He wanted her to hold him and say, with joy and authority: "Stop all this restlessness and beating against death.

You are mine for a mate." She had not the strength.

Or was it a mate she wanted?
or did she want a Christ in him?
He felt, in leaving her, he was defrauding her of life.

But he knew that, in staying, stilling the inner, desperate man, he was denying his own life.

And he did not hope to give life to her by denying his own.
She sat very quiet.