw her riding one morning with a famous soldier, a Nietzschian type of strength, splendor, and high indifference. And now he understood all. He knew the man. He was one who would have stared light irony at Gavan’s chivalrous willingness to sacrifice his life to a woman; to such a charming triviality as an intrigue he would sacrifice just enough and no more. He knew the rules of the game and with him Alice was safe from any open pillory. People would never do more than whisper.