第30章

"I wrote as soon as I could," she rejoined."I explained the delay and asked you to come.And you never even answered my letter.""It was impossible to come then.I had to go back to my post.""And impossible to write and tell me so?""Your letter was a long time coming.I had waited a week--ten days.I had some excuse for thinking, when it came, that you were in no great hurry for an answer.""You thought that--really--after reading it?""I thought it."

Her heart leaped up to her throat."Then why are you here today?"He turned on her with a quick look of wonder."God knows--if you can ask me that!"

"You see I was right to say I didn't understand."He stood up abruptly and stood facing her, blocking the view over the river and the checkered slopes."Perhaps I might say so too.""No, no: we must neither of us have any reason for saying it again." She looked at him gravely."Surely you and Ineedn't arrange the lights before we show ourselves to each other.I want you to see me just as I am, with all my irrational doubts and scruples; the old ones and the new ones too."He came back to his seat beside her."Never mind the old ones.They were justified--I'm willing to admit it.With the governess having suddenly to be packed off, and Effie on your hands, and your mother-in-law ill, I see the impossibility of your letting me come.I even see that, at the moment, it was difficult to write and explain.But what does all that matter now? The new scruples are the ones Iwant to tackle."

Again her heart trembled.She felt her happiness so near, so sure, that to strain it closer might be like a child's crushing a pet bird in its caress.But her very security urged her on.For so long her doubts had been knife-edged:

now they had turned into bright harmless toys that she could toss and catch without peril!

"You didn't come, and you didn't answer my letter; and after waiting four months I wrote another.""And I answered that one; and I'm here."

"Yes." She held his eyes."But in my last letter I repeated exactly what I'd said in the first--the one I wrote you last June.I told you then that I was ready to give you the answer to what you'd asked me in London; and in telling you that, I told you what the answer was.""My dearest! My dearest!" Darrow murmured.

"You ignored that letter.All summer you made no sign.And all I ask now is, that you should frankly tell me why.""I can only repeat what I've just said.I was hurt and unhappy and I doubted you.I suppose if I'd cared less Ishould have been more confident.I cared so much that Icouldn't risk another failure.For you'd made me feel that I'd miserably failed.So I shut my eyes and set my teeth and turned my back.There's the whole pusillanimous truth of it!""Oh, if it's the WHOLE truth!----" She let him clasp her."There's my torment, you see.I thought that was what your silence meant till I made you break it.Now I want to be sure that I was right.""What can I tell you to make you sure?"

"You can let me tell YOU everything first." She drew away, but without taking her hands from him."Owen saw you in Paris," she began.

She looked at him and he faced her steadily.The light was full on his pleasantly-browned face, his grey eyes, his frank white forehead.She noticed for the first time a seal-ring in a setting of twisted silver on the hand he had kept on hers.

"In Paris? Oh, yes...So he did."

"He came back and told me.I think you talked to him a moment in a theatre.I asked if you'd spoken of my having put you off--or if you'd sent me any message.He didn't remember that you had.""In a crush--in a Paris foyer? My dear!""It was absurd of me! But Owen and I have always been on odd kind of brother-and-sister terms.I think he guessed about us when he saw you with me in London.So he teased me a little and tried to make me curious about you; and when he saw he'd succeeded he told me he hadn't had time to say much to you because you were in such a hurry to get back to the lady you were with."He still held her hands, but she felt no tremor in his, and the blood did not stir in his brown cheek.He seemed to be honestly turning over his memories.

"Yes: and what else did he tell you?"

"Oh, not much, except that she was awfully pretty.When Iasked him to describe her he said you had her tucked away in a baignoire and he hadn't actually seen her; but he saw the tail of her cloak, and somehow knew from that that she was pretty.One DOES, you know...I think he said the cloak was pink."Darrow broke into a laugh."Of course it was--they always are! So that was at the bottom of your doubts?""Not at first.I only laughed.But afterward, when I wrote you and you didn't answer----Oh, you DO see?" she appealed to him.

He was looking at her gently."Yes: I see.""It's not as if this were a light thing between us.I want you to know me as I am.If I thought that at that moment...when you were on your way here, almost----"He dropped her hand and stood up."Yes, yes--I understand.""But do you?" Her look followed him."I'm not a goose of a girl.I know...of course I KNOW...but there are things a woman feels...when what she knows doesn't make any difference.It's not that I want you to explain--I mean about that particular evening.It's only that I want you to have the whole of my feeling.I didn't know what it was till I saw you again.I never dreamed I should say such things to you!""I never dreamed I should be here to hear you say them!" He turned back and lifting a floating end of her scarf put his lips to it."But now that you have, I know--I know," he smiled down at her.

"You know?"

"That this is no light thing between us.Now you may ask me anything you please! That was all I wanted to ask YOU."For a long moment they looked at each other without speaking.She saw the dancing spirit in his eyes turn grave and darken to a passionate sternness.He stooped and kissed her, and she sat as if folded in wings.

XII

It was in the natural order of things that, on the way back to the house, their talk should have turned to the future.