He was summoning his courage to face what might be the final
solution. When he must, she had said, he was to open and read. Well ...
he must. He could bear it no longer, the wordless uncertainty. He lifted
down the volume, gently parted the fastened pages and read. From out the
still, ordered lines, there rose to him the passionate cry of protest
and bereavement:
"............................Nevermore Alone upon the threshold of my
door Of individual life I shall command The uses of my soul, nor lift my
hand Serenely in the sunshine as before, Without the sense of that which
I forbore--Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land Doom takes to part
us, leaves thy heart in mine With pulses that beat double. What I do And
what I dream include thee, as the wine Must taste of its own grapes. And
when I sue God for myself, He hears that name of thine And sees within
my eyes the tears of two."
Over and over he read it with increasing bewilderment, with increasing
fear, with slow-developing comprehension. If that was to be her farewell
... but why! Io, the straightforward, the intrepid, the exponent of fair
play and the rules of the game!... Had it been only a game? No; at least
he knew better than that.
What could it all mean? Why that medium for her message? Should he write
and ask her? But what was there to ask or say, in the face of her
silence? Besides, he had not even her address.
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