REVEALS THE BARRIER
Edris sat staring blankly in front of her.
Her breath came and went in short, quick gasps, and he saw that her
small, white hands were trembling. She seemed startled, even afraid.
Her lips moved, but no sound came from them.
His declaration was so unexpected that she sat dazed.
“Edris,” he exclaimed, as, with sudden impulse, he fell upon one knee
and, taking her hand, raised it to his lips. “I--I want to tell you,
darling, that ever since that day in Wengen when I was indiscreet
enough to tell you of Elaine, and you sympathized with me, I have
loved you. Nearly a year has gone since then, but I dared not tell you
the truth, because--because I knew that you loved Lionel.”
She said nothing. She seemed to hold her breath, and he felt her hand
trembling in his.
“You do not speak,” he went on in a low, soft voice. “Are you annoyed
that I should have summoned courage to tell you the truth, Edris? I
know that my love for you is forbidden on account of my age. You will
love, and--and marry a man younger than myself, and be happy. I know
it all!” he cried in desperation. “I ought not to have told you this.
I--I regret it,” he urged, his voice broken by emotion. “Forgive me,
Edris.”
Slowly she raised her pale face, and, looking shyly into his eyes,
said in a whisper:
“There is nothing to forgive, Seton.”
“Ah, but I ought to have still preserved the secret of my love for
you. It is more than love! I stifled the fire of my passion all these
months because I knew that you belonged to Lionel. I suppose it is the
knowledge that you are now free that has loosened my tongue. I don’t
expect that you can ever love a man of my age. It isn’t fair to ask
you to make such a sacrifice, darling. So I withdraw my words. I----”
“Do you really wish to withdraw?” she interrupted.
“Do I wish!” he cried despairingly. “Certainly not.”
She was silent for some moments.
“Then why do you do so?” she whispered, her head bowed again.
“Because--well, I know too well that you can never love me,” he said
in a bitter, broken voice.
She paused, and then she said: “I knew that you liked me, Seton, but I
never dreamed that you actually loved me. I confess that, after my
experience with Lionel, my faith in men is now shattered.”
“And very naturally, my darling,” he said soothingly. “You have had a
cruel and bitter disillusionment, I know. The pangs of jealousy you
have suffered must have been the very tortures of hell. I have never
experienced them, because, until now, I have never in my life loved a
woman. But, darling, believe me, I adore you. I can say no more. I
only beg your forgiveness for telling you the truth.”
“You have my forgiveness,” the girl replied, tears welling in her
great, gray eyes.
She rose to her feet slowly, and he did the same, still holding her
hand and looking into her sweet, pale face. Her bare arms and chest
were white as alabaster, and their contour exquisitely perfect.
“I thank you, Edris. I, however, dare not ask that you should love me
in return,” he said. “You are my idol, and I worship you--my adored.
But I realize only too plainly and bitterly the folly of a love that
can never be reciprocated. I love now, for the first time in all my
adventurous life. My soul is in your keeping!”
The girl listened to him in silence. Her head was still bent, her eyes
fixed upon the carpet, her white brow troubled, her eyes narrowed in
thought, and her lips trembling. She who had learnt such a hard lesson
in youth’s school of love, and had in secret vowed to have her revenge
upon every man she met, was inert and hesitating. She had listened to
declarations of love from other men’s lips on two or three occasions
when on a trip round the world. In India and on the decks of liners,
at dances, she had been courted by men, all of whom she had flouted
until Lionel came into her life. He had been her ideal. Her affection
for him had been a grand passion, but at what a cost! Her heart was
broken. She now hated men with a deep and violent hatred, and had
vowed to herself that never in all her life would she believe the word
of any man.
She raised her face to Darville’s, and the love-look she saw in his
dark eyes softened her. A moment before it had been in her mind to
have an interesting flirtation with him, because he was famous and his
manner was charming, and then to throw him over with heartless
disregard of his feelings. But in his glance she suddenly realized
that he was violently in love with her. Moreover, his passion for her
had commenced nearly a year ago, and he had resolutely abstained from
seeing her since that time because he believed her to be Lionel’s
fiancée. His silence was the act of an honorable man, if nothing
else.
Such were the thoughts which flashed through her mind at that crucial
moment.
He spoke some words, but they fell upon ears that were deaf. Her mind
was not made up. His repeated regretful references to his age did not
concern her. After her experience of Lionel’s vacillating nature and
his unstable character, she had come to prefer elderly men to those of
her own age. The young men she so constantly met in society she held
in abhorrence. She thought them all silly, inane, and egotistical,
inasmuch as they “got on her nerves,” and caused her to prefer the
society of men whose years had brought them to discretion. And Seton
Darville was one of the latter.
From the first moment of their introduction, she had liked him on
account of his unfailing courtesy and his unruffled merriment. She
regarded him as a popular figure in society, a man who had not the
slightest care in all the world. He had told her one day the romantic
story of Rene--how, when she was a little child of twelve, he had
adopted her after the sudden death of both her parents, friends of his
who had, alas! left her penniless. For fifteen years he had given her
a life of luxury, with expensive governesses, and satisfying her every
whim, for in his lonely life she was the one bright spot. But now she
had married and gone abroad, so that he was again a lonely man. His
sympathetic nature and his great heart had led him into many
liabilities which he could not afford. One of his secrets was that for
twenty years he had supported a poor bedridden woman whom he had
found, with her little child, selling matches on the Embankment. And
often he had had to send her weekly money when, as a Bohemian, his own
finances were tight.
His only reward had been a weekly letter of thanks, and of heartfelt
prayers for his future. In the heart of Seton Darville was that
old-world spirit of chivalry towards a woman that is, unfortunately,
almost extinct nowadays.
Edris Temperley knew nothing of that side of his character, any more
than she knew of his Secret Service work. She regarded him as a pet of
Society, a man who was received everywhere, and who had so many
invitations that he might live the year in and out as a visitor to his
friends.
He had told her in all deep earnestness that his soul was in her
keeping. His eyes had softened her. She realized the pain and
suffering he had gone through ever since that day amid the Alpine
snows when he had first grown to love her.
She realized that he was an outstanding man in spite of his years;
that he was strong and upright, smart without a suspicion of dandyism,
a man whose eyes danced with the joy of living and whose activity in
everything was amazing.
His soul was in her keeping! In her dazed condition she could not
realize the full meaning of those words of his. Lionel, as his
mother’s darling, with his shallowness, his inexperience of the world,
his empty chatter, combined with the modern egotism of youth, had been
all so different to the strong, upright, popular figure in the world
who now stood before her with his soft, tender hand resting upon her
shoulder.
Again their eyes met.
“I--I hardly know what to say, Seton,” she faltered, her eyes still
dimmed with tears and her voice trembling with emotion.
“Say that I may hope!” he cried, suddenly pressing her to him with his
strong arms. “Say that I may dare to love you--to win you--to make you
my wife!” he added breathlessly. “I--I love you, Edris! I adore you! I
worship you as my idol, as my ideal of all that a woman should be. My
life these past months has been all so utterly strange and
incomprehensible to me. I am in dreamland--the dreamland you have
created for me. But----”
“But what?” she asked very softly, her hand tightening upon his as she
turned her great, wide-open eyes upon his own.
“But--yes, it is but--I know that we can never marry,” he said with a
suppressed sob. “I am too old. I----”
“Seton! Please don’t say that! You are very dear to me,” she said
sympathetically. “Dearer than you realize. You are my greatest friend.
I do not admire you just because the world admires a famous man, and
because the papers praise your books, publish your photographs, and
tell the world of your doings, but because I know that--well, I don’t
really know how to express it. I know that your heart beats true. You
are my pal--one to whom I could confide any secret of my life. And
yet----”
“Well! Tell me, my darling,” he urged, drawing her closer to him.
“If I confided every secret I should arouse your anger--even your
jealousy.”
“My jealousy? How ridiculous!”
“No, my dear Seton, not ridiculous,” she declared in a low, serious
tone. “If you were jealous you would, alas! know what it means--a
living hell!”
“Well, I shan’t be, so we need not discuss it.”
He saw that the girl he adored was gradually softening towards him.
So conscious was he of the difference of their ages that he did not
press her for an answer. He simply made confession of his
all-absorbing passion, and again expressed regret that he should have
told her the truth.
Her tiny hand closed tightly upon his. Her own heart was at that
moment bursting with grief, and his unexpected words had brought her
comfort. She found that she was no longer alone in the world, for he
whom she had looked upon as a very kind friend actually loved her. It
seemed hardly credible, but she now saw quite plainly that the reason
he had so abruptly left Switzerland for Paris was because Lionel had
returned to her, and she had confessed that she was devoted to her
young lover. She realized, too, how he must have suffered, sorrowing
in silence and nursing his grief in those weeks and months of utter
loneliness. Yet for nearly five months Lionel had gone, and she, too,
had been just as lonely.
“I never dreamed that you cared for me so much, Seton,” she said,
turning her pale face again to his. “All this has come as a complete
surprise to me. I believed that the reason you refused to come and see
me was because I had in some way or other offended you.”
“It was because I could not bear to meet you, knowing that you
belonged to another,” he assured her in a deep, earnest voice. His arm
had stolen around her waist, and she stood locked in his embrace.
“You are certain--quite certain--that this is not a mere passing
infatuation?” she asked, looking at him very seriously. “I somehow
feel that you must love Elaine. What is her name? Do tell me?”
“That I am not permitted to do,” he said with regret, a firmness in
his voice that surprised her. “I took an oath some years ago that I
would never reveal her name to a soul. One day, perhaps, you will find
out. Forgive me, my darling, but I know you would never wish me to
break a solemn oath to a woman.”
She sighed. Her natural curiosity caused her to endeavor to discover
the identity of the pretty young society woman whom he admitted had
played such a prominent part in his later life. His refusal was a
rebuff, yet she could not take offense at it. In honor bound he had to
respect Elaine’s wishes.
“If I had any affection for Elaine I could never love you, Edris,” he
went on after a long pause. “And believe me, darling, you have come
into my life against my better judgment, against my will, because I
know that this sweet dream of mine is only an empty one, and can never
be realized. Love between us is forbidden. That is why I do not ask
you to try and reciprocate my affection, and ask you to love me in
return. You are young and bright, with all your brilliant life before
you. I have lived my life to the full, and have now turned to the path
which leads to old age.”
“No, no, I don’t think so!” she said cheerfully. “Why, you have far
more energy than half the young men I know. At heart you are still
youthful. Have I not remarked that a hundred times?”
Her protest pleased him. It was very sweet of her to hearten him in
that manner. Yet she had, no doubt, done so in order not to unduly
pain him, he thought.
Holding her close to him as he did, he looked into her glorious eyes,
and saw that they met his without wavering. In them was a very earnest
expression, such as he had never seen there before. He had one hand
around her waist and the other upon her bare shoulder, as he drew her
tightly to him. She remained in his embrace without any endeavor to
disengage herself. Her white chest heaved and fell, as she drew long
breaths. For fully five minutes they stood together, neither of them
speaking, so full were they both of their own thoughts.
For many months he had longed to take her in his strong arms and tell
her his secret, and that blissful moment had now come. True, she was
rather cold, and not very responsive. What, however, could he expect
of her in her present grief-stricken state of mind, her illusions
shattered by a young man who had deceived her, and her young heart
broken? Further, the words he had blurted forth had been wholly
unexpected.
He hesitated to ask if she would ever love him in return, for he
thought that such a question might sound foolish. She might laugh him
to scorn.
As she remained inert in his strong embrace a sweet smile came slowly
to her lips, a smile that proved irresistible, for he placed his hand
tenderly upon her head and, raising it towards his lips, slowly
imprinted a long, passionate caress upon her white brow.
“I love you, my darling!” he whispered in that moment of ecstasy. “I
love you! Edris, my darling, can you ever be mine?”