"The knowledge that Ennis would not THEN embrace him face-to-face" is the clue to this thread's answer. Jack knew - AT THE TIME OF THE EMBRACE - that Ennis would not want to admit to himself that he held a man. BUT later on, that changed. The word "then" is crucial, to me. It shows that the relationship did expand greatly after the time of that embrace which we know occurred when they were very young ( no gray hair and no lines on their faces). Surely, by the time of the reunion kiss, Ennis knew damned well he was holding and kissing a man, and he surely was not shying away from that fact. He went for the kiss gangbusters.
I'm with all of you who refuse to believe Jack quit Ennis. By his own words, he couldn't do that. He said he WISHED he could quit him, but he knew, and we do, too, that he wasn't ablt to do that. That doesn't mean he may not have become more involved with Randall, but that doesn't mean he wouldn't run when Ennis called. To me, that's the love part of this whole situation.
quote author=NoReins link=topic=304.msg218270#msg218270 date=1154442538]
From the short story:
"...they torqued things almost to where they had benn, for what they'd said was no news. Nothing ended, nothing begun, nothing resolved."
And then:
"Later, that dozy embrace solidified in his memory as the single moment of artless, charmed happiness in their separate and difficult lives. Nothing marred it, even the knowledge that Ennis would not then embrace him face to face because he did not want to see nor feel that it was Jack he held. And maybe, he thought, they'd never got much farther than that. Let be, let be."
The 'let be' does it for me. He wasn't going anywhere.
Thanks for that FlwrChild. I couldn't remember the exact passage from the ss.
I do like your interpretation of "let be, let be", and I share it, but I can see how others get that Jack was going to quit Ennis from that passage too. Jack has realised that they've never moved beyond the fact that Ennis doesn't want to think about the fact that he's with a man and it's time to let it be and move on to someone who is comfortable with his sexuality.
Ah jeez - now I'm going round in circles with this