“Up until a month or so ago,” he said, “I was the right man for you, and you were the only woman who had ever mattered to me. It had not occurred to me those things could change. It’s not just that we want different things. It’s that I have become a different man. To marry you—to live with you—would be false. To both of us. You deserve someone who comes to you with a whole heart.”

“You’ve fallen in love with someone else.”

“That’s only part of it,” he said.

“That’s the only part I need to know.” All this time, she had kept his hand in hers, but now she released him, in a gesture both stately and final. She came to her feet, and he followed suit, feeling as if there had not been enough sentences between them for him to explain what he truly meant.

“There’s so much to tell you,” he began, “but so much I don’t know how to put into words.”

She held up one hand as if to enjoin silence and moved back from him a pace or two. Her face was so stony he was sure she was holding back tears, but she moved with all her usual grace and dignity. “At times like this,” she said, “words are the most harmful things in the world. The less you say, the less I’ll have to remember.”

He stood still a moment, trying to think of a response to that, but it was clear all she wanted from him was an exit. He made a small bow, a quaint acknowledgement of her unexpressed desire, and moved toward the door. On the threshold he paused, and turned back toward her.

“Yours is the spirit that formed me more than any other,” he told her. “When I think of the last fifteen years of my life, everything will be colored by you. You taught me only the sweeter aspects of love. I never knew, till others told me, that love also can be careless and cruel. What I have become is something you would not want, but I did not become that because of anything you have done. Had I been given a choice about it, I would have remained who I was, and faithful to you. And I will always love you for the beauty you brought to my life.”

She listened, but nothing about her softened. “None of that helps,” she said in a forlorn voice, and turned her back on him. He waited a moment longer in silence, then left the room. That would be, he thought, the last time in his life he would ever see her.

*   *   *