She had a good mind to tell him straight out, there and then, that he
couldn't have everything he wanted, not with her, at any rate. He
couldn't have it both ways. But you do not say these things; and if she
could judge by the expression of his face what she had said had hit him
hard enough.
He sheltered himself behind a semblance of irrelevance. "Laura is very
fond of you."
The significance of the statement lay in its implication that he was
very fond of Laura. Taken that way it was fuel heaped on to Nina's
malignant fire. Under it she smouldered darkly.
"She's getting unhappy about you," he went on. "You don't want to make
her unhappy, do you?"
"Did I ever want to make her unhappy?" she answered, with a flash. "And
if it comes to that, why should it?"
"The Kiddy has a very tender conscience."
She saw what he meant now. He was imploring her not to put it into
Laura's head that she had come between them. That would hurt Laura. His
wife was never to suspect that her friend had suffered. Nina, he seemed
secretly to intimate, was behaving in a manner likely to give rise to
that suspicion. He must have been aware that she did it to save herself
more suffering; but his point was that it didn't matter how much she
suffered, provided they saved Laura. There must be no flaw in that
perfect happiness.
"You mean," she said, "she won't understand it if I don't come?"
"I'm afraid I mean she will understand it if you keep on not coming. But
of course you'll come. You're coming with me now."
It was the same voice that had told her three years ago that she was not
coming with him, that she was going to stay and take care of Laura,
because that was all that she could do for him. And as she had stayed
then she went with him now, and for the same reason.
She felt, miserably, that her reluctance damned her; it proved her
coarse, or at any rate not fine enough for the communion he had offered
her, the fineness of which she had once accepted as the sanction of
their fellowship. She must seem to him preposterous in her anxiety to
break with him, to make an end of what had never been. All the same,
what he was forcing on her now was the fact of separation. As they
approached the house where he and Laura lived she had an increasing
sense of estrangement from him and of distance.
He drew her attention to the iron gate that guarded their sanctuary, and
the untrodden grass behind it. His dreams came in by that gate, and all
other things by the postern door, which, he said, was the way he and she
must go.