She was looking rather tired, he thought, when he examined her more
critically; her eyes seemed larger, and her expression had grown
restless, and she had lost some of the roundness of her face. But she
had gained a good deal in repose of manner; and her voice, when she
answered him, was more under control at the moment than his own.
"I shouldn't think you would," she laughed. "I shocked them all at
breakfast, this morning, by saying I should like to try idle men for a
change!"
It struck him that she would not have made such a remark when he left
her last autumn; and again he would have liked to possess a chronicle
of the last six weeks. But her laugh was the same as ever, and her
hand was still grasping his with a reassuring fervour.
"Come back with me," he said, spontaneously. "We can't talk here, can
we? I dare say I can knock up some sort of a supper for you, if you
don't mind a very primitive arrangement."
"It will be beautiful," she said; and the throb of pleasure in her
voice allayed his last feeling of suspicion.
They found that, after all, they had very little to say to one
another; and they were both glad of the occupation of preparing
supper, when they arrived at the Temple and found that the housekeeper
had gone out for the evening. They made as much fun as they could over
the difficulties of procuring a meal, and avoided personal topics with
a scrupulous care, and did not once run the risk of looking each other
in the face. And afterwards, when they had made themselves comfortable
in two chairs near the lamp and conversation became inevitable, an
awkward embarrassment seized them both.
"It's very odd," said Katharine, frowning a little; "but I have been
bottling up things to tell you for weeks, and now they seem to have
got congested in my brain and I can't get one of them out. Why is it,
I wonder? I can't have grown suddenly shy of you; but we seem to have
lost touch, somehow. Oh, it's queer; I don't like it!"
She gave herself a little shake. Paul laughed slightly.
"What an absurd child you are! It is only because we have not been
together lately, and so we've lost the trick of it. You are always
turning yourself inside out, and then sitting down a little way off to
look at it."
"I believe I do," owned Katharine. "I always want to know why certain
things affect me in certain ways."
"Did you want to know why you were glad to see me, this evening?"
She looked up quickly at him for the first time.
"No," she said, frankly. "At least, I don't think I thought about it."
"Good child!" he said. "Don't think about it." And she wondered why he
looked so pleased.
"Why not?" she asked him. "Please tell me."
"Oh, because it isn't good for you to be always turning yourself
inside out; certainly not on my account. Besides, it spoils things.
Don't you think so?"
"What things?"
"Oh, please! I'm not here to answer such a lot of puzzling questions.
Who has been getting you into such bad habits, while I have been
away?"
"Nobody who could answer any of my puzzling questions," she replied,
softly; and Paul asked hastily if she would make the coffee. He had
fetched her here as an experiment, a kind of test of his own feelings
and of hers; and he had a sudden fear lest it should succeed too
effectually. She went obediently and did as she was told, and brought
him his coffee when it was ready; and he submitted to having sugar in
it, since it compelled her to brush his hair with her sleeve as she
bent over him with the sugar basin.
"Well?" he asked, in the next pause. She was balancing her spoon on
the edge of her cup, with a curious smile on her face.
"Oh, nothing!"
"Nothing must be very interesting, then. But I don't suppose I have
any right to know. Have I?"
The spoon dropped on the floor with a clatter.
"Of course you have! I wish you wouldn't say those things! They hurt
so. I was only thinking,--it wasn't anything important, but--I'm so
awfully happy to-night."
"But that is surely of the very first importance. Might one know why?
Or is that some one else's secret, too?"
She disturbed his composure by suddenly pushing her coffee away from
her; and there was an angry light in her eyes, as she sprang to her
feet and stood looking down at him.
"Sometimes I think I hate you," she said; and the words struck him as
being strangely inadequate to the occasion. They might have been
spoken by a petulant child, and the moment before he had felt that she
was a woman. He put his cup down too, and went towards her.
"Does sometimes mean now?" he asked jestingly. He was trying,
impotently, to prevent her from going any farther. But she took a step
backward, and did not heed his intention.
"Yes, it does," she said, angrily. "I am tired of being treated like a
child; I am tired of letting you do what you like with me. One day you
spoil me; and another, you hurt me cruelly. And you don't care a
little bit. I am a kind of amusement to you, an interesting puzzle, a
toy that doesn't seem to break easily; that's all. And I just let you
do it,--it is my own fault; when you hurt me I hide what I feel, and
when you are nice to me I forget everything else. Oh, yes, of course I
am a fool; do you think I don't know it? You have only to touch my
face, or to look at me, or to smile, and you know I am in your hands.
I despise myself for it; I would give all I know to be strong enough
to put you out of my life. But I can't do it, I can't! And you know I
can't; you know I am bound up in you. Everything I feel seems to be
yours; all my thoughts seem to belong to you, directly they come into
my head; I can't take the smallest step without wondering what you
will think of it. Oh, I hate myself for it; you don't know how I hate
myself! But I can't help it."
"Stop," said Paul, putting out his hand. But she waved him away, and
went on talking rapidly.
"I must say it all now; it has been driving me mad lately. At first,
it seemed so easy to get on without you; but it grew much harder as it
went on, and when you stopped writing to me, I--I thought I should go
mad. It was so awful, too, when I had got used to telling you things;
there was no one else I could tell things to, and the loneliness of it
was so terrible! I wanted to kill myself, those days; but I was too
big a coward. So I got along somehow; and some days it was easier than
others, but it was always hard. Only, nobody ever guessed. Oh, if you
knew how I have learnt to deceive people! And there was always my work
to get through, as well; it has been horrible. And I could no more
help it than I could help breathing. I wanted to kill myself!"
"Don't," half whispered Paul, and he came a little nearer to her. But
she turned and leaned against the mantel-shelf for support, and
clasped the cold marble with her fingers.
"I must say it, Paul. If you like, I will go away afterwards and never
see you again. But I cannot let it spoil my life any longer; I feel as
though you had got to hear it _now_. When I wrote you that last
letter, I said that if you did not answer it I would not write to you
again, or think about you, or come and see you any more. And you
didn't answer it. I got to loathe the postman's knock, because it made
my face hot, and I was afraid people would find out. But they never
did! I came down to breakfast every day, in the hope of finding a
letter from you; and when there wasn't one, and everything seemed a
blank,--oh, don't I know the awful look of that dining-room when
there isn't a letter from you!--I just had to pretend that I hadn't
expected to find one at all." She paused expectantly, but this time
Paul made no attempt to speak. "I was never any good at pretending,
before," she went on in a gentler tone, "but I believe I could deceive
any one now. Only, I never succeeded in cheating myself! I used to
find out new ways to school, because the old ones reminded me of you;
and I had to do all my crying in omnibuses, at the far end up by the
horses, because I dare not do it at Queen's Crescent, where I might
have been seen. For I did cry sometimes." Her voice trembled, and she
ended with a little sob. She buried her face in her hands.
"So that is what you have been doing for these six weeks?" said Paul,
involuntarily.
"Do you find it so amusing, then?" asked Katharine in a stifled tone.
He stepped up behind her, and twisted her round gently by the
shoulders, so that she was obliged to look at him. The hardness went
from her face, and she held out her hands to him instinctively.
"Paul," she said, piteously, "I couldn't help it. Aren't you a little
bit sorry for me? What have I done that I should like the wrong
person? Other girls don't do these things. Am I awfully wicked, or
awfully unlucky? Paul, say something to me! Are you very angry with
me? But I couldn't help it, I couldn't indeed! I have tried so hard to
make myself different, and I can't!"
He bit his lip and tried to say something, but failed.
"And after all," she added in a low tone, "when I had been schooling
myself to hate you for six weeks, I nearly went mad with joy when
Phyllis came and told me you were in the hall. Oh, Paul, I know I am
dreadfully foolish! Will you ever respect me again, I wonder?"
There was a quaint mixture of humour and pathos in her tone; and he
gathered her into his arms and kissed her tenderly, without finding
any words with which to answer her. She clung to him, and kissed him
for the first time in return, and forgot that she had once thought it
wrong to be caressed by him; just now, it seemed the most natural
thing in the world that he should be comforting her for the suffering
of which he himself was the cause. And her passionate wish to rouse
him from his apathy had ended in a weak desire to regain his tolerance
at any cost.
"You are not angry with me? I haven't made you angry?" she asked him
in an anxious whisper.
"No, no, you foolish child!" was all he said as he drew her closer.
"But it was dreadful of me to say all those things to you, wasn't it?"
"I like you to say dreadful things to me, dear."
She swayed back from him at that, with her two hands on his shoulders.
"Do you mean that, really? But--you _must_ think it dreadfully wicked
of me to let you kiss me, and to come and see you like this? It is
dreadfully wicked, isn't it? Oh, I know it is; everybody would say
so."
"I can't imagine what you mean. You are a dear little Puritan to me.
You don't know what you are saying. Come, there are all those things
you have got to tell me. I want to hear everything, please; whom you
have been flirting with, and all sorts of things. Now, it is no use
your pretending that you are going to hide anything from me, because
you know you can't!"
He had resumed his former manner with a rather conscious effort, and
drew her down beside him on the sofa. She tried to obey him, but she
could think of very little to say; and towards ten o'clock, Paul
looked at his watch.
"My child, you must go," he said. Katharine rose to her feet with a
sigh.
"I don't want to go," she said, reluctantly.
"Has it been nice, then?" he asked, smiling at her dejected face.
"It has been the happiest evening I have ever spent," she said,
looking away from him.
"Surely not!" laughed Paul. "Think of all the other evenings at the
theatre, with Ted and Monty and all the rest of them!"
"You know quite well," she said indignantly, "that I like being with
you better than with any one else in the world. You know I do, don't
you?" she repeated, anxiously.
"It is enough for me that you say so," replied Paul; and they stood
silent for a moment or two. "Come, you really must go, child," he said
again. Katharine still remained motionless, while he put on his coat.
"Must I?" she said, dreamily. He came back to her and gave her a
gentle shake.
"What is it, you strange little person? I believe you would have been
much happier if I had not come back to bother you, eh?"
She denied it vehemently, and exerted herself to talk to him all the
way home in the cab. She was solemn again, however, when the time
came to say good-bye.
"May I see you again soon?" she asked him wistfully.
"Why, surely! We are going to have lots of larks together, aren't we?
Well, what is it now?"
"Oh, I was only thinking!"
"What about?"
She unlocked the door with her latch-key before she replied.
"It seems so odd," she said, "that I care more about your opinion than
about anybody else's in the whole world; and yet I have given you the
most reason to think badly of me. Isn't it awfully queer?"
She shut the door before he had time to answer her. And Paul walked
home, reflecting on the futility of experiments.