"I know a lot more than you think. And a lot more than you know
yourself. I know that you're not happy as you are, and I know that
you can't _live_ without happiness. If you're not happy you'll be ill;
more horribly ill, perhaps, than Alice. Look at Alice."
"I'm not like Alice."
"Not now. Not next year. Not for ten years, perhaps, or twenty. But
you don't know what you may be."
She raised her head.
"I shall never be like that. Never."
Rowcliffe laughed.
It struck her then that that was what she ought never to have said if
she wanted to carry out her purpose.
"When I say I'm not like Ally I mean that I'm not so dependent on
people. I'm not gentle like Ally. I'm not as loving and I'm not as
womanly. In fact, I'm not womanly at all."
"My dear child, do you suppose it matters to me what you're not, as
long as I love you as you are?"
"No," she said, "you don't love me really. You only think you do."
She clung to that.
"Why do you say that, Gwenda?"
"Because, if you did, I should have known it before now."
"Well, considering that you _do_ know it now--"
"I mean, you'd have said so before."
"I say! I like that. I'd have said so about five times if you'd ever
given me a chance."
"Oh, no. You had your chance."
"When did I have it? When?"
"The other day. Up at Bar Hill."
"You thought so then?"
"I didn't say I thought so then. I think so now."
"That's rather clever of you. Because, you see, if you thought so then
that shows--"
"What does it show?"
"Why, that you knew all the time--and that you were thinking of me.
You _did_ know. You _did_ think--"
"No. No. It's only that I've got to--that you're _making_ me think of
you now. But I'm not thinking of you the way you want."
"If you're not--if you haven't thought of me--_the way I want_--then I
can't make you out. You're beyond me."
They sat down, tired out with the struggle, as if they had reached the
same point of exhaustion at the same instant.
"Why not leave it at that?" she said.
He rallied.
"Because I can't leave it at that. You knew I cared. You must have
seen. I could have sworn you saw. I could have sworn--"
She knew what he was going to swear and she stopped him.
"I _did_ see that you thought you cared for me. If you'd been quite
sure you'd have told me. You wouldn't have waited. You're not quite
sure now. You're only telling me now because I'm going away. If I
hadn't said I was going away you'd never have told me. You'd just have
gone on waiting till you were quite sure."
She had irritated him now beyond endurance.
"Gwenda," he said savagely, "you're enough to drive a man mad."
"You've told me _that_ before, anyhow. Don't you see that I should go
on driving you mad? Don't you see how unhappy you'd be with me, how
impossible it all is?"
She laughed. It was marvelous to her how she achieved that laugh. It
was as if she had just thought of it and it came.
"I can see," he said, "that _you_ don't care for me."
He had given himself into her hands--hands that seemed to him diabolic
in their play.
"Did I ever _say_ I cared?"
"Well--of all the women--you _are_----! No, you didn't _say_ it."
"Did I ever show it?"
"Good God, how do _I_ know what you showed? If it had been any other
woman--yes, I could have sworn."
"You can't swear to any woman--I'm afraid--till you've married her.
Perhaps--not then."
"You shouldn't say things like that; they sound----"
"How do they sound?"
"As if you knew too much."
She smiled.
"Well, then--there's another reason."
He softened suddenly.
"I didn't mean that, Gwenda. You don't know what you're saying. You
don't know anything. It's only that you're so beastly clever."
"That's a better reason still. You don't want to marry a beastly
clever woman. You really don't."
"I'd risk it. That sort of cleverness doesn't last long."
"It would last your time," she said.
She rose. It was as much as giving him his dismissal.
He stood a moment watching her. She and all her movements still seemed
to him incredible.
"Do you mind telling me where you're going to?"
"I'm going to Mummy." She explained to his blankness: "My stepmother."
He remembered. Mummy was the lady who was "the very one," the lady of
remarkable resources.
It seemed to him then that he saw it all. He knew what she was going
for.
"I see. Instead of your sister," he sneered.
"Papa wouldn't let Ally go to her. But he can't stop _me_."
"Oh, no. Nobody could stop _you_."
She smiled softly. She had missed the brutality of his emphasis.
* * * * *
He said to himself that Gwenda was impossible. She was obstinate and
conceited and wrong-headed. She was utterly selfish, a cold mass of
egoism.
"Cold?" He was not so sure. She might be. But she was capable, he
suspected, of adventures. Instead of taking her sister away to have
her chance, she was rushing off to secure it herself. And the irony of
the thing was that it was he who had put it into her head.
Well--she was no worse, and no better--than the rest of them. Only
unlike them in the queerness of her fascination. He wondered how long
it would have lasted?
You couldn't go on caring for a woman like that, who had never cared a
rap about you.
And yet--he could have sworn--Oh, _that_ was nothing. She had only
thought of him because he had been her only chance.
He made himself think these things of her because they gave him
unspeakable consolation.
All the way back to Morfe he thought them, while on his right hand
Karva rose and receded and rose again, and changed at every turn
its aspect and its form. He thought them to an accompaniment of an
interior, persistent voice, the voice of his romantic youth, that said
to him, "That is her hill, her hill--do you remember? That's where you
met her first. That's where you saw her jumping. That's her hill--her
hill--her hill."