The Goddess Abides: A Novel Read Online Free Page B

exactly,” he replied, still irritably.
    “Why not?”
    He pushed his plate aside, rose and went to the window. There he stood gazing at the shadowed mountain and the hanging moon.
    “I’m in a strange situation,” he said.
    “Yes?” Her voice invited.
    “I’m always too young for what I want to do, but I’m too old for—for girls.”
    A moment of silence hung between them, as tenuous, as quivering, as the new moon, glimmering in the clouds now drifting above the mountain.
    “I don’t quite know what you mean,” she said at last, her voice gentle.
    “I don’t, either,” he said abruptly and came back to the table and sat down. “More coffee, please. What’s your name, by the way? Your first name—”
    “Edith.”
    “Edith,” he repeated. “Edith? I never knew anyone with that name. My mother had a silly name—Ariadne. Still, it’s rather sweet. As I said, I don’t remember her, but my uncle said she was a sweet person.”
    “What happened to them?” she asked in the same gentle voice.
    “They were killed in a motor accident when I was two. Yet I seem to remember someone like my mother, a soft pretty someone—but probably I don’t remember, really—just a dream, perhaps, or even pure imagination.”
    “And there’s been no one to take her place?”
    “No. My uncle never married. Didn’t I tell you? I suppose he has a mistress tucked away somewhere. We never discuss such matters.”
    “No one has ever taken your mother’s place?”
    “I’ve never looked for anyone. Mothers are irreplaceable, aren’t they?”
    “Yes,” she said firmly, and then after a moment, “but the girl? Is she younger than you really?”
    “Not so many years—but otherwise—” He shrugged slightly. “Yet she’s clever enough, intelligent, all that. But I’m too old for her. I’m too old for myself. I’m a burden even to myself.”
    She laughed, “Oh, come now!”
    He did not reply with laughter. “Yes, I am that. I’m interested in too many things, not people. So much I want to do! I’ve no time for—for marriage and so forth, and that’s what this girl wants.”
    “Is she in love with you?”
    “She says so.”
    “And you?”
    “I? When I’m with her, I’m normal enough to feel the stir, you know! But the old part of me knows better. ‘You’ll be bored with her.’ That’s what it tells me—am I mad?”
    “No. Only wise.”
    “I could do with less wisdom.”
    “Don’t say that. It’s given to you as a tool for accomplishment.”
    “Of what?”
    “Of whatever it is that you want to accomplish.”
    “To penetrate the secrets of the universe!”
    He leaned forward, elbows on the table, his eyes shining into hers, and she felt comforted, even elated, for some vague reason she did not wish to comprehend.
    “I must leave early tomorrow morning,” he said abruptly, and as abruptly went to the piano and began to play.
    Snow fell upon snow, in silence and chill. It began as he left the house the next morning, the sky gray and the mountain clouded in mist. Winter settled over the eastern coast. In Philadelphia, too, it was snowing, her radio had announced.
    “I hate to leave this warm house,” he said.
    He stood at the door, wrapped in his rough, outdoor coat, its cap falling back.
    “You are leaving your skis in the cellar. That means you will be back,” she said.
    “Yes, but I mean this morning.”
    “This morning,” she echoed.
    She could not tell him what she was thinking, what she always thought when snow was falling. Arnold, lying under the snow! Of course she was accustomed by now, if she was ever to be accustomed, that is, and why should it be the snow? In the spring she could contemplate his grave without agony, and in the autumn the bright leaves falling from a maple tree near his grave made the city churchyard almost cheerful. But the snow? The realization of his death, desolate and final, had come at the first snowfall and she was alone here in this house. She had