And that too, his nothing, is as irremediable as your all.
He can no more ever cast back and do, than you can cast back and undo.
You have a manchild that is not his, by a man that is not him.
You will be forcing into his life two men and only the third part of a woman, who deserves at the least that the nothing with which he has lived for thirty-five years be violated, if violated it must be, without two witnesses.
Send him away.”
“That ain’t for me to do.
He is free.
Ask him.
I have not tried once to hold him.”
“That’s it.
You probably could not have held him, if you had tried to.
That’s it.
If you had known how to try.
But then, if you had known that, you would not be here in this cot, with this child at your breast.
And you won’t send him away?
You won’t say the word?”
“I can say no more than I have said.
And I said No to him five days ago.”
“No?”
“He said for me to marry him.
To not wait.
And I said No.”
“Would you say No now?”
She looks at him steadily.
“Yes.
I would say it now.”
He sighs, huge, shapeless; his face is again slack, weary.
“I believe you.
You will continue to say it until after you have seen ...” He looks at her again; again his gaze is intent, hard. “Where is he?
Byron?”
She looks at him.
After a while she says quietly:
“I don’t know.” She looks at him; suddenly her face is quite empty, as though something which gave it actual solidity and firmness were beginning to drain out of it.
Now there is nothing of dissimulation nor alertness nor caution in it. “This morning about ten o’clock he came back.
He didn’t come in.
He just came to the door and he stood there and he just looked at me.
And I hadn’t seen him since last night and he hadn’t seen the baby and I said,
‘Come and see him,’ and he looked at me, standing there in the door, and he said,
‘I come to find out when you want to see him,’ and I said,
‘See who?’ and he said,
‘They may have to send a deputy with him but I can persuade Kennedy to let him come,’ and I said,
‘Let who come?’ and he said,
‘Lucas Bunch,’ and I said,
‘Yes,’ and he said,
‘This evening?
Will that do?’ and I said,
‘Yes,’ and he went away.
He just stood there, and then he went away.” While he watches her with that despair of all men in the presence of female tears, she begins to cry.
She sits upright, the child at her breast, crying, not loud and not hard, but with a patient and hopeless abjectness, not hiding her face. “And you worry me about if I said No or not and I already said No and you worry me and worry me and now he is already gone.
I will never see him again.”