kissed me with tear-salt lips.

I was promised now and pledged, and I hardened my heart against this
impossible dawn. Yet it seems to me that there were moments when it
needed but a cry, but one word to have united us again for all our
lives. Could we have united again? Would that passage have enlightened
us for ever or should we have fallen back in a week or so into the old
estrangement, the old temperamental opposition?

Of that there is now no telling. Our own resolve carried us on our
predestined way. We behaved more and more like separating lovers,
parting inexorably, but all the preparations we had set going worked on
like a machine, and we made no attempt to stop them. My trunks and boxes
went to the station. I packed my bag with Marion standing before me. We
were like children who had hurt each other horribly in sheer stupidity,
who didn't know now how to remedy it. We belonged to each other
immensely--immensely. The cab came to the little iron gate.

"Good-bye!" I said.

"Good-bye."

For a moment we held one another in each other's arms and
kissed--incredibly without malice. We heard our little servant in the
passage going to open the door. For the last time we pressed ourselves
to one another. We were not lovers nor enemies, but two human souls in a
frank community of pain. I tore myself from her.

"Go away," I said to the servant, seeing that Marion had followed me
down.