I meant it would be like a sign--of you. I shouldn't be able to
forget you; you would be there in the ring, in the box, in the drawer,
like the portrait of Aunt Sophia's--' She stopped herself. 'And I
can't burn you.'
'I don't know what you are talking about. I suppose I ought to.'
'No, you oughtn't.' She sprang up, delivered from her weakness. 'This
is nonsense. Of course, I can't keep your ring. Take it back, Charles.
It's beautiful. I thought it would be all red and blue like a flag,
but it's lovely. It makes my mouth water. It's like white fire.'
'It's like you,' he said. 'You're just as bright and just as hard, and
if only you were as small, I could put you in my pocket and never let
you go.'
She opened her eyes very wide. 'Then why do you let me go?' she asked
on an ascending note, and she did not mean to taunt him. It would be
so easy for him to keep her, if he knew how. She expected a despairing
groan, she half hoped for a violent embrace, but he answered quietly,
'I don't really let you go. It's you I love, not just your hair and
your face and the way your nose turns up, and your hands and feet, and
your straight neck. I have to let them go, but you don't go. You stay
with me all the time: you always will. You're like music, always in my
head, but you're more than that. You go deeper: I suppose into my
heart. Sometimes I think I'm carrying you in my arms. I can't see you
but I can feel you're there, and sometimes I laugh because I think
you're laughing.
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