"I believed in you, I gave you everything I had. You have had it, and you
leave me. I made no pretences--I told you all my secrets. You said that
you loved me--and now you leave me. Go, please. I hope I shall never see
you again."
Her great eyes loomed in her hot face like beacons. Her colour was high,
her lips vivid. She looked as beautiful as an Indian flower. She was
fighting for her own like a cat. An absent, shadowy, icily-pure Sanchia
could never contend with this quivering reality of scarlet and burning
brown; and the man stood disarmed before her, watching her every movement
and sensible of every call of her body. Her wild words provoked him, her
beauty melted him; pity for her, shame, memories of what he had believed
her, impossible visions of what she might be; he was tossed this way and
that, was whirled, engulfed, overwhelmed. There is only one end to such
strifes. With a short cry, he threw up his arms.
"God help us, I stay," he said.
III
Hear now of the immediate end. This gentleman, a philosopher and poet,
rich in theory, having reached a middle point in his career, had found
that he had, without knowing it, encountered a Fact which had gripped him
in a vital part, squeezed the very fibres of him, sucked him apparently
dry of human juices, even of the zest to live, and presently departed,
leaving him faint by the wayside.
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