第71章

A moment before, at the moment when she had lifted her arms to his neck, she had been wrapped in a sense of complete security.All the spirits of doubt had been exorcised, and her love was once more the clear habitation in which every thought and feeling could move in blissful freedom.And then, as she raised her face to Darrow's and met his eyes, she had seemed to look into the very ruins of his soul.

That was the only way she could express it.It was as though he and she had been looking at two sides of the same thing, and the side she had seen had been all light and life, and his a place of graves...

She didn't now recall who had spoken first, or even, very clearly, what had been said.It seemed to her only a moment later that she had found herself standing at the other end of the room--the room which had suddenly grown so small that, even with its length between them, she felt as if he touched her--crying out to him "It IS because of you she's going!" and reading the avowal in his face.

That was his secret, then, THEIR secret: he had met the girl in Paris and helped her in her straits--lent her money, Anna vaguely conjectured--and she had fallen in love with him, and on meeting him again had been suddenly overmastered by her passion.Anna, dropping back into her sofa-corner, sat staring these facts in the face.

The girl had been in a desperate plight--frightened, penniless, outraged by what had happened, and not knowing (with a woman like Mrs.Murrett) what fresh injury might impend; and Darrow, meeting her in this distracted hour, had pitied, counselled, been kind to her, with the fatal, the inevitable result.There were the facts as Anna made them out: that, at least, was their external aspect, was as much of them as she had been suffered to see; and into the secret intricacies they might cover she dared not yet project her thoughts.

"I must believe him...I must believe him..." She kept on repeating the words like a talisman.It was natural, after all, that he should have behaved as he had: defended the girl's piteous secret to the last.She too began to feel the contagion of his pity--the stir, in her breast, of feelings deeper and more native to her than the pains of jealousy.

From the security of her blessedness she longed to lean over with compassionate hands...But Owen? What was Owen's part to be? She owed herself first to him--she was bound to protect him not only from all knowledge of the secret she had surprised, but also--and chiefly!--from its consequences.

Yes: the girl must go--there could be no doubt of it--Darrow himself had seen it from the first; and at the thought she had a wild revulsion of relief, as though she had been trying to create in her heart the delusion of a generosity she could not feel...

The one fact on which she could stay her mind was that Sophy was leaving immediately; would be out of the house within an hour.Once she was gone, it would be easier to bring Owen to the point of understanding that the break was final; if necessary, to work upon the girl to make him see it.But that, Anna was sure, would not be necessary.It was clear that Sophy Viner was leaving Givre with no thought of ever seeing it again...

Suddenly, as she tried to put some order in her thoughts, she heard Owen's call at the door: "Mother!----" a name he seldom gave her.There was a new note in his voice: the note of a joyous impatience.It made her turn hastily to the glass to see what face she was about to show him; but before she had had time to compose it he was in the room and she was caught in a school-boy hug.

"It's all right! It's all right! And it's all your doing! Iwant to do the worst kind of penance--bell and candle and the rest.I've been through it with HER, and now she hands me on to you, and you're to call me any names you please." He freed her with his happy laugh."I'm to be stood in the corner till next week, and then I'm to go up to see her.And she says I owe it all to you!""To me?" It was the first phrase she found to clutch at as she tried to steady herself in the eddies of his joy.

"Yes: you were so patient, and so dear to her; and you saw at once what a damned ass I'd been!" She tried a smile, and it seemed to pass muster with him, for he sent it back in a broad beam."That's not so difficult to see? No, I admit it doesn't take a microscope.But you were so wise and wonderful--you always are.I've been mad these last days, simply mad--you and she might well have washed your hands of me! And instead, it's all right--all right!"She drew back a little, trying to keep the smile on her lips and not let him get the least glimpse of what it hid.Now if ever, indeed, it behoved her to be wise and wonderful!

"I'm so glad, dear; so glad.If only you'll always feel like that about me..." She stopped, hardly knowing what she said, and aghast at the idea that her own hands should have retied the knot she imagined to be broken.But she saw he had something more to say; something hard to get out, but absolutely necessary to express.He caught her hands, pulled her close, and, with his forehead drawn into its whimsical smiling wrinkles, "Look here," he cried, "if Darrow wants to call me a damned ass too you're not to stop him!"It brought her back to a sharper sense of her central peril:

of the secret to be kept from him at whatever cost to her racked nerves.

"Oh, you know, he doesn't always wait for orders!" On the whole it sounded better than she'd feared.

"You mean he's called me one already?" He accepted the fact with his gayest laugh."Well, that saves a lot of trouble;now we can pass to the order of the day----" he broke off and glanced at the clock--"which is, you know, dear, that she's starting in about an hour; she and Adelaide must already be snatching a hasty sandwich.You'll come down to bid them good-bye?""Yes--of course."