"A thousand times!" He paused. "It would be easy to lie to you; but the
truth is I think it detestable."
"Oh, so do I!" she cried with a deep breath of relief.
He sprang up impatiently. "Well, then--it's my turn to ask: what is it,
in God's name, that you think better?"
She hung her head and continued to clasp and unclasp her hands in her
muff. The step drew nearer, and a guardian in a braided cap walked
listlessly through the room like a ghost stalking through a necropolis.
They fixed their eyes simultaneously on the case opposite them, and
when the official figure had vanished down a vista of mummies and
sarcophagi Archer spoke again.
"What do you think better?"
Instead of answering she murmured: "I promised Granny to stay with her
because it seemed to me that here I should be safer."
"From me?"
She bent her head slightly, without looking at him.
"Safer from loving me?"
Her profile did not stir, but he saw a tear overflow on her lashes and
hang in a mesh of her veil.
"Safer from doing irreparable harm. Don't let us be like all the
others!" she protested.
"What others? I don't profess to be different from my kind. I'm
consumed by the same wants and the same longings."
She glanced at him with a kind of terror, and he saw a faint colour
steal into her cheeks.
"Shall I--once come to you; and then go home?" she suddenly hazarded in
a low clear voice.
The blood rushed to the young man's forehead. "Dearest!" he said,
without moving. It seemed as if he held his heart in his hands, like a
full cup that the least motion might overbrim.
Then her last phrase struck his ear and his face clouded. "Go home?
What do you mean by going home?"
"Home to my husband."
"And you expect me to say yes to that?"
She raised her troubled eyes to his. "What else is there? I can't stay
here and lie to the people who've been good to me."
"But that's the very reason why I ask you to come away!"
"And destroy their lives, when they've helped me to remake mine?"
Archer sprang to his feet and stood looking down on her in inarticulate
despair. It would have been easy to say: "Yes, come; come once." He
knew the power she would put in his hands if she consented; there would
be no difficulty then in persuading her not to go back to her husband.
But something silenced the word on his lips. A sort of passionate
honesty in her made it inconceivable that he should try to draw her
into that familiar trap. "If I were to let her come," he said to
himself, "I should have to let her go again." And that was not to be
imagined.
But he saw the shadow of the lashes on her wet cheek, and wavered.
"After all," he began again, "we have lives of our own.... There's
no use attempting the impossible. You're so unprejudiced about some
things, so used, as you say, to looking at the Gorgon, that I don't
know why you're afraid to face our case, and see it as it really
is--unless you think the sacrifice is not worth making."
She stood up also, her lips tightening under a rapid frown.
"Call it that, then--I must go," she said, drawing her little watch
from her bosom.
She turned away, and he followed and caught her by the wrist. "Well,
then: come to me once," he said, his head turning suddenly at the
thought of losing her; and for a second or two they looked at each
other almost like enemies.
"When?" he insisted. "Tomorrow?"