PAUL GRIGGS was a man compounded of dominant qualities and dormant
contradictions of them which threatened at any moment to become dominant
in their turn for a time. He himself almost believed that he had two
separate individualities, if not two distinct minds.
It may be doubted whether it can be good for any man to dwell long upon
such an idea in connexion with himself, however distinctly he may see in
others the foundation of truth on which it rests. To Griggs, however, it
presented itself so clearly that he found it impossible not to take it
into consideration in the more important actions of his life. The two
men were very sharply distinguished in his thoughts. The one man would
do what the other would not. The other could think thoughts above the
comprehension of the first.
The one was material, keen, strong, passionate, and selfish;
pre-eminently adapted for hard work; conscientious in the force of its
instinct to carry out everything undertaken by it to the very end, and
judging that whatever it undertook was good and worth finishing; having
something of the nature of a strong piece of clockwork which being
wound up must run to the utmost limit before stopping, whether regulated
to move fast or slow, with a fateful certainty independent of will;
possessed of such uncommon strength as to make it dangerous if opposed
while moving, and at the same time having an extraordinary inertia when
not wound up to do a certain piece of work; self-reliant to a fault, as
the lion is self-reliant in the superiority of physical endowment;
gentle when not opposed, because almost incapable of action without a
determinate object and aim; but developing an irresistible momentum when
the inertia was overcome; thorough, in the sense in which the tide is
thorough, in rising evenly and all at the same time, and as ruthless as
the tide because it was that part of the whole man which was a result,
and which, therefore, when once set in motion was almost beyond his
control; reasonable only because, as a result, it followed its causes
logically, and required a real cause to move it at first.
The other man in him was very different, almost wholly independent of
the first, and very generally in direct conflict with it, at that time.
It was an imaginative and meditative personality, easily deceived into
assuming a false premise, but logical beyond all liability to deception
when reasoning from anything it had accepted. Its processes were
intuitively correct and almost instantaneous, while its assumptions
were arbitrary in the extreme. It might begin to act at any point
whatsoever, and unlike the material man, which required a will to move
it at first, it struck spontaneously with the directness of straight
lightning from one point to another, never misled in its path, though
often fatally mistaken in the value of the points themselves.
Most men who have thought much, wisely or foolishly, and who have seen
much, good or bad, are more or less conscious of their two
individualities. Idle and thoughtless people are not, as a rule. With
Griggs, the two were singularly distinct and independent. Sometimes it
seemed to him that he sat in judgment, as a third person, between them.
At other moments he felt himself wholly identified with the one and
painfully aware of the opposition of the other. The imaginative part of
him despised the material part for its pride of life and lust of living.
The material part laughed to scorn the imaginative one for its false
assumptions and unfounded beliefs. When he could abstract himself from
both, he looked upon the intuitive personality as being himself in every
true sense of the word, and upon the material man as a monstrous
overgrowth and encumbrance upon his more spiritual self.
When he began to love Gloria Dalrymple, she appealed to both sides of
his nature. For once, the spiritual instinct coincided with the
direction given to the material man by a very earthly passion.
The cause of this was plain enough and altogether simple. The spiritual
instinct had taken the lead. He had known Gloria before she had been a
woman to be loved. The maiden genius of the girl had spoken to the
higher man from a sphere above material things, and had created in him
one of those assumed premises for subsequent spiritual intuition from
which he derived almost the only happiness he knew. Then, all at once,
the woman had sprung into existence, and her young beauty had addressed
itself to the young gladiator with overwhelming force. The woman
fascinated him, and the angelic being his imagination had assumed in the
child still enchanted him.
He was not like Reanda; for his sensitiveness was one-sided, and
therefore only half vulnerable. Gloria's faults were insignificant
accidents of a general perfectness, the result of having arbitrarily
assumed a perfect personality. They could not make the path of his
spiritual intuitive love waver, and they produced no effect at all
against his direct material passion. To destroy the prime beautiful
illusion, something must take place which would upset the mistaken
assumption from a point beyond it, so to say. As for the earthly part of
his love, it was so strong that it might well stand alone, even if the
other should disappear altogether.
Then came honour, and the semi-religious morality of the man, defending
the woman against him, for the sake of the angel he saw through her.
Chief of all, in her defence, stood his own conviction that she did not
love him, and never would, nor ever could. To all intents and purposes,
too, he had been her father's friend, though between the two men there
had been little but the similarity of their gloomy characters. It was
the will of the material man to be governed, and as no outward influence
set it in motion, it remained inert, in unstable equilibrium, as a vast
boulder may lie for ages on the very edge of a precipice, ready but not
inclined to fall. There was fatality in its stillness, and in the
certainty that if moved it must crash through everything it met.
Gloria had not the least understanding of the real man. She thought
about him often during the months which followed his return, and a week
rarely passed in which she did not see him two or three times. Her
thoughts of him were too ignorant to be confused. She was conscious,
rather than aware, that he loved her, but it seemed quite natural to
her, at her age, that he should never express his love by any word or
deed.
But she compared him with her husband, innocently and unconsciously, in
matters where comparison was almost unavoidable. His leonine strength of
body impressed her strongly, and she felt his presence in the room,
even when she was not looking at him. Reanda was physically a weak and
nervous man. When he was painting, the movements of his hand seemed to
be independent of his will and guided by a superior unseen power, rather
than directed by his judgment and will. Paul Griggs never made the
slightest movement which did not strike Gloria as the expression of his
will to accomplish something. He was wonderfully skilful with his hands.
Whatever he meant to do, his fingers did, forthwith, unhesitatingly. His
mental processes were similar, so far as she could see. If she asked him
a question, he answered it categorically and clearly, if he were able.
If not, he said so, and relapsed into silence, studying the problem, or
trying to force his memory to recall a lost item. Reanda, on the other
hand, answered most questions with the expression of a vague opinion,
often right, but apparently not founded on anything particular. The
accuracy of Griggs sometimes irritated the artist perceptibly, in
conversation; but he took an interest in what Griggs wrote, and made
Gloria translate many of the articles to him, reading aloud in Italian
from the English. Strange to say, they pleased him for the very
qualities which he disliked in the man's talk. The Italian mind, when it
has developed favourably, is inclined to specialism rather than to
generalization, and Griggs wrote of many things as though he were a
specialist. He had enormous industry and great mechanical power of
handling language.
"I have no genius," he said one day to Gloria, when she had been
admiring something he had written, and using the extravagant terms of
praise which rose easily to her lips. "Your husband has genius, but I
have none. Some day I shall astonish you all by doing something very
remarkable. But it will not be a work of genius."
It was in the late autumn days, more than a year and a half after
Gloria's marriage. The southeast wind was blowing down the Corso, and
the pavements were yellow and sticky with the moistened sand-blast from
the African desert. The grains of sand are really found in the air at
such times. It is said that the undoubted effect of the sirocco on the
temper of Southern Italy is due to the irritation caused by inhaling the
fine particles with the breath. Something there is in that especial
wind, which changes the tempers of men and women very suddenly and
strangely.
Gloria and her companion were seated in the drawing-room that afternoon,
and the window was open. The wind stirred the white curtains, and now
and then blew them inward and twisted them round the inner ones, which
were of a dark grey stuff with broad brown velvet bands, in a fashion
then new. Gloria had been singing, and sat leaning sideways on the desk
of the grand piano. A tall red Bohemian glass stood beside the music on
one of the little sliding shelves meant for the candles, and there were
a few flowers in it, fresh an hour ago, but now already half withered
and drooping under the poisonous breath of the southeast. The warm damp
breeze came in gusts, and stirred the fading leaves and Gloria's auburn
hair, and the sheet of music upright on the desk. Griggs sat in a low
chair not far from her, his still face turned towards her, his shadowy
eyes fixed on her features, his sinewy hands clasped round his crossed
knees. The nature of the great athlete showed itself even in repose--the
broad dark throat set deep in the chest, the square solidity of the
shoulders, the great curved lines along the straightened arms, the
small, compact head, with its close, dark hair, bent somewhat forward in
the general relaxation of the resting muscles. In his complete
immobility there was the certainty of instant leaping and flash-like
motion which one feels rather than sees in the sleeping lion.
Gloria looked at him thoughtfully with half-closed lids.
"I shall surprise you all," he repeated slowly, "but it will not be
genius."
"You will not surprise me," Gloria answered, still meeting his eyes. "As
for genius, what is it?"
"It is what you have when you sing," said Griggs. "It is what Reanda has
when he paints."
"Then why not what you do when you write?"
"The difference is simple enough. Reanda does things well because he
cannot help it. When I do a thing well it is because I work so hard at
it that the thing cannot help being done by me. Do you understand?"
"I always understand what you tell me. You put things so clearly. Yes, I
think I understand you better than you understand yourself."
Griggs looked down at his hands and was silent for a moment.
Mechanically he moved his thumb from side to side and watched the knot
of muscle between it and the forefinger, as it swelled and disappeared
with each contraction.
"Perhaps you do understand me. Perhaps you do," he said at last. "I have
known you a long time. It must be four years, at least--ever since I
first came here to work. It has been a long piece of life."
"Indeed it has," Gloria answered, and a moment later she sighed.
The wind blew the sheet of music against her. She folded it impatiently,
threw it aside and resumed her position, resting one elbow on the narrow
desk. The silence lasted several seconds, and the white curtains flapped
softly against the heavy ones.
"I wonder whether you understand my life at all," she said presently.
"I am not sure that I do. It is a strange life, in some ways--like
yourself."
"Am I strange?"
"Very."
"What makes you think so?"
Again he was silent for a time. His face was very still. It would have
been impossible to guess from it that he felt any emotion at the moment.
"Do you like compliments?" he asked abruptly.
"That depends upon whether I consider them compliments or not," she
answered, with a little laugh.
"You are a very perfect woman in very imperfect surroundings," said
Griggs.
"That is not a compliment to the surroundings, at all events. I do not
know whether to laugh or not. Shall I?"
"If you will. I like to hear you laugh."
"You should hear me cry!" And she laughed again at herself.
"God forbid!" he said gravely.
"I do sometimes," she answered, and her face grew suddenly sad, as he
watched her.
He felt a quick pain for her in his heart.
"I am sorry you have told me so," he said. "I do not like to think of
it. Why should you cry? What have you to cry for?"
"What should you think?" she asked lightly, though no smile came with
the words.
"I cannot guess. Tell me. Is it because you still wish to be a singer?
Is that it?"
"No. That is not it."
"Then I cannot guess." He looked for the answer in her face. "Will you
tell me?" he asked after a pause.
"Of what use could it be?" Her eyes met his for a moment, the lids fell,
and she turned away. "Will you shut the window?" she said suddenly. "The
wind blows the things about. Besides, it is getting late."
He rose and went to the window. She watched him as he shut it, turning
his back to her, so that his figure stood out distinct and black against
the light. She realized what a man he was. With those arms and those
shoulders he could do anything, as he had once caught her in the air and
saved her life, and then, again, as he had broken the cords that night
at Mendoza's house. There was nothing physical which such a man could
not do. He was something on which to rely in her limited life, an
absolute contrast to her husband, whose vagueness irritated her, while
his deadness of sensibility, where she had wrung his sensitiveness too
far, humiliated her in her own eyes. She had kept her secret long, she
thought, though she had kept it for the simple reason that she had no
one in whom to confide.
Griggs came back from the window and sat down near her again in the low
chair, looking up into her face.
"Mr. Griggs," she said, turning from his eyes and looking into the
piano, "you asked me a question just now. I should like to answer it, if
I were quite sure of you."
"Are you not sure of me?" he asked. "I think you might be, by this time.
We were just saying that we had known each other so long."
"Yes. But--all sorts of things have happened in that time, you know. I
am not the same as I was when I first knew you."
"No. You are married. That is one great difference."
"Too great," said she. "Honestly, do you think me improved since my
marriage?"
"Improved? No. Why should you improve? You are just what you were meant
to be, as you always were."
"I know. You called me a perfect woman a little while ago, and you said
my surroundings were imperfect. You must have meant that they did not
suit me, or that I did not suit them. Which was it?"
"They ought to suit you," said Griggs. "If they do not, it is not your
fault."
"But I might have done something to make them suit me. I sometimes think
that I have not treated them properly."
"Why should you blame yourself? You did not make them, and they cannot
unmake you. You have a right to be yourself. Everybody has. It is the
first right. Your surroundings owe you more than you owe to them,
because you are what you are, and they are not what they ought to be.
Let them bear the blame. As for not treating them properly, no one could
accuse you of that."
"I do not know--some one might. People are so strange, sometimes."
She stopped, and he answered nothing. Looking down into the open piano,
she idly watched the hammers move as she pressed the keys softly with
one hand.
"Some people are just like this," she said, smiling, and repeating the
action. "If you touch them in a certain way, they answer. If you press
them gently, they do not understand. Do you see? The hammer comes just
up to the string, and then falls back again without making any noise. I
suppose those are my surroundings. Sometimes they answer me, and
sometimes they do not. I like things I can be sure of."
"And by things you mean people," suggested Griggs.
"Of course."
"And by your surroundings you mean--what?"
"You know," she answered in a low voice, turning her face still further
away from him.
"Reanda?"
She hesitated for a moment, knowing that her answer must have weight on
the man.
"I suppose so," she said at last. "I ought not to say so--ought I? Tell
me the truth."
"The truth is, you are unhappy," he answered slowly. "There is no reason
why you should not tell me so. Perhaps I might help you, if you would
let me."
He almost regretted that he had said so much, little as it was. But she
had wished him to say it, and more, also. Still turning from him, she
rested her chin in her hand. His face was still, but there was the
beginning of an expression in it which she had never seen. Now that the
window was shut it was very quiet in the room, and the air was strangely
heavy and soft and dim. Now and then the panes rattled a little. Griggs
looked at the graceful figure as Gloria sat thinking what she should
say. He followed the lines till his eyes rested on what he could see of
her averted face. Then he felt something like a sharp, quick blow at his
temples, and the blood rose hot to his throat. At the same instant came
the bitter little pang he had known long, telling him that she had never
loved him and never could.
"Are you really my friend?" she asked softly.
"Yes." The word almost choked him, for there was not room for it and for
the rest.
She turned quietly and surveyed the marble mask with curious inquiry.
"Why do you say it like that," she asked; "as though you would rather
not? Do you grudge it?"
"No." He spoke barely above his breath.
"How you say it!" she exclaimed, with a little laugh that could not
laugh itself out, for there was a strange tension in the air, and on her
and on him. "You might say it better," she added, the pupils of her eyes
dilating a little so that the room looked suddenly larger and less
distinct.
She knew the sensation of coming emotion, and she loved it. She had
never thought before that she could get it by talking with Paul Griggs.
He did not answer her.
"Perhaps you meant it," she said presently. "I hardly know. Did you?"
"Please be reasonable," said Griggs, indistinctly, and his hands gripped
each other on his knee.
"How oddly you talk!" she exclaimed. "What have I said that was
unreasonable?"
She felt that the emotion she had expected was slipping from her, and
her nerves unconsciously resented the disappointment. She was out of
temper in an instant.
"You cannot understand," he answered. "There is no reason why you
should. Forgive me. I am nervous to-day."
"You? Nervous?" She laughed again, with a little scorn. "You are not
capable of being nervous."
She was dimly conscious that she was provoking him to something, she
knew not what, and that he was resisting her. He did not answer her last
words. She went back to the starting-point again, dropping her voice to
a sadder key.
"Honestly, will you be my friend?" she asked, with a gentle smile.
"Heart and soul--and hand, too, if you want it," he said, for he had
recovered his speech. "Tell me what the trouble is. If I can, I will
take you out of it."
It was rather an odd speech, and she was struck by the turn of the
phrase, which expressed more strength than doubt of power to do anything
he undertook.
"I believe you could," she said, looking at him. "You are so strong. You
could do anything."
"Things are never so hard as they look, if one is willing to risk
everything," he answered. "And when one has nothing to lose," he added,
as an after-thought.
She sighed, and turned away again, half satisfied.
"There is nothing to risk," she said. "It is not a case of danger. And
you cannot take my trouble and tear it up like a pack of cards with
those hands of yours. I wish you could. I am unhappy--yes, I have told
you so. But what can you do to help me? You cannot make my surroundings
what they are not, you know."
"No--I cannot change your husband," said Griggs.
She started a little, but still looked away.
"No. You cannot make him love me," she said, softly and sadly.
The big hands lost their hold on one another, and the deep eyes opened a
little wider. But she was not watching him.
"Do you mean to say--" He stopped.
She slowly bent her head twice, but said nothing.
"Reanda does not love you?" he said, in wondering interrogation. "Why--I
thought--" He hesitated.
"He cares no more for me than--that!" The hand that stretched towards
him across the open piano tapped the polished wood once, and sharply.
"Are you in serious earnest?" asked Griggs, bending forward, as though
to catch her first look when she should turn.
"Does any one jest about such things?" He could just see that her lips
curled a little as she spoke.
"And you--you love him still?" he asked, with pressing voice.
"Yes--I love him. The more fool I."
The words did not grate on him, as they would have jarred on her
husband's ear. The myth he had imagined made perfections of the woman's
faults.
"It is a pity," he said, resting his forehead in his hand. "It is a
deadly pity."
Then she turned at last and saw his attitude.
"You see," she said. "There is nothing to be done. Is there? You know my
story now. I have married a man I worship, and he does not care for me.
Take it and twist it as you may, it comes to that and nothing else. You
can pity me, but you cannot help me. I must bear it as well as I can,
and as long as I must. It will end some day--or I will make it end."
"For God's sake do not talk like that!"
"How should I talk? What should I say? Is it of any use to speak to him?
Do you think I have not begged him, implored him, besought him, almost
on my knees, to give up that work and do other things?"
Griggs looked straight into her eyes a moment and then almost understood
what she meant.
"You mean that he--that when he is painting there--" He hesitated.
"Of course. All day long. All the bitter live-long day! They sit there
together on pretence of talking about it. You know--you can guess at
least--it is the old, old story, and I have to suffer for it. She could
not marry him--because she is a princess and he an artist--good enough
for me--God knows, I love him! Too good for her, ten thousand times too
good! But yet not good enough for her to marry! He needed a wife, and
she brought us together, and I suppose he told her that I should do very
well for the purpose. I was a good subject. I fell in love with
him--that was what they wanted. A wife for her favourite! O God! When I
think of it--"
She stopped suddenly and buried her face in both her hands, as she
leaned upon the piano.
"It is not to be believed!" The strong man's voice vibrated with the
rising storm of anger.
She looked up again with flashing eyes and pale cheeks.
"No!" she cried. "It is not to be believed! But you see it now. You see
what it all is, and how my life is wrecked and ruined before it is half
begun. It would be bad enough if I had married him for his fame, for his
face, for his money, for anything he has or could have. But I married
him because I loved him with all my soul, and worshipped him and
everything he did."
"I know. We all saw it."
"Of course--was it anything to hide? And I thought he loved me, too. Do
you know?" She grew more calm. "At first I used to go and sit in the
hall when he was at work. Then he grew silent, and I felt that he did
not want me. I thought it was because he was such a great artist, and
could not talk and work, and wanted to be alone. So I stayed away. Then,
once, I went there, and she was there, sitting in that great chair--it
shows off the innocence of her white face, you know! The innocence of
it!" Gloria laughed bitterly. "They were talking when I came, and they
stopped as soon as the door opened. I am sure they were talking about
me. Then they seemed dreadfully uncomfortable, and she went away. After
that I went several times. Once or twice she came in while I was there.
Then she did not come any more. He must have told her, of course. He
kept looking at the door, though, as if he expected her at any moment.
But she never came again in those days. I could not bear it--his trying
to talk to me, and evidently wishing all the time that she would come. I
gave up going altogether at last. What could I do? It was unbearable. It
was more than flesh and blood could stand."
"I do not wonder that you hate her," said Griggs. "I have often thought
you did."
Gloria smiled sadly.
"Yes," she answered. "I hate her with all my heart. She has robbed me of
the only thing I ever had worth having--if I ever had it. I sometimes
wonder--or rather, no. I do not wonder, for I know the truth well
enough. I have been over and over it again and again in the night. He
never loved me. He never could love any one but her. He knew her long
ago, and has loved her all his life. Why should he put me in her place?
He admired me. I was a beautiful plaything--no, not beautiful--" She
paused.
"You are the most beautiful woman in the world," said Paul Griggs, with
deep conviction.
He saw the blush of pleasure in her face, saw the fluttering of the
lids. But he neither knew that she had meant him to say it, nor did he
judge of the vast gulf her mind must have instantaneously bridged, from
the outpouring of her fancied injuries and of her hatred for Francesca
Campodonico, to the unconcealable satisfaction his words gave her.
"I have heard him say that, too," she answered a moment later. "But he
did not mean it. He never meant anything he said to me--not one word of
it all. You do not know what that means," she went on, working herself
back into a sort of despairing anger again. "You do not know. To have
built one's whole life on one thing, as I did! To have believed only one
thing, as I did! To find that it is all gone, all untrue, all a wretched
piece of acting--oh, you do not know! That woman's face haunts me in the
dark--she is always there, with him, wherever I look, as they are
together now at her house. Do you understand? Do you know what I feel?
You pity me--but do you know? Oh, I have longed for some one--I have
wished I had a dog to listen to me--sometimes--it is so hard to be
alone--so very hard--"
She broke off suddenly and hid her face again.
"You are not alone. You have me--if you will have me."
Before he had finished speaking the few words, the first sob broke,
violent, real, uncontrollable. Then came the next, and then the storm of
tears. Griggs rose instinctively and came to her side. He leaned heavily
on the piano, bending down a little, helpless, as some men are at such
moments. She did not notice him, and her sobs filled the still room. As
he stood over her he could see the bright tears falling upon the black
and white ivory keys. He laid his trembling hand upon her shoulder. He
could hardly draw his breath for the sight of her suffering.
"Don't--don't," he said, almost pathetic in his lack of eloquence when
he thought he most needed it.
One of her hot hands, all wet with tears, went suddenly to her shoulder,
and grasped his that lay there, with a convulsive pressure, seeming to
draw him down as she bowed herself almost to the keyboard in her agony
of weeping. Then, without thought, his other hand, cold as ice, was
under her throat, bringing her head gently back upon his arm, till the
white face was turned up to his. Sob by sob, more distantly, the tempest
subsided, but still the great tears swelled the heavy lids and ran down
across her face upon his wrist. Then the wet, dark eyes opened and
looked up to his, above her head.
"Be my friend!" she said softly, and her fingers pressed his very
gently.
He looked down into her eyes for one moment, and then the passion in him
got the mastery of his honourable soul.
"How can I?" he cried in a broken, choking voice. "I love you!"
In an instant he was standing up, lifting her high from the floor, and
the lips that had perhaps never kissed for love before, were pressed
upon hers. What chance had she, a woman, in those resistless arms of
his? In her face was the still, fateful look of the dead nun, rising
from the far grave of a buried tragedy.
In his uncontrollable passion he crushed her to him, holding her up like
a child. She struggled and freed her hands and pressed them both upon
his two eyes.
"Please--please!" she cried.
There was a pitiful ring in the tone, like the bleating of a frightened
lamb. He hurt her too, for he was overstrong when he was thoughtless.
She cried out to him to let her go. But as she hung there, it was not
all fear that she felt. There came with it an uncertain, half-delirious
thrill of delight. To feel herself but a feather to his huge strength,
swung, tossed, kissed, crushed, as he would. There was fear already,
there was all her innocent maidenlike resistance, beating against him
with might and anger, there was the feminine sense of injury by
outrageous violence; but with it all there was also the natural woman's
delight in the main strength of the natural man, that could kill her in
an instant if he chose, but that could lift her to itself as a little
child and surround her and protect her against the whole world.
"Please--please!" she cried again, covering his fierce eyes and white
face with her hands and trying to push him away. The tone was pathetic
in its appeal, and it touched him. His arms relaxed, tightened again
with a sort of spasm, and then she found herself beside him on her feet.
A long silence followed.
Gloria sank into a chair, glanced at him and saw that his face was
turned away, looked down again and then watched him. His chest heaved
once or twice, as though he had run a short sharp race. One hand grasped
the back of a chair as he stood up. All at once, without looking at her,
he went to the window and stood there, looking out, but seeing nothing.
The soft damp wind made the panes of glass rattle. Still neither broke
the silence. Then he came to her and stood before her, looking down,
and she looked down, too, and would not see him. She was more afraid of
him now than when he had lifted her from her feet, and her heart beat
fast. She wondered what he would say, for she supposed that he meant to
ask her forgiveness, and she was right.
[Illustration: "Gloria--forgive me!"--Vol. II., p. 50.]
"Gloria--forgive me," he said.
She looked up, a little fear of him still in her face.
"How can I?" she asked, but in her voice there was forgiveness already.
Her womanly instinct, though she was so young, told her that the fault
was hers, and that considering the provocation it was not a great
one--what were a few kisses, even such kisses as his, in a lifetime? And
she had tempted him beyond all bounds and repented of it. Before the
storm she had raised in him, her fancied woes sank away and seemed
infinitely small. She knew that she had worked herself up to emotion and
tears, though not half sure of what she was saying, that she had
exaggerated all she knew and suggested all she did not know, that she
had almost been acting a part to satisfy something in her which she
could not understand. And by her acting she had roused the savage truth
in her very face and it had swept down everything before it. She had not
guessed such possibilities. Before the tempest of his love all she had
ever felt or dreamed of feeling seemed colourless and cold. She
dreaded to rouse it again, and yet she could never forget the instant
thrill that had quivered through her when he had lifted her from her
feet.
When she had answered him with her question, he stood still in silence
for a moment. She was too perfect in his eyes for him to cast the blame
upon her, yet he knew that it had not been all his fault. And in the
lower man was the mad triumph of having kissed her and of having told
her, once for all, the whole meaning of his being. She looked down, and
he could not see her eyes. There was no chair near. To see her face he
dropped upon his knee and lightly touched her hands that lay idly in her
lap. She started, fearing another outbreak.
"Please--please!" he said softly, using the very word she had used to
him.
"Yes--but--" She hesitated and then raised her eyes.
The mask of his face was all softened, and his lips trembled a little.
His hands quivered, too, as they touched hers.
"Please!" he repeated. "I promise. Indeed, I promise. Forgive me."
She smiled, all at once, dreamily. All his emotion, and her desire for
it, were gone.
"I asked you to be my friend," she said. "I meant it, you know. How
could you? It was not kind."
"No--but forgive me," he insisted in a pleading tone.
"I suppose I must," she said at last. "But I shall never feel sure of
you again. How can I?"
"I promise. You will believe me, not to-day, perhaps, nor to-morrow, but
soon. I will be just what I have always been. I will never do anything
to offend you again."
"You promise me that? Solemnly?" She still smiled.
"Yes. It is a promise. I will keep it. I will be your friend always.
Give me something to do for you. It will make it easier."
"What can I ask you to do? I shall never dare to speak to you about my
life again."
"I think you will, when you see that I am just as I used to be. And you
forgive me, quite?"
"Yes. I must. We must forget to-day. It must be as though it had never
happened. Will you forget it?"
"I will try." But of that he knew the utter impossibility.
"If you try, you can succeed. Now get up. Be reasonable."
He took her hand in both of his. She made a movement to withdraw it, and
then submitted. He barely touched it with his lips and rose to his feet
instantly.
"Thank you," she said simply.
She had never had such a mastery of charm over him as at that moment.
But his mood was changed, and there was no breaking out of the other man
in him, though he felt again the quick sharp throb in the temples, and
the rising blood at his throat. The higher self was dominant once more,
and the features was as still as a statue's.
He took leave of her very quickly and went out into the damp street and
faced the gusty southeast wind.
When he was gone, she rose and went to the window with a listless step,
and gazed idly through the glass at the long row of windows in the
palace opposite, and then went back and sank down, as though very weary,
upon a sofa far from the light. There was a dazed, wondering look in her
face and she sat very still for a long time, till it began to grow dark.
In the dusk she rose and went to the piano and sang softly to herself.
Her voice never swelled to a full note, and the chords which her fingers
sought were low and gentle and dreamy.
While she was singing, the door opened noiselessly, and Reanda came in
and stood beside her. She broke off and looked up, a little startled.
The same wondering, half-dazed look was in her face. Her husband bent
down and kissed her, and she kissed him silently.