_I love you. I love you._
Gently the daffodils swayed in this light breeze of dying March, and the
grass was already tall enough to sigh forth its transitory summer tune.
Guy in a flood of penitence hastened at once to the Rectory to accuse
himself to Pauline, and when he saw her watching for him at the nursery
window he had no regrets that could stab to wound him as deeply as he
deserved to be wounded. She was very tender and still that afternoon,
and as he held her in his arms there seemed to him nothing more worth
while in life than her cherishing. For them sitting in that nursery the
hours swung lazily to and fro in felicity, and all the time there was
nobody to disturb the reconciliation. They talked only of the future and
allowed recent despairs and foreboding agitations to slink away
disgraced. Janet, coming to take away the tea-things, beamed at their
happiness and through a filigree of bare jasmine twigs the slanting sun
touched with new life the faded wall-paper, opening wider, it seemed,
the daisies' eyes, mellowing the berries and tinting the birds with
brighter plumes for their immutable and immemorial courtship.
Plunged deep in such a peace Guy prompted by damnable discord asked idly
what had been that dream of which Pauline had spoken in her letter. She
was unwilling for a long while to tell him, but he spurred on by
mischief itself persuaded her in the end and she recounted that
experience of waking to find herself prone upon the floor of her room.
"No wonder you're looking pale," he exclaimed. "Now you see the result
of exciting yourself unnecessarily."
"But it was so vivid," she protested, "and really the light was blinding
and it thought so terribly all the time."
"I shall think very terribly that you've been reading some
spiritualistic rot in a novel," said Guy, "if you talk like that. Your
religion may be true, but I'm quite sure these conjuring tricks of your
fancy are a sign of hysteria. And this poor speck that was me? How did
you know it was me if it was a speck? Did that think too? My foolish
Pauline, you encouraged your morbid ideas when you were awake and when
you were asleep you paid the penalty."
She had gone away from him and was standing by the window.
"Guy, if you talk like that, it means you don't really love me. It means
you have no sympathy, that you're cold and cruel and cynical."
He sighed with elaborate compassion for her state of mind.
"And what else? I wonder how you ever managed to fall in love with me."
"Sometimes I wonder too," she said slowly.
He turned quickly and went out of the room.
Guy regretted before he was half-way down the passage what he had done,
but he steeled himself against going back by persuading himself that
Pauline's hysteria must be remorselessly checked. All the way back to
Plashers Mead he had excuses for his behaviour, and all the way he was
wondering if he had done right. Supposing that she were to persist in
this exaggeration of everything, who could say into what extravagance of
attitude she might not find herself driven? Rage seized him against this
malady that was sapping the foundations of their love, and all his
affection for her was obscured in the contemplation of that overwrought
Pauline who sacrificed herself to baseless doubts and alarms. If he
once admitted her right to dream ridiculously about him, he would be
encouraging her upon the road to madness. Had she not already fondled
the notion of going mad, just as she would often fondle the picture of
herself as the heroine of an unhappy love-affair? If he were severe now,
she would surely come to see the absurdity of these religious fears,
this heart-searching and morbid sensitiveness. It was curious that he
was able to keep his idea of Pauline herself quite apart from Pauline as
the subject of nervous depression. He was practically ascribing to her a
double personality, so distinct were the two views of her in his mind.
When he got home he found the manuscript had been sent back by a seventh
publisher, and on top of the packet lay a letter from his friend
Comeragh.