So we sat side by side. The rain pelted the
window, the clock chimed. And the night was passing. A proposal of
marriage seemed belated, incongruous. Yet it came into my mind as a
protective coloration to more immediate expressions of the moment.
Men have lost women because they dishonored them or betrayed them or
changed for the time toward them--for a thousand reasons. But look at
me. What were friendship, truth, honor, the service of all that I was,
love in its highest and deepest sense, understanding, sympathy with all
of Isabel's flights of the mind, if I could not come to her with a
promise of the future? She was not only the revelation of all that I had
desired and of all that I had missed in life, but she was the symbol of
a fate that has come past the appointed hour. I was the father of
Reverdy by Dorothy, whom I loved with a heart's beginning; and I was the
defeated lover of the ideal whom I had found too late.
In these circumstances of myself and Isabel were symbolized the lives of
all men who give their devotions to lesser loves, who find their
creations and their work imperfect or worthless when the planting season
has passed.
As hollow as the words sounded, I nevertheless asked Isabel to be my
wife. And Isabel without changing her position and without opening her
eyes said in the quietest of voices: "You know I love you.
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