bodiless thing, like a ghost in a bottomless cleft between the past and
the to come. And I was to be that forever.

"You only loved me," she repeated. "Yes, you loved me. But what claim
upon me does that give you? You loved me.... Well, if I had loved you it
would have given you a claim.... All your misery; your heartache comes
from ... from love; your love for me, your love for the things of the
past, for what was doomed.... You loved the others too ... in a way, and
you betrayed them and you are wretched. If you had not loved them you
would not be wretched now; if you had not loved me you would not have
betrayed your--your very self. At the first you stood alone; as much
alone as I. All these people were nothing to you. I was nothing to you.
But you must needs love them and me. You should have let them remain
nothing to the end. But you did not. What were they to you?--Shapes,
shadows on a sheet. They looked real. But were they--any one of them?
You will never see them again; you will never see me again; we shall be
all parts of a past of shadows. If you had been as I am, you could have
looked back upon them unmoved or could have forgotten.... But you ...
'you only loved' and you will have no more ease. And, even now, it is
only yourself that matters. It is because you broke; because you were
false to your standards at a supreme moment; because you have discovered
that your honour will not help you to stand a strain. It is not the
thought of the harm you have done the others.... What are they--what is
Churchill who has fallen or Fox who is dead--to you now? It is yourself
that you bemoan. That is your tragedy, that you can never go again to
Churchill with the old look in your eyes, that you can never go to
anyone for fear of contempt.... Oh, I know you, I know you."

She knew me. It was true, what she said.