Archer reddened, and hurried on with a rush. "We had a frank
talk--almost the first. She thinks my impatience a bad sign."
"Merciful heavens--a bad sign?"
"She thinks it means that I can't trust myself to go on caring for her.
She thinks, in short, I want to marry her at once to get away from some
one that I--care for more."
Madame Olenska examined this curiously. "But if she thinks that--why
isn't she in a hurry too?"
"Because she's not like that: she's so much nobler. She insists all the
more on the long engagement, to give me time--"
"Time to give her up for the other woman?"
"If I want to."
Madame Olenska leaned toward the fire and gazed into it with fixed
eyes. Down the quiet street Archer heard the approaching trot of her
horses.
"That _is_ noble," she said, with a slight break in her voice.
"Yes. But it's ridiculous."
"Ridiculous? Because you don't care for any one else?"
"Because I don't mean to marry any one else."
"Ah." There was another long interval. At length she looked up at him
and asked: "This other woman--does she love you?"
"Oh, there's no other woman; I mean, the person that May was thinking
of is--was never--"
"Then, why, after all, are you in such haste?"
"There's your carriage," said Archer.
She half-rose and looked about her with absent eyes. Her fan and gloves
lay on the sofa beside her and she picked them up mechanically.
"Yes; I suppose I must be going."
"You're going to Mrs. Struthers's?"
"Yes." She smiled and added: "I must go where I am invited, or I should
be too lonely. Why not come with me?"
Archer felt that at any cost he must keep her beside him, must make her
give him the rest of her evening. Ignoring her question, he continued
to lean against the chimney-piece, his eyes fixed on the hand in which
she held her gloves and fan, as if watching to see if he had the power
to make her drop them.
"May guessed the truth," he said. "There is another woman--but not the
one she thinks."
Ellen Olenska made no answer, and did not move. After a moment he sat
down beside her, and, taking her hand, softly unclasped it, so that the
gloves and fan fell on the sofa between them.
She started up, and freeing herself from him moved away to the other
side of the hearth. "Ah, don't make love to me! Too many people have
done that," she said, frowning.
Archer, changing colour, stood up also: it was the bitterest rebuke she
could have given him. "I have never made love to you," he said, "and I
never shall. But you are the woman I would have married if it had been
possible for either of us."
"Possible for either of us?" She looked at him with unfeigned
astonishment. "And you say that--when it's you who've made it
impossible?"
He stared at her, groping in a blackness through which a single arrow
of light tore its blinding way.
"_I've_ made it impossible--?"
"You, you, _you_!" she cried, her lip trembling like a child's on the
verge of tears. "Isn't it you who made me give up divorcing--give it
up because you showed me how selfish and wicked it was, how one must
sacrifice one's self to preserve the dignity of marriage ... and to
spare one's family the publicity, the scandal? And because my family
was going to be your family--for May's sake and for yours--I did what
you told me, what you proved to me that I ought to do. Ah," she broke
out with a sudden laugh, "I've made no secret of having done it for
you!"
She sank down on the sofa again, crouching among the festive ripples of
her dress like a stricken masquerader; and the young man stood by the
fireplace and continued to gaze at her without moving.
"Good God," he groaned. "When I thought--"
"You thought?"
"Ah, don't ask me what I thought!"
Still looking at her, he saw the same burning flush creep up her neck
to her face. She sat upright, facing him with a rigid dignity.
"I do ask you."
"Well, then: there were things in that letter you asked me to read--"
"My husband's letter?"
"Yes."
"I had nothing to fear from that letter: absolutely nothing! All I
feared was to bring notoriety, scandal, on the family--on you and May."
"Good God," he groaned again, bowing his face in his hands.
The silence that followed lay on them with the weight of things final
and irrevocable. It seemed to Archer to be crushing him down like his
own grave-stone; in all the wide future he saw nothing that would ever
lift that load from his heart. He did not move from his place, or raise
his head from his hands; his hidden eyeballs went on staring into utter
darkness.
"At least I loved you--" he brought out.
On the other side of the hearth, from the sofa-corner where he supposed
that she still crouched, he heard a faint stifled crying like a
child's. He started up and came to her side.
"Ellen! What madness! Why are you crying? Nothing's done that can't
be undone. I'm still free, and you're going to be." He had her in
his arms, her face like a wet flower at his lips, and all their vain
terrors shrivelling up like ghosts at sunrise. The one thing that
astonished him now was that he should have stood for five minutes
arguing with her across the width of the room, when just touching her
made everything so simple.
She gave him back all his kiss, but after a moment he felt her
stiffening in his arms, and she put him aside and stood up.
"Ah, my poor Newland--I suppose this had to be. But it doesn't in the
least alter things," she said, looking down at him in her turn from the
hearth.
"It alters the whole of life for me."
"No, no--it mustn't, it can't. You're engaged to May Welland; and I'm
married."
He stood up too, flushed and resolute. "Nonsense! It's too late for
that sort of thing. We've no right to lie to other people or to
ourselves. We won't talk of your marriage; but do you see me marrying
May after this?"
She stood silent, resting her thin elbows on the mantelpiece, her
profile reflected in the glass behind her. One of the locks of her
chignon had become loosened and hung on her neck; she looked haggard
and almost old.
"I don't see you," she said at length, "putting that question to May.
Do you?"