"I can't see to read, just now, Marcus."
Then she paused in front of her own photograph, the only one now
on the mantel-piece.
"Will you give me that back?"
"Why should I?" I asked.
"I would rather--I should not like you to burn it."
"Burn it? All I have left of you?"
She turned swimming eyes on me.
"You are good, Marcus--after what I have told you--you do not
feel bitterly against me?"
"For what? For being quixotic? For going to martyrdom for an
ideal?"
"You did not listen when I spoke about Carlotta?"
"Oh, my dear!" said I.
And now she has gone. We kissed at parting--a kiss of
remembrance and renunciation. Shall we ever meet again?
Darkness gathers round me, and I am tired, tired, and I would
that I could sleep like Rip Van Winkle, and awake an old man,
with an old man's passionless resignation; or better, awake not
at all. Such poor fools as I are better dead.
I look back and see all my philosophy refuted, all my prim little
opinions lying prone like dolls with the sawdust knocked out of
them.
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