For a moment--one mad moment--Lauraine forgets all else save that she
loves. Then she snatches herself away from those fierce-clasping
arms and starts back, covering her crimson cheeks with her hands,
while at her feet the cluster of roses falls, and lies unheeded.
"Oh, Keith!" she sobs, terrified and dismayed.
He recoils as if a blow had struck him. His eyes--_bad_ blue eyes,
indeed, now--burn with eager light. A thousand mad, wild words rush
to his lips, but he does not speak them. He is striving for an
instant's self-command. "Forgive me," he says. "I--I forgot. You
used to let me kiss you in the old days, you know."
"The old days," she says, and her hands drop, and white and sad she
stands before him, looking back at his face with agonized eyes. "I
thought you had forgotten them long ago!"
"Since your wedding-day, you mean?" he says bitterly. "No,
Lauraine--I do not forget easily, and you are not the sort of woman a
man can forget. Heaven knows, I tried hard enough. I did everything
in my power to drive you out of my head those twelve months after
your marriage. A black year that is to look back upon, Lauraine; and
you gave it to me."
"Oh, hush!" she says entreatingly; "you have no right to speak like
this now, and I have no right to listen."
"No right," he says, and all the rich, full music of his voice has
grown hoarse and harsh with strong emotion. "I _have_ a right--every
right. The right of loving you with the truest, fondest love man
ever gave to woman. I never meant to meet you again--I never sought
you; but Fate threw you in my way in Rome, and after all those weary
months I--I could not help being glad of it. You--of course it was
nothing to you: it never will be--you are so cold; you never cared
for me as I for you, and now--oh, God--if you only knew _how_ I love
you!"
Lauraine shivers from head to foot. It is not his words, his
reproaches, that fill her with so strange a dread--it is herself.
She knows that she loves him as intensely and as uselessly as he
loves her, and that before their two lives now stretches a broad
black gulf they cannot cross or evade.
She is quite speechless. The awful ordeal of that wedding-day comes
back before her eyes, fresh and vivid as if it had been but
yesterday. She knows she has committed a fatal error, but it is too
late now to rectify it. Presently Keith speaks again.
"I think you have spoilt my whole life," he says. "Thought drives me
mad, or to distractions that are ruinous to body and soul. I feel as
if I cannot bear to live as I do. Why," he continues passionately,
"do you know, I never stand alone on a moonlight night, or look at
any beauty in nature or in art, or see the stars shining in the sky,
but I long and long till longing drives me desperate for just your
presence beside me, your voice on my ear. I never hear a strain of
music that touches my soul but I long to turn to you for answering
sympathy. I am young and rich, and have life and the world before
me, and yet there is no single thing I can enjoy with any real
heart-whole enjoyment now. There is always the one want that drives
me desperate--the one craving for _you_!"
Lauraine listens to the torrent of his words, and all her soul seems
rent and shaken. In the old days, the old boy and girl days
together, she had never loved Keith Athelstone as she loves him now,
and that thought terrifies her with a sense of her own wickedness and
an awful dread of the ordeal before her.
"I am sorry--so sorry," she says tremulously. "I did hope you had
got over it--had forgotten--
"Forgotten!" interrupts Keith bitterly. "No; I leave that for women."
"Do you think I forgot?" she cries, flashing round upon him with
sudden, tempestuous anger. "I did not. My marriage was in a way
forced upon me by my mother. You knew it, then. Why do you say such
things to me now? Am I not wretched enough?"
Her voice breaks into a faint sob, and all his heart melts at a sign
of grief from her.
"Are you wretched?" he says softly. "Oh, my poor darling, not half
so wretched as I. When you gave yourself away from me you little
knew what you did. I think I have never known one happy moment
since--nor ever shall again."
"Why do you tell me this? Is it any use?" falters Lauraine.
"I don't know," he says wearily. "I thought, perhaps, you might pity
me--be a little sorry for your work."
"Oh, don't talk like that," she entreats, lifting two soft tear-wet
eyes to the young, haggard, reproachful face before her. "Pity
you--do you think I am a stone; that I have no feeling?"
"Then you _are_ sorry--a little sorry," he says, coming nearer.
"Well, that is some consolation. But I can't live on that. I want
something more. I don't care how badly you think of me, Lauraine.
After to-night I suppose I have just done for myself, but I _will_
hear you say what your eyes told me a little while ago--say you love
me."
His arms are wrapped around the slender, trembling figure--he holds
her closely to his breast and looks down, down, into her eyes with
all the fire and passion of his impulsive nature burning in his own.
As she meets that look the blood flies like flame through her veins.
She feels escape is impossible.
"Don't ask me," she whispers faintly.
His look never changes. "Answer me," he says.
Her eyes sink before that gaze, and all the lustre of the summer
night seems to sway and reel amidst the leafy shadows.
"Yes--I love you," she says, with sudden desperation. "It is no new
thing to tell you--Heaven forgive me for saying it! Is my shame
complete--is there any other confession you wish to force from me?"
His arms release her as suddenly as they had clasped her. "No," he
says. "Do not speak so bitterly. I am a brute, I know; but I was
always a bad fellow, according to your mother. After all, it is a
poor satisfaction to know we are both in the same boat. It makes my
pain no less to know you share it. Well, I suppose I have about done
for myself now. I may go galloping to the downward road as fast as I
like. I have insulted you, and I have made an utter fool of myself.
I'd give a great deal not to have done it, but it's too late to say
that now. Will you ever forgive me, Lorry?"
The old pet-name of their childish days slips out unconsciously. It
moves Lauraine almost to tears. How sad, how changed, how
unutterably dreary is life now! "I have little to forgive," she says
unsteadily. "I share your fault. Only--only----"
"Hush!" he says, with sudden fierceness. "I know what you are going
to say. My folly has shut me out from the only happiness I have.
How cruel a _good_ woman can be."
"It is not cruelty--it is safety," murmurs Lauraine, with faltering
voice. "How can we meet and face each other in the world knowing
what we know? Friendship between us is impossible--you have made it
so--and there can be--nothing more."
"I would rather _die_ than lose you," says Keith passionately. "If
you were happy it would be different; but you are not, and your
husband is a blackguard, and half London knows it--even your precious
mother. It was bad enough to stand aside and see you sold to him, as
you were; but it was nothing to what it is now--now, when I know you
are not even happy. Oh, Lauraine, God knows I would have made you
_that_, if it lay in any mortal's power!"
The hot colour comes into the beautiful, pale face on which his eyes
are fixed. She holds out her hands entreatingly.
"Say no more--it can do no good. Whatever his faults are, I am his
wife. Nothing can alter that!"
"Something can," is trembling on Keith's lips, but he does not utter
it. Lauraine is not a woman to be trifled with, and he dares not
breathe a word that would insult her dignity. All that is boiling in
his heart he dares not even think. He knows the purity of her soul
and life, and from that pedestal he cannot drag her down to listen to
the baser temptings that he might have whispered to another woman.
For a moment they stand silently there. At last Keith speaks. "I
never meant to say such words to you again. I don't know what drove
me mad to-night. The music, and that song, and your look combined.
Oh! Lauraine, you can't love as I do, or you would not scruple to
take happiness while it lay in your power. Life is so short, except
for those who are miserable, and in all our lives we shall only drag
on a wretched half-and-half existence. I know you are the one woman
in the world for me, and I have lost you."
"You may forget--in--time," falters Lauraine, her lips growing white
at the pain of that thought, her whole soul wrung with the
unutterable anguish of this coming parting. "You are very young,
Keith, and have the world before you."
"The world is not you," he answers, looking down from his tall height
on the pale, sad face he loves so madly. "It is all nothingness and
emptiness to me now. But you won't be too cruel to me, Lorry--you
won't visit the sins of this evening too hardly on my head. Don't
tell me we are never to meet or see each other. I can't live without
a sight of you sometimes, and if you will only say you forgive me I
promise not to offend in the same way again. I have kept silence all
these months--I can do it again, and----"
"Oh, Keith, don't tempt me like this," she entreats sorrowfully.
"You know--you must know--that if we love each other we cannot be
'only' friends. It is not safe for either of us."
"I shall not run away from you as if I were afraid," he says
doggedly. "I do not care to live a day if I don't see you. Can't
you trust me? can't you believe my word? To-night shall be buried
and forgotten, unless--well, unless some happier fate awaits us in
the future. We can be as we were, surely. There is no harm in that?"
_No harm in that?_
Lauraine echoes the words in her heart. No harm--and with the memory
of this scene in both their hearts, the thought of that passionate
embrace, thrilling every pulse, the rapture of one mad moment ever at
hand to repeat its tempting. No harm in it!
A spasm of pain crosses her face.
"Your own sense, your own feelings, ought to tell you that such a
course is full of harm," she says faintly. "But, of course, I have
no power to banish you. You accuse me of blighting your life, and I
deserve the reproach. I should have been firmer--truer; but I did
not think your love was so faithful, and in one weak moment I yielded
to my mother's persuasions. The harm is done past all undoing,
and--and now you wish to increase my unhappiness."
"I wish to be nearer to you--to see you sometimes; that is all. Is
it a great deal to ask, considering what I have suffered at your
hands?"
Lauraine knows it is only paltering with temptation--only leaping up
fresh misery for herself and him in time to come, but still she
hesitates; she is only a woman, and she loves.
Alas! that instant's hesitation undoes all the better resolves she
has been striving to make. A window is thrown open--voices
sound--there comes an echo of footsteps--they are alone no longer.
Keith bends over her impulsively. "Say one word, Lauraine--only one.
Say 'stay!'"
She draws her breath sharp and quick--his hand is on her own--she
feels its strong, warm pressure, and all her good resolutions fly
away. Nothing seems in her heart but one aching, passionate longing
for his presence--his voice. Her face pales to the whiteness of
death, but to his ear steals the word he has asked for--a whisper
that seals their fate to-night--a whisper for which the future holds
its own Nemesis of dread and of despair.
"Stay!" she says, and they pass out of the silver radiance of the
night as they entered it--together.