第67章

"She thought I could make him happy.Would she think so now?""Now...? I don't say now.But later? Time modifies...rubs out...more quickly than you think...Go away, but let him hope...I'm going too--WE'RE going--" he stumbled on the plural--"in a very few weeks: going for a long time, probably.What you're thinking of now may never happen.We may not all be here together again for years."She heard him out in silence, her hands clasped on her knee, her eyes bent on them."For me," she said, "you'll always be here.""Don't say that--oh, don't! Things change...people change...You'll see!""You don't understand.I don't want anything to change.Idon't want to forget--to rub out.At first I imagined Idid; but that was a foolish mistake.As soon as I saw you again I knew it...It's not being here with you that I'm afraid of--in the sense you think.It's being here, or anywhere, with Owen." She stood up and bent her tragic smile on him."I want to keep you all to myself."The only words that came to him were futile denunciations of his folly; but the sense of their futility checked them on his lips."Poor child--you poor child!" he heard himself vainly repeating.

Suddenly he felt the strong reaction of reality and its impetus brought him to his feet."Whatever happens, Iintend to go--to go for good," he exclaimed."I want you to understand that.Oh, don't be afraid--I'll find a reason.

But it's perfectly clear that I must go."She uttered a protesting cry."Go away? You? Don't you see that that would tell everything--drag everybody into the horror?"He found no answer, and her voice dropped back to its calmer note."What good would your going do? Do you suppose it would change anything for me?" She looked at him with a musing wistfulness."I wonder what your feeling for me was?

It seems queer that I've never really known--I suppose we DON'T know much about that kind of feeling.Is it like taking a drink when you're thirsty?...I used to feel as if all of me was in the palm of your hand..."He bowed his humbled head, but she went on almost exultantly: "Don't for a minute think I'm sorry! It was worth every penny it cost.My mistake was in being ashamed, just at first, of its having cost such a lot.I tried to carry it off as a joke--to talk of it to myself as an 'adventure'.I'd always wanted adventures, and you'd given me one, and I tried to take your attitude about it, to 'play the game' and convince myself that I hadn't risked any more on it than you.Then, when I met you again, I suddenly saw that I HAD risked more, but that I'd won more, too--such worlds! I'd been trying all the while to put everything Icould between us; now I want to sweep everything away.I'd been trying to forget how you looked; now I want to remember you always.I'd been trying not to hear your voice; now Inever want to hear any other.I've made my choice--that's all: I've had you and I mean to keep you." Her face was shining like her eyes."To keep you hidden away here," she ended, and put her hand upon her breast.

After she had left him, Darrow continued to sit motionless, staring back into their past.Hitherto it had lingered on the edge of his mind in a vague pink blur, like one of the little rose-leaf clouds that a setting sun drops from its disk.Now it was a huge looming darkness, through which his eyes vainly strained.The whole episode was still obscure to him, save where here and there, as they talked, some phrase or gesture or intonation of the girl's had lit up a little spot in the night.

She had said: "I wonder what your feeling for me was?" and he found himself wondering too...He remembered distinctly enough that he had not meant the perilous passion--even in its most transient form--to play a part in their relation.

In that respect his attitude had been above reproach.She was an unusually original and attractive creature, to whom he had wanted to give a few days of harmless pleasuring, and who was alert and expert enough to understand his intention and spare him the boredom of hesitations and misinterpretations.That had been his first impression, and her subsequent demeanour had justified it.She had been, from the outset, just the frank and easy comrade he had expected to find her.Was it he, then, who, in the sequel, had grown impatient of the bounds he had set himself? Was it his wounded vanity that, seeking balm for its hurt, yearned to dip deeper into the healing pool of her compassion? In his confused memory of the situation he seemed not to have been guiltless of such yearnings...Yet for the first few days the experiment had been perfectly successful.Her enjoyment had been unclouded and his pleasure in it undisturbed.It was very gradually--he seemed to see--that a shade of lassitude had crept over their intercourse.

Perhaps it was because, when her light chatter about people failed, he found she had no other fund to draw on, or perhaps simply because of the sweetness of her laugh, or of the charm of the gesture with which, one day in the woods of Marly, she had tossed off her hat and tilted back her head at the call of a cuckoo; or because, whenever he looked at her unexpectedly, he found that she was looking at him and did not want him to know it; or perhaps, in varying degrees, because of all these things, that there had come a moment when no word seemed to fly high enough or dive deep enough to utter the sense of well-being each gave to the other, and the natural substitute for speech had been a kiss.

The kiss, at all events, had come at the precise moment to save their venture from disaster.They had reached the point when her amazing reminiscences had begun to flag, when her future had been exhaustively discussed, her theatrical prospects minutely studied, her quarrel with Mrs.Murrett retold with the last amplification of detail, and when, perhaps conscious of her exhausted resources and his dwindling interest, she had committed the fatal error of saying that she could see he was unhappy, and entreating him to tell her why...