She entered her bedroom and
crossed to the door of his bedroom; she pushed this open, and keeping
her face bent aside waited for him to go in. He went in and she closed
the door on him and turned the key. Then with a low note, with which
the soul tears out of itself something that has been its life, she
made a circlet of her white arms against the door and laid her profile
within this circlet and stood--the figure of Memory.
Thus sometimes a stranger sees a marble figure standing outside a tomb
where some story of love and youth ended: some stranger in a far
land,--walking some afternoon in those quieter grounds where all human
stories end; an autumn bird in the bare branches fluting of its
mortality and his heart singing with the bird of one lost to him--lost
to him in his own country.
On the other side of the door the silence was that of a tomb. She had
felt confident--so far as she had expected anything--that he would
speak to her through the door, try to open it, plead with her to open
it. Nothing of the kind occurred.
Why did he not come back? What bolt could have separated her from him?
The silence began to weigh upon her.
Then in the tense stillness she heard him moving quietly about,
getting ready for bed.
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