him pass. It was not that she had quarrelled with him, for in the mood that had overtaken him he was indifferent to her anger; and it was not that he did not love her as passionately as ever, though there was a despair of love in his thought. It was merely that he had found her separated from him by that space of mental isolation which seems to divide every one person from every other, the cold interplanetary space which surrounds what we call souls and separates them as eternally as the worlds of the solar system. He had found her a centred identity following an orbit of thoughts and interests within which she saw him revolving, drawn by a superior attraction. Love might bring them a little nearer together; he felt, now, that it could never really merge them in an absolute unity of interest and outlook. And this old tragedy of affection had come on him with a deadening chill of banishment and desertion.
He told himself that he must find her something to do. He assured himself that he would do so. But he knew that whether he succeeded in that endeavour or failed in it, whether she remained in New York or went away, whether he won her or lost her for life, she would be, always, as she was now, a fellow-human looking out at him from the closed chamber of her identity as he looked out at her. He was alone in the world—alone even with her. He might help her and love her, as he might love and help anybody; but he could not share with her his imprisonment in being. The walls were up between them. They spoke through grated windows—which Death, at last, would close.
