"
"And for me, too, isn't it?" he questioned, as if he turned the surfaces of
the object beneath her fingers.
The soft, frightened hover seemed to go all over it, to recognize it
finally, and to draw back, terrified, from recognition.
"Most terrible of all for me, if I have come between you," she said.
Her pain pierced him so, that he put out his hand and took hers. Don't
think that; you mustn't think that, not for a moment. It's not that you
came between us. It's only that, because of you, I began to see things--as
I hadn't seen them. It was just,--well, just like seeing one color change
when another is put beside it. Imogen's blue, now that your gold has come,
is turned to green; that's all that has happened."
"All that has happened! Do you know what you are saying, Jack! If my gold
were gone, would the blue come back again?"
"The blue will never come back," said Jack.
He felt, as her hand tightened on his, that he would have liked to put his
head down on her knees and sob like a little boy; but when she said, "And
the green you cannot care for?" his own hand tightened as if they clutched
some secret together, some secret that neither must dare look at. "You
mustn't think that--you mustn't. And I mustn't." He said it with all the
revolt and all the strength of his will and loyalty; with all his longing,
too. "The real truth is that the green can't care for me unless I will see
it back to blue again--and as I can't do that, and as it won't accept my
present vision, there is a sort of dead-lock.
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