"No," she said, whitely radiant with a serenity I had never seen before
in her face. "You love me with your brain. With your soul if you like. I
_know_, my poor bleeding Stephen!--Aren't those tears there? Don't mind
my seeing them, Stephen.... Poor dear! Poor dear!.... You love _them_
with your inmost heart. Why should you mind that I see you do?... All my
life I've been wrong, Stephen, and now I know too late. It's the things
we own we love, the things we buy with our lives.... Always I have been
hard, I've been a little hard.... Stephen, my dear, I loved you, always
I have loved you, and always I have tried to keep myself.... It's too
late.... I don't know why I am talking like this.... But you see I can
make a bargain now--it's not an impossible bargain--and save you and
save your wife and save your children----"
"But how?" I said, still doubting.
"Never mind how, Stephen. Don't ask me how now. Nothing very difficult.
Easy. But I shall write you no more letters--see you--no more. Never.
And that's why I had to come, you see, why I was able to come to you,
just to see you and say good-bye to you, and take leave of you, dear
Love that I threw away and loved too late...."
She bit her lip and faced me there, a sweet flushed living thing, with a
tear coursing down her cheek, and her mouth now firm and steady.
"You can stop this divorce?" I said, "But how, Mary?"
"No, don't ask me how. At a price. It's a bargain. No, no! Don't think
that,--a bargain with Justin, but not degrading. Don't, my dear, let the
thought of it distress you. I have to give earnests.... Never, dear,
never through all the dusty rest of life again will you and I speak
together. Never! Even if we come face to face once more--no word...."
"Mary," I said, "what is it you have to do? You speak as if---- What is
it Justin demands?"
"No! do not ask me that.... Tell me--you see we've so much to talk
about, Stephen--tell me of all you are going to do. Everything. Because
I've got to make a great vow of renunciation--of you. Not to think
again--not even to think of you again.... No, no. I'm not even to look
for you in the papers any more. There's to be no tricks this time. And
so you see I want to fill up my mind with you. To store myself with you.
Tell me your work is worth it--that it's not like the work of everyone.
Tell me, Stephen--_that_. I want to believe that--tremendously. Don't be
modest now. That will be cruel. I want to believe that I am at last to
do something that is worth doing, something not fruitless...."
"Are you to go into seclusion," I asked suddenly, "to be a nun----?"
"It is something like that," she said; "very like that. But I have
promised--practically--not to tell you that. Tell me your soul, Stephen,
now. Give me something I may keep in my mind through--through all those
years of waiting...."
"But where?" I cried. "What years of waiting?"
"In a lonely place, my dear--among mountains. High and away. Very
beautiful, but lonely. A lake. Great rocks.... Yes,--like that place. So
odd.... I shall have so much time to think, and I shall have no
papers--no news. I mustn't talk to you of that. Don't let me talk to you
of that. I want to hear about this world, this world I am going to
leave, and how you think you are going on fighting in the hot and dusty
struggle--to make the world cool and kind and reasonable, to train minds
better, to broaden ideas ... all those things you believe in. All those
things you believe in and stick to--even when they are dull. Now I am
leaving it, I begin to see how fine it is--to fight as you want to
fight. A tiresome inglorious lifelong fight.... You really believe,
Stephen?"
§ 11
And then suddenly I read her purpose.
"Mary," I cried, and stood up and laid my hand upon her arm, "Tell me
what is it you mean to do. What do you mean to do?"
She looked up at me defensively and for a moment neither of us spoke.
"Mary," I said, and could not say what was in my thoughts.
"You are wrong," she lied at last....
She stood up too and faced me. I held her shoulder and looked into her
eyes.
The gong of my little clock broke the silence.
"I must go, Stephen," she said. "I did not see how the time was slipping
by."
I began to entreat her and she to deny. "You don't understand," she
said, "you don't understand. Stephen!--I had hoped you would understand.
You see life,--not as I see it. I wanted--all sorts of splendid things
and you--begin to argue. You are shocked, you refuse to understand....
No. No. Take your hands off me, Stephen dear, and let me go. Let me go!"
"But," I said, stupid and persistent, "what are you going to do?"
"I've told you. Stephen. I've told you. As much as I can tell you. And
you think--this foolish thing. As though I could do that! Stephen, if I
promise, will you let me go?..."
§ 12
My mind leaps from that to the moment in the afternoon, when torn by
intolerable distresses and anxiety I knocked and rang, and again knocked
at the door of the house she occupied in South Street, with the
intention of making one last appeal to her to live--if, indeed, it was
death she had in mind. I had let her go from me and instantly a hundred
neglected things had come into my head. I could go away with her, I
could threaten to die with her; it seemed to me that nothing in all the
world mattered if only I could thrust back the dark hand of death to
which she had so manifestly turned. I knew, I knew all along that her
extorted promise would not bind her. I knew and I let the faintest
shadow of uncertainty weaken and restrain me. And I went to her too
late. I saw instantly that I was too late when the door opened and
showed me the scared face of a young footman whose eyes were red with
tears.
"Are you Doctor----?" he asked of my silence.
"I want----" I said. "I must speak to Lady Mary."
He was wordless for a moment. "She--she died, sir," he said. "She's died
suddenly." His face quivered, he was blubbering. He couldn't say
anything more; he stood snivelling in the doorway.
For some moments I remained confronting him as if I would dispute his
words. Some things the mind contests in the face of invincible
conviction. One wants to thrust back time....