"For God's sake, look where you're going...."
I stood in the corridor again, staring. Down the corridor, coming toward me, was a single figure--Selda. Behind me there was nobody. I went to meet Selda, dazed and uneasy. I could still hear, close to my ear, an echo of that muffled, hoarse voice that I had never heard before.
That was two days before the end. We were leaving the city on that final bright morning, when a representative of the Bureau stopped us. I looked at him inquiringly.
"I have come to tell you, Baret," he said, "that your departure is scheduled for this evening." I drew back, startled, and looked at Selda.
"My departure?" I repeated in a low voice, hardly understanding. "So soon?" I had forgotten that one day I should have to leave.
"It has been arranged," he said impersonally.
We bowed slightly to each other, and he went away. Selda and I stepped aboard our ship in silence.
That time we flew up the river until we came to the foothills of the mountains in the north. We landed in a little clearing by the river at the foot of a waterfall hundreds of feet high, towering over us. The forest stood about us on all sides, coming down to the river's brim on the opposite bank and meeting it not far from us on the near bank. The precipice, covered with moss and small bushes, stood above us.
We sat a long while in silence, before I said bitterly:
She didn't look at me, but answered quietly, "Yes, you must go."
"I don't want to go," I cried, "I want to stay here!"
"Don't you know?" I said swiftly. "Haven't you understood long ago that I love you?" She shook her head.
"Love is something that we don't know here--not until we have been married and lived with our men. Sometimes not then." But she looked at me, and I thought there were tears in her eyes. Suddenly the impulse I had been resisting ever since the morning on the mountain became insupportable, and I caught her in my arms almost roughly. Her face was close to mine, and she closed her eyes. I kissed her, forgetting everything but the knowledge that I had stumbled upon the sort of love that doesn't pass away, no matter how long a man lives.
After a while, though, she drew away as if she resisted not my desire, but her own.