It was a little less than a fortnight after the dinner at Richmond
that Kent brought Mrs. Deane-Pitt the ten-thousand-word story that she
had wanted, and, like the two earliest stories that he had written for
her, it was work to which he would have been glad to see his own name
attached. He had promised to let her have half a dozen short stories
as soon after its completion as possible, and it was his delight to
surprise her by the versatility, as well as the originality, of the
invention that he displayed in these. In one he wrote an idyll; in
another a gruesome little sketch, bound to attract attention by its
weirdness; in a third he seemed to be running through the stalest of
devices towards the most commonplace of conclusions, until, lo! in the
last half-column there came a literary thunder-clap, and this story was
even more startling than its predecessors. But all the links fitted, if
a reader liked to take the trouble to look back, and the tragedy had
been foreshadowed from the beginning. The tales tickled the fancy of
the Editor for whom they were intended. They tickled it so much that
he asked Mrs. Deane-Pitt to contribute regularly for a few months; and
the lady accepting the compliment and the invitation, Kent continued to
supply _The Society Mirror_ with an idyll, or a tragedy, or a comedy
every week, astonished at his own fecundity.
It was amazing how his hand was emboldened, I his imagination
stimulated, by the knowledge that his work was accepted before it was
penned. There were weeks during which he turned out a story for Mrs.
Deane-Pitt nearly every day. All the stories were built upon more or
less brilliant ideas, each of them was noteworthy and distinctive when
it appeared in _The Society Mirror_ or elsewhere; and if his share of
the swindle had been punctiliously paid to him now, he would have been
making a good deal of money. Even as it was, he was making it in a
sense, for his partner always credited him with the sums that were not
forthcoming--entering them in an oxidised silver memorandum-book that
she kept in one of the drawers of her desk. When he said that it did
not matter about that, she laughingly told him not to be a fool.
His conscience was not dull, however, and there were hours when Kent
suffered scarcely less acutely than one realises that a wife may
sometimes suffer in similar circumstances. His remorse then was just
what he had known it would be. From making his projected visit to
Monmouth he had excused himself--it was repugnant enough to play the
hypocrite in his letters--and by degrees Cynthia ceased to refer to
his coming; but while her silence on the point relieved him from the
necessity for telling her further falsehoods, it intensified his shame.
His abasement was completed by the seventh rejection of _The Eye of the
Beholder_. He sent it off again at once, to Messrs. Kynaston, to get it
out of his sight; but the return of the ill-starred package had revived
all the passion of his disappointment concerning it, and he could not
get rid of the burning at his heart so easily as he did of the parcel.
The weight of the slighted manuscript lay on his spirit for days after
Thurgate and Tatham's refusal. The irony of it, that Mrs. Deane-Pitt
could place his hasty work in the best papers, was enabled to pay him
two hundred pounds for writing a novel of which he was ashamed, while
his own book, to which he had devoted a year, was scorned on all sides!
True, he had had, in his own name, very much better, reviews than those
that had been accorded so far to the novel written for her. But ...
what a profession?
Once he owned to her something of what he was feeling. He couldn't help
himself--he wanted her to comfort him.
"_The Eye of the Beholder_ has come back again," he groaned.
"Really?" she said. "How many is that?"
"God knows! It's awfully hard that _you_ can place whatever I do, Eva,
and _I_ get my best stuff kicked back to me from every publisher's
office in London. I'm miserable!"
She smiled. She did not mean to be unsympathetic, but Kent hated her
for it furiously as she turned her face.
"There's much in a name," she said with a shrug. "What's the
difference, though? Your terms aren't bad, 'miserable one,' whether the
name is mine or yours. By the way, I can work another tale for _The
Metropolis_, if you'll knock it off for me; I was going to write to
you."
Kent never appealed to her for pity again. But a little later there
came a letter from Cynthia, replying to his brief announcement of
Thurgate and Tatham's rejection. Her consolation and prophesies of
"success yet" overflowed four sheets, and the man's throat was tight as
he read them.
Well, he must do the tale for _The Metropolis_! But he would write some
short stories for himself as well, he determined. It had not been a
lucrative occupation when he essayed it before, but those early stories
had been the wrong kind of thing--he perceived it now: he would write
some short stories of the pattern that was so successful when it was
signed "Eva Deane-Pitt."
He soon began to see his work over her signature in almost every
paper that he looked at. If he turned the leaves of a magazine on a
book-stall, a tale of his own met his eyes, signed "Eva Deane-Pitt";
if he picked up a periodical in a restaurant, a familiar sentence
might flash out of the pages at him, and there would be another of his
stories "By Eva Deane-Pitt." Yes, he would submit to the editors on his
own account! He would not receive such terms as she, that he knew; he
doubted strongly whether he would even receive so much as she spared
to him after retaining the larger share. But he could, and he would,
get what was dear to him--the recognition and the kudos to which he was
entitled!
He found that he did not write so quickly for himself as in his
capacity of ghost, but he was not discouraged, for he felt that he
was writing better. For a week he did nothing for the woman at all;
he wrote all day and half the night as "Humphrey Kent," and when a
manuscript was declined by _The Society Mirror_ he sent it to _The
Metropolis_, and forwarded the story rejected by _The Metropolis_ to
_The Society Mirror_. He could not abandon his work for her entirely,
but under the pressure that she put upon him, and his new interests,
he wrote for her more and more hastily--wrote frank and unmitigated
rubbish at last, and on one occasion candidly told her so.
She had telegraphed to him at six o'clock, begging him to call,
and he had risen from his table feeling that his head was vacant.
She clamoured for a two-thousand-word story by the first post the
following morning, and insisted, as usual, that "anything would do."
He assured her that he was too exhausted even to invent a motive; how
could he produce two thousand words before he slept? She overruled his
objections, hanging about him with caresses. She made him promise that
the sketch should reach her in time.
"Write twaddle, dearest boy," was her parting injunction, "but write
it! A motive? A mercenary girl jilts her lover because he is poor, and
then her new fiancé loses his fortune, and the jilted lover succeeds
to a dukedom! What does it matter? Write a story that Noah told to his
family in the Ark--only cover enough pages. Write any rot; simply fill
it out. I depend on you, Humphrey, mind!"
He went home and did it--on the lines she had laid down. She wanted
drivel--she should have it! He did not stop to think at all. He wrote,
without a pause or a correction, as rapidly as his pen would glide, and
posted the tale to her before half-past ten. A note went with it.
"I have done as you ordered," he scribbled. "Don't blame me because no
editor will take such muck now you are obeyed."
She had no complaint to make when he saw her next. And it was after
this that Kent's work for her was uniformly fatuous, while he lavished
on his own a wealth of fastidious care for which she would have mocked
him had she known. He visited her at much longer intervals now, for a
disgust of her caresses was growing in him, a horror of the amorous
afternoons, which ended always with a plea for additional tales. But
that cowardice prevented him, he would have stayed away altogether.
There grew something like horror of the woman herself, insatiable, no
matter with how much work he might supply her--coaxing him for "two
little stories more; anything will do--I must have a new costume,
darling, really!" while a batch of manuscript that he had brought to
her lay in her lap. He could remember now, with her arms about him,
the many original ideas that she had had from him at the beginning,
and he felt with a shudder that her clutch was deadly. First she had
had his brains, and now she stole his conscience. He foresaw that, if
the strain that she put upon him continued, a day must come when the
imagination that she was squeezing like an orange would be sterile, or
fruitful of nothing better than the literary abortions with which his
mistress was content.
His dismay at his position did not wane. It became so evident that, by
degrees, a coldness crept into the woman's manner towards him. He was
at no pains to dispel it. That their relations drifted on to a purely
business footing inspired him with no other fear than that presently
she might make him a scene and entail upon him the disagreeable
necessity for declaring, as delicately as he could, that his infidelity
to his wife had been a madness that he violently regretted, and would
never repeat. The obvious retort would be so superficially true that
fervently he trusted that the necessity would not arise.
Meanwhile the short stories submitted in his own name, with silent
prayers, had all been refused; but, undeterred by the failure, he wrote
more and more. The present tenants of No. 64 were anxious to renew
their agreement for another six months, and he was pleased to hear
it. The prospect of meeting Cynthia again frightened him; and, closing
readily with the off er that afforded him a respite, he remained
at his literary forge in Soho, writing for Mrs. Deane-Pitt and for
himself--seeing sometimes three of his tales for her published, by
different papers, in the same week, and finding the tales submitted in
the lowlier name of "Humphrey Kent" returned without exception.
He would once have said that such a state of things couldn't be, but
now he discovered that it could be, and was. There was not at this
stage: a periodical or magazine in London that Humphrey Kent did not
essay in vain, and there were; not more than three or four (of the
kind that one sees in a club or an educated woman's room) in which his
stuff did not appear, at a substantial rate of payment, when it was
supposed to be by Mrs. Deane-Pitt. There were not in London five papers
making a feature of fiction, which did not repeatedly reject the man's
best work, signed by himself, and accept his worst, signed by somebody
else. Not five of the penny or sixpenny; publications--not five among
the first or second-class--not five editors appraising fiction in
editorial chairs who did not either find or assume a story bearing the
unfamiliar name of "Humphrey Kent" to be below their standard, while
they paid ten or twelve guineas for a tale scribbled by the same author
in a couple of hours when it was falsely represented to be by Mrs.
Deane-Pitt. During nine months he was never offered a single guinea by
an editor for a tale. Every story that he submitted during nine months
was declined, and every story that he gave to Mrs. Deane-Pitt was sold.
Raging, he swore that some day he would set the facts forth in a novel;
and even as he swore it, he knew that they would be challenged and
that, in at least one literary organ of eminence, a critic would write,
"We do not find the situation probable."
Once an editor did know his name. He was the Editor of a fashionable
magazine, and Kent had called at the office to inquire about a
manuscript that had been lying there for a long while. The gentleman
was very courteous: he did not remember the title, and, unfortunately,
he could not put his hand on the tale at the moment, but he promised to
have a search made for it, and to read it as soon as it was found.
A letter from him (and the manuscript) reached Kent the same week. It
was as considerate a letter of rejection as any one could dictate. The
Editor began by saying that the story "was clever, as all Mr. Kent
touched was clever, but----" And then he proceeded to analyse the
plot, to demonstrate that the motive was too slight for the purpose.
The tone was so kindly that, though Kent could not perceive the justice
of the criticism--he was sensible enough to try--he felt a glow of
gratitude towards the writer; and his appreciation was deepened when
the following post brought him a copy of the current issue of the
magazine, "With compliments."
He opened it at once, and the first thing that he saw in it was a story
done for Mrs. Deane-Pitt--the story that he had written, tired and
insolently careless, about the mercenary girl and the jilted lover and
the succession to the dukedom.
And this, too, he swore, should be some day recorded in a novel, though
a critic, knowing less about it than the author, would "not find the
situation probable."
Now, when he was least expecting it, there came to him the first gleam
of encouragement that he had had since he received his last review.
Messrs. Kynaston wrote, offering to undertake the publication of _The
Eye of the Beholder_, if he were willing to accept forty pounds for the
copyright.
He did not hesitate even for an instant; he said "Thank God!" as
devoutly as if he had never expected more for it.
Turquand had just come in.
"It's a wicked price," grunted Turquand; "but I suppose you'll take it
if you can't get them to spring?"
"Take it! I could take them to my heart for it! Oh, thank God! I mean
it. Yes, it's beggarly, it's awful; but, at any rate, the book 'll
see the light. Price? It isn't a price at all, but the thing 'll be
published. There's quite enough money for us to live while I'm writing
my next, and this will send me to it with double energy. I shall go to
Kynaston's to-morrow morning."
He did go, and, though he was less enthusiastic there, his attempt
to induce the publisher to increase the terms was but weak. Seven
rejections had made a high hand unattainable.
"I got a hundred for my first," he said, "and you offer me forty for my
second. It isn't scaling the ladder with rapidity."
"The other was longer, perhaps," suggested Mr. Kynaston, tapping his
fingers together pensively--"three volumes?"
"Don't you reckon that this will make three volumes, then?" said Kent.
"Two. It's unfortunately short; that's the only fault I have to find
with it. I like it--it's out of the common; but there isn't enough
of it." He sighed. "I am sorry that 'forty' is the most I can say. I
considered the subject very deeply before I wrote you--very deeply
indeed."
His expression implied that he had lain awake all night considering,
and that regret at being unable to offer more might even keep him awake
again to-night.
He did not disguise his opinion of the novel, however, especially after
the matter was settled.
"Send us something else, Mr. Kent," he said warmly, as he saw the
author downstairs and pressed his hand--"something a trifle longer--and
we shall be able to do better for you. Yours is a very rare style; you
have remarkable power, if I may say so. If fine work always meant a
fine sale, _The Eye of the Beholder_ should see six editions. I shall
get it out at once. Good-day to you: and don't forget--make your next
book a little longer!"
Turquand would not be back for some hours, and Kent did not hurry home.
He sauntered through the streets reflecting. He resolved that now he
would do ghost-work no more, and he wondered how Eva would receive
the announcement. Disappointing as she would doubtless find it, she
would not have had much to complain of, he thought; he congratulated
himself anew on their liaison having ended, since it left him but one
association to sever, instead of two. Again an access of remorse in
its most poignant form assailed him, and he wished he could bear his
good news to Cynthia in lieu of writing it--wished he could confess to
Cynthia--wondered if the desire to do so was mad.
This desire had fastened on Kent more than once. He thought he would
feel less guilty towards her--would _be_ less guilty towards her--if
she knew. There had been moments when, if they had not been separated,
he would have told her the truth in a burst, and, whether she pardoned
him or not, have lifted his head, feeling happier for the fact that the
avowal had been made. He did not imagine that his craving to confess
to her was any shining virtue. He was conscious, just as he had been
conscious in Paris, when he had informed her casually of the supper in
the avenue Wagram, that it was as much the weakness of his character as
its nobility which urged him to voice the load that lay on his mind;
but, weak or noble, the longing was always there, and at times it
mastered him completely.
Sleet began to fall, and he went into a tea-room and ordered some
coffee. A copy of _Fashion_ lay on the table, and, mechanically turning
the pages, he noticed that the feature of the issue was an instalment
of a story in three parts by Lady Cornwallis. The name arrested his
attention, for she was the widow of a man who had been a connection
of the late Deane-Pitt's, and Kent was aware that Eva and she were
on friendly terms. He glanced at the heading with an ironical smile;
the lady was not known to him as an author, though she had figured
prominently of late in the witness-box, where a shrewd solicitor,
and a dressmaker of distinction, had posed her in a quite romantic
light; he surmised bitterly that her maiden effort in fiction had
been remunerated more handsomely than his second novel. What was his
astonishment, on glancing at the opening paragraph, to discover that
the story "By Lady Cornwallis" was another of the stories that had been
written by himself for Mrs. Deane-Pitt!
As a matter of fact, the Editor, thinking that her name would be a
draw just now, had offered Lady Cornwallis a hundred pounds for a tale
to run through three numbers. Lady Cornwallis, who had never tried to
write anything more elaborate than a love-letter in her life, and who
was being dunned to desperation for an account at a livery-stable, had
gone to Mrs. Deane-Pitt to do it for her. Mrs. Deane-Pitt, who wrote
much less quickly than she pretended, had relegated the duty to Kent.
It was a literary house-that-Jack-built. Lady Cornwallis, fearing that
her friend might ascertain how much the Editor paid, had ingenuously
halved the sum with her; Mrs. Deane-Pitt, confident that the young
man would be unable to ascertain, had given to him ten pounds. At the
details of the transaction Kent could only guess, as he sat staring at
his work while his coffee got cold; but the evolution of the story,
perpetrated in a Soho attic for ten pounds, and published as Lady
Cornwallis's at the cost of a hundred, was interesting.
He was fiercely and inconsistently resentful. In one way it mattered
nothing to him. Since his stuff wasn't printed over his own name, it
was unimportant over whose name it appeared. But the perception did
not lessen his angry sense of having been duped. He remembered the
circumstances in which he had written this tale and the lies that Eva
had told him about it. Was he to become the ghost of every impostor in
London?
Though he did not refer to the discovery that he had made, it lent a
firmness to his tone when he informed her that his book was accepted
and that he was going down to the country to devote a year to another.
She heard him without remonstrance. Whatever her faults, she had
the virtue of being a woman of the world, and she did not endow the
parting, for which she was partially prepared, with any tactless
tragedy. For an instant only, recalling the benefit of histrionics
at Richmond, she considered the feasibility of sentiment begetting a
reconciliation; then she dismissed the idea. The man was remorseful
--not of having become estranged from her, but of having succumbed--and
sentiment would be wasted to-day. Besides, it would make the interview
painful for him, and she didn't care for him half enough to be eager to
give him a bad time. She shrugged her shoulders.
"Everything has an end," she said languidly--"even _Daniel Deronda_. I
owe you a lot of money, by-the-by. I'm afraid I can't square accounts
with you at the moment, but I suppose you don't mind trusting me?"
"You owe me nothing," said Kent. "If my boorishness has left any liking
for me possible, let me have the pleasure of feeling that I did you one
or two trifling services."
But he did not go down to the country. More than ever he felt that to
rejoin his wife with his guilt unacknowledged would be a greater trial
than he could endure. She was so innocent. If she had been a different
kind of woman, his reluctance would have been duller and easier to
overcome; but to have been false to Cynthia made him feel as if he had
robbed a blind girl.
That he could not delay rejoining her much longer he was distressfully
aware. It was ten months since she had gone away, and even if the
people in Streatham wished to retain the house for a third half-year,
as he understood was likely--their return to New York, or wherever
they had come from, being indefinitely postponed--that would be no
reason why he and Cynthia should not live together at Monmouth or
somewhere else.
He had written her that Messrs. Kynaston had taken _The Eye of the
Beholder_, and during the next day or two he was in hourly expectation
of her reply. On the third afternoon after he had posted his letter,
the door opened and she came into the room.
He had not heard the bell ring, and at the sound of her footstep he
turned quickly--and then, almost before he realised it, his wife was in
his arms, laughing and half crying, saying how glad she was to see him,
how delighted she was at the book's acceptance.
"I had to come," she exclaimed--"I had to! Oh, darling! you don't mind
because the money isn't much? Think what Kynaston said of it! And for
your next you'll get proper terms.... Well, are you surprised to see
me? Let me look at you. You're different. What have you been doing to
yourself? And Baby--you wouldn't know Baby. He talks!... I've been
praying you'd be at home. I wouldn't let them show me in; I've been
picturing walking in on you all the way in the train.... Sweetheart!"
She squeezed him to her again, and then held him at arm's length,
regarding him gaily. "You've changed," she repeated; "you look more
serious. And I? Am I all right--am I a disappointment?"
"You're beautiful," said Kent slowly. "You have changed, too."
He gazed at her with a curious sense of unfamiliarity, striving to
define to himself the alteration that puzzled him. Her face had gained
something besides the hues of health. It seemed to him that her eyes
were deeper, that her smile was more complex. Vaguely he felt that he
had thought of her as a girl and was beholding a woman--that he had
insulted a woman who was lovelier than any he had known.
"Aren't you going to invite me to take off my things? May I?"
"Do," he said, with the same sense of strangeness. "Can I help you?" He
took them from her, awkwardly, and put her into a comfortable chair,
and made up the fire. "It's a new hat, it suits you! I always liked you
in a little hat. Did you I get it down there?"
"I trimmed it myself," she said. "Mind the pin!"
"You shall have some tea--or would you rather have dinner? You must be
hungry!"
"Tea, please, and cake. Can you produce cake?"
"There's a confectioner's just round the corner." He rang the bell.
"Then, madeira. I didn't tell the servant who I was; better say 'my
wife' casually when she comes in. I suppose you don't have ladies to
tea and madeira cake, as a rule?"
"Not as a rule," he said--"no."
She laughed again, and stretched her shoes to the blaze luxuriously.
"So this is the room. This is where you lived before we knew each
other. How funny that it should be the first time I've been in it!
I've often imagined you here, and it isn't the least bit like what I
fancied, of course; I always saw the window over there! Well, talk to
me--tell me all! what you are thinking about? I believe you find me
plain now the hat's off!"
Tea was brought to them in about a quarter of an hour, and they sat
before the fire sipping it, and stealing glances at each other--the
woman's, amused, delicious; Kent's, guilty and tortured. He was tempted
to kiss her, but could not bring himself to do it deliberately; and
with every phrase that fell from her lips his heart grew; heavier.
"You've scarcely been to Strawberry Hill all the time, I hear," she
said. "This is very good tea, Humphrey!"
"Not very often; I've been so busy. Yes, it isn't bad, is it? the
landlady gets it for me. Are they offended with me?"
"H'mph! they'll look over it. You'll have to be very nice and
repentant."
"I will. I'll go this week if I can."
"This week? You must take me to-night!" she cried. "What do you suppose
is going to become of me? I can't stop here.... Shall I give you
another cup?"
Kent felt the blood sinking from his face. His hands shook as he bent
over the fire, and for a moment he had no voice to reply.
"You don't go back to Monmouth to-night?" he asked harshly, without
looking at her.
"N--no," she said; "I can't go back till to-morrow."
"I was thinking of the child," he muttered.
"He's as safe with the nurse as with me," she answered; "I wouldn't
have left him even for a day if he hadn't been."
"I see," said Kent.
His pause appeared to him to become significant and terrible.
"I can't go there with you this evening," he said abruptly; "it can't
be done. I have to be here--there is some one I must meet. I mean, I
can take you there, but I can't possibly stay. You--you must forgive
me, Cynthia."
Still he was not looking at her. When she spoke, her tone was different.
"You will do as you like," she said quietly.
He lifted himself, and faced her.
"Cynthia!"
"Well?"
"Cynthia, don't think I don't care for you."
She did not answer, but she was very pale, and her lips were proudly
set.
"You're angry with me?" he stammered.
"What prevents you--your business? If you're too late for a train,
there are hansoms. It would be expensive, I know----"
"'Expensive!'"
"Perhaps it might cost half a sovereign."
"Cynthia! It's impossible."
"Oh, please don't let's talk about it!" she said. "I made a mistake,
that's all. I've made a good many since I married you; this was one
more."
"I _can't_ go," gasped Kent, fighting for his words. "I----If I cared
for you less, I should! I can't go, because there's something I must
tell you first. If ... but you won't. I want you to know ... I've a
confession to make to you. It's over, but ... I've acted badly to you;
I haven't the right to go to you. For God's sake, don't hate me more
than you can help--I've been unfaithful."
Her first sensation was as if, without warning, he had dealt her a
brutal blow in the face. There was the same staggered sense of fright,
succeeded by the same sick wave of horror. Another woman had known
him? Her brain did not leap for details instantaneously, as a man's
would have leapt in the inverse situation; the name the woman bore, her
position--what had such things to do with it? Curiosity to compare her
with herself in looks would follow; now, while she stared at him with
bloodless features, she was conscious of nothing but the pollution:
another woman had known him. Kent stared back at her, appalled at
her aspect; but he divined what she felt no more than he could have
understood her emotions had she analysed them for him. "Another woman
had known him" was the tumult in her soul; he believed her pride
outraged that he had known another woman. The difference was enormous.
The curiosity and thirst for vengeance apart, the wife's sensation was
what the husband's would have been, had he heard of her own defilement.
But that he himself appeared to her defiled he could not grasp;
unworthy, contemptible, corrupt, he realised, but "defiled," no.
"Cynthia, forgive me!"
She swayed a little as his voice struck her agony.
"I'll try."
"You see why I couldn't go?"
"Yes," she said hoarsely.
"I should have told you anyhow soon.... You aren't sorry I've told you?"
"I don't know. I think ... I think I'm sorry just now. I shall be able
to thank you for that later."
"I did it for the best," said Kent.
"You were right."
He leant against the mantelpiece, his chin sunk. The only sound in
the room came from the kettle, on which the woman's eyes were fixed
intently. The clock of St. Giles-in-the-Fields tolled four.
"What am I to do?" he said.
"Oh," she moaned, "don't ask me; I can't think yet.... You've killed
me, Humphrey--you've killed me!"
He dropped before her chair and stroked her hand. Her pain writhed like
a live thing at his touch, but, in pity for him, she let the hand lie
still and suffered.
"Did you ... love her so much?" she asked.
"God knows I didn't!"
"And yet----Humphrey, she wasn't----?"
"I was mad. She was a lady. It wasn't love; I didn't love her at
all.... If you were a man, you'd understand. I sinned with my body, but
my mind--she never had that ...it was with you--with you. It was the
animal in me--how can I explain to an angel?"
Presently she said:
"Does a woman ever learn to understand a man? She gives him her life;
yet to the end----They begin differently.... He has known everything
before he comes to her, and she has known nothing. She's told that it
doesn't matter, that it's right. She doesn't believe it in her heart
--the more she loves him, the less she believes it--but she tries to
persuade herself she believes it. It's wrong--wrong! To him she's a
new girl, and to her _he_ is a new world. How can marriage be the same
thing to both. You didn't love her, but you gave yourself to her. Could
a husband think less of his wife's sin for a reason like that?"
Kent rose, and stood beside her dumbly. Some glimmer of her point of
view reached him and confused him by its strangeness.
"I'll do whatever you want. What can I say?"
"Help me to forget," she said in a low voice. "Will you help me to
forget?"
"You'll let me come to you?"
"Give me a few days--wait a few days. Only I can't be your wife again,
Humphrey, all at once--I can't.... Ah, don't think me unforgiving;
it isn't that. Come to me, if you will, and work, and we'll be good
friends together. Don't be afraid, I won't make it bad for you, I
promise--I'll never remind you even by a look.... Are the terms too
hard?"
"You're merciful."
The seconds crept away.
"I must go," she said; "I'll write to you."
"Shall you go to your mother's?"
"I must; there's no train to Monmouth after three. Will you send for a
cab to take me to Waterloo? I'll tell them you were coming with me, but
something prevented you.... Can I bathe my eyes in your room before I
go?"
Kent showed her where it was, and waited for her in the parlour. Then
they went downstairs together to the cab. She leant forward and gave
him her hand.
"Don't be afraid of me," she whispered again.
"God bless you!" he said, closing the door.