"Owen--it's not that. It's not because I don't know myself. It's because
I know you. I know that, whatever there might be in me, whatever I did,
however low I sank--if I could sink--your charity would be there to hold
me up. And it wouldn't be your charity, either. I couldn't stand your
charity. It wouldn't even be understanding. You don't understand me. It
would be some knowledge of me that I couldn't have myself, that nobody
but you could have. As if whatever you saw you'd say, 'That isn't really
Nina.'"
"I should say, 'That's really Nina, so it's all right.'"
She paused, brooding on the possibilities he saw, that he was bound to
see, if he saw anything. Did he, she wondered, really see what was in
her, her hidden shames and insanities, the course of the wild blood that
he knew must flow from all the Lemprieres to her? She lived, to be sure,
the life of an ascetic and took it out in dreams. Yet he must see how
her savage, solitary passion clung to him, and would not let go. Did he
see, and yet did he not condemn her?
"Owen," she said suddenly, "do you mind seeing?"
"Sometimes I hate it. These aren't the things, you know, I want to see."
She lowered her eyes. Her nervous hand moved slowly to and fro along the
window-sill, measuring her next words.
"What--do you want--to see?"
He rose to his feet and looked at her. At her, not through her, and she
wondered, had he seen enough? It was as if he withdrew himself before
some thought that stirred in her, menacing to peace.
"I can't tell you," he said. "I can't talk about it."
Then she knew what he meant. He was thinking of his vision, his vision
of God.
He could not speak of it to her. She had never known him. This soul,
with which her own claimed kindred, was hidden from her by all the veils
of heaven.
"I know," she said. "Only tell me one thing. Was that what you went out
to India and Central Africa to see?"
That drew him.
"No. I went out not to see it. To get away from it. I meant to give
things their chance. That's why I went in for medicine. I wasn't going
to shirk. I wanted to be a man. Not a long-haired, weedy thing in a soft
hat."
"Was it any good?"
"Yes. I proved the unreality of things. I proved it up to the hilt. And
I _did_n't shirk."
"But you wanted to escape, all the time?"
"I didn't escape. I couldn't. I couldn't catch cholera, or plague, _or_
sleeping sickness. I couldn't catch anything."
"You tried?"
"Oh, yes, I gave _myself_ a chance. That was only fair. But it was no
use. I couldn't even get frightened."
"Owen--some people would say you were morbid."
"No, they wouldn't. They'd say I was mad. They _will_ say it when I've
published those poems."
"Did you mind my showing them to George Tanqueray?"
"No. But it's no use. Nobody knows my name."
"May I show them to Jane Holland?"
"Show them to any one you like. It'll be no use either."
"Owen--does it never occur to you that any human being can be of use?"
"No." He considered the point. "No, I can't say it ever does."
He stood before her, wrapped in his dream, removed from her, utterly
forgetful.
She had her moment of pain in contemplating him. He saw it in her face,
and as it were came back to her.
"Don't imagine," he said, "that I don't know what _you_'ve done. Now
that I do know you."
She turned, almost in anger. "I've done nothing. You don't know me." She
added, "I am going to write to Jane Holland."
When he had left her she sat a long while by the window, brooding on the
thing that had happened to her a second time.
She had fallen in love; fallen with the fatality of the Lemprieres, and
with the fine precipitate sweep of her own genius. And she had let
herself go, with the recklessness of a woman unaware of her genius for
loving, with the superb innocence, too, of all spontaneous forces.
Owen's nature had disarmed her of all subterfuges, all ordinary defences
of her sex. They were absurd in dealing with a creature so remote and
disembodied.
She knew that in his way, his remote and disembodied way, he cared for
her. She knew that in whatever place he held her she was alone there.
She was the only woman for whom as yet he had cared. His way was not
Tanqueray's way. It was a way that kept her safe. She had sworn that
there were to be no more George Tanquerays; and there were none. She had
done with that.
Not but that she was afraid of Owen. She had taken possession of him in
fear, a secret, unallowed possession, a holding with hands invisible,
intangible. For she had wisdom, the sad wisdom of the frustrate; it, and
the insight of her genius, told her that Owen would not endure a tie
less spiritual than friendship. She knew George Tanqueray's opinion of
her. He was justified.
But though she sacrificed so far to spirit, it was her flesh and blood
that shrank from the possible communion of Owen Prothero and Jane
Holland. For Jinny, as Tanqueray said, had a way with her; and she knew
Jinny's way. Jinny would take Owen Prothero from her as she had taken
George, not deliberately, not because she wanted to, but because she was
Jinny and had a way. Besides, Jane could do for him what she with her
bare genius could not do, and that thought was insupportable to Nina.
Yesterday she had been everything to him. Tomorrow Jane would be as
much, or more.
And there were other women. They would be as ready as she to take
possession. They would claim his friendship, and more than she had
claimed, as the reward of having recognized him. There was no reason why
she should give Owen up, and hand him over to them. And this was what
she would do if she wrote that letter to Jane Holland.
She rose, and went to her desk and wrote it.