No More Learning

'I congratulate you,' she said. 'I hope you will be always happy. You
came here on some business for your firm, I suppose? I believe they
have some connection with the town still. '

'I only came here to tell you I was going to be married. '

'Do you not think it would have been better to have written? ' she said,
beginning to put away the children's tea-things in a cupboard by the
fireplace.

'It would have been better,' he answered, drooping his head.

Without a word, locking the door behind them, they went out. Without
a word they walked the grey streets. Now and then a woman or a child
curtseyed as they passed. Some wondered, perhaps, to see these old
friends so silent. At the rectory they bade each other good-bye.

'I hope you will be always happy,' she said. 'I will pray for you and
your wife.
I am very busy with the children and old people, but I shall
always find a moment to wish you well in. Good-bye now. '

They parted; the gate in the wall closed behind her. He stayed for a
few moments looking up at the tops of the trees and bushes showing over
the wall, and at the house a little way beyond. He stood considering
his problem--her life, his life. His, at any rate, would have incident
and change; hers would be the narrow existence of a woman who, failing
to fulfil the only abiding wish she has ever formed, seeks to lose
herself in routine--mournfulest of things on this old planet.

This had been revealed: he loved Mary Carton, she loved him. He
remembered Margaret Leland, and murmured she did well to be jealous.
Then all her contemptuous words about the town and its inhabitants came
into his mind. Once they made no impression on him, but now the sense
of personal identity having been disturbed by this sudden revelation,
alien as they were to his way of thinking, they began to press in on
him. Mary, too, would have agreed with them, he thought; and might it
be that at some distant time weary monotony in abandonment would have
so weighed down the spirit of Mary Carton that she would be merely one
of the old and sleepy whose dulness filled the place like a cloud?

He went sadly towards the hotel; everything about him, the road, the
sky, the feet wherewith he walked seeming phantasmal and without
meaning.

He told the waiter he would leave by the first train in the morning.
'What! and you only just come home? ' the man answered.