第13章

He looked at her as never yet."What was it he did to you?""Everything!" Then abruptly she put out her hand in farewell.

"Good-bye."

He turned as cold as he had turned that night he read the man's death."You mean that we meet no more?""Not as we've met - not THERE!"

He stood aghast at this snap of their great bond, at the renouncement that rang out in the word she so expressively sounded.

"But what's changed - for you?"

She waited in all the sharpness of a trouble that for the first time since he had known her made her splendidly stern."How can you understand now when you didn't understand before?""I didn't understand before only because I didn't know.Now that Iknow, I see what I've been living with for years," Stransom went on very gently.

She looked at him with a larger allowance, doing this gentleness justice."How can I then, on this new knowledge of my own, ask you to continue to live with it?""I set up my altar, with its multiplied meanings," Stransom began;but she quietly interrupted him.

"You set up your altar, and when I wanted one most I found it magnificently ready.I used it with the gratitude I've always shown you, for I knew it from of old to be dedicated to Death.Itold you long ago that my Dead weren't many.Yours were, but all you had done for them was none too much for MY worship! You had placed a great light for Each - I gathered them together for One!""We had simply different intentions," he returned."That, as you say, I perfectly knew, and I don't see why your intention shouldn't still sustain you.""That's because you're generous - you can imagine and think.But the spell is broken."It seemed to poor Stransom, in spite of his resistance, that it really was, and the prospect stretched grey and void before him.

All he could say, however, was: "I hope you'll try before you give up.""If I had known you had ever known him I should have taken for granted he had his candle," she presently answered."What's changed, as you say, is that on making the discovery I find he never has had it.That makes MY attitude" - she paused as thinking how to express it, then said simply - "all wrong.""Come once again," he pleaded.

"Will you give him his candle?" she asked.

He waited, but only because it would sound ungracious; not because of a doubt of his feeling."I can't do that!" he declared at last.

"Then good-bye." And she gave him her hand again.

He had got his dismissal; besides which, in the agitation of everything that had opened out to him, he felt the need to recover himself as he could only do in solitude.Yet he lingered -lingered to see if she had no compromise to express, no attenuation to propose.But he only met her great lamenting eyes, in which indeed he read that she was as sorry for him as for any one else.

This made him say: "At least, in any case, I may see you here.""Oh yes, come if you like.But I don't think it will do."He looked round the room once more, knowing how little he was sure it would do.He felt also stricken and more and more cold, and his chill was like an ague in which he had to make an effort not to shake.Then he made doleful reply: "I must try on my side - if you can't try on yours." She came out with him to the hall and into the doorway, and here he put her the question he held he could least answer from his own wit."Why have you never let me come before?""Because my aunt would have seen you, and I should have had to tell her how I came to know you.""And what would have been the objection to that?""It would have entailed other explanations; there would at any rate have been that danger.""Surely she knew you went every day to church," Stransom objected.

"She didn't know what I went for."

"Of me then she never even heard?"

"You'll think I was deceitful.But I didn't need to be!"He was now on the lower door-step, and his hostess held the door half-closed behind him.Through what remained of the opening he saw her framed face.He made a supreme appeal."What DID he do to you?""It would have come out - SHE would have told you.That fear at my heart - that was my reason!" And she closed the door, shutting him out.