And
they went in silence, thinking in the epic elegy of their time.
Jim drove his car up to the end of Rhode Island and across to
Tiverton; then he left the highway for the lonelier roads. The car
charged the dark hills and galloped the levels, a black stallion
with silent hoofs and dreadful haste. There was so much death, so
much death in the world! The youth and strength and genius of all
Europe were going over the brink eternally in a Niagara of blood.
And the sea that Charity was about to venture on, the sea whose
estuaries lapped this sidelong shore so innocently with such tender
luster under the gentle moon, was drawing down every day and every
night ships and ships and ships with their treasures of labor and
their brave crews till it seemed that the floor of the ocean must
be populous with the dead.
Charity felt quite close to death. A very solemn tenderness of
farewell endeared the beautiful world and all its doomed creatures.
But most dear of all was this big, simple man at her side, the man
she ought to have married. It was all her fault that she had not.
She owed him a profound eternal apology, and she had not the right
to pay the debt--that is, so long as she lived she had not the right.
But if they were never to meet again--then she was already dying
to him.
It was important that she should not depart this life without making
restitution of what she owed. She had owed Jim Dyckman the love he
had pleaded for from her and would not get from anyone else.
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