第75章

"I was on my way to you--after repeated delays and postponements of your own making.At the very last you turned me back with a mere word--and without explanation.Iwaited for a letter; and none came.I'm not saying this to justify myself.I'm simply trying to make you understand.

I felt hurt and bitter and bewildered.I thought you meant to give me up.And suddenly, in my way, I found some one to be sorry for, to be of use to.That, I swear to you, was the way it began.The rest was a moment's folly...a flash of madness...as such things are.We've never seen each other since..."Anna was looking at him coldly."You sufficiently describe her in saying that!""Yes, if you measure her by conventional standards--which is what you always declare you never do.""Conventional standards? A girl who----" She was checked by a sudden rush of almost physical repugnance.Suddenly she broke out: "I always thought her an adventuress!""Always?"

"I don't mean always...but after you came...""She's not an adventuress."

"You mean that she professes to act on the new theories? The stuff that awful women rave about on platforms?""Oh, I don't think she pretended to have a theory----""She hadn't even that excuse?"

"She had the excuse of her loneliness, her unhappiness--of miseries and humiliations that a woman like you can't even guess.She had nothing to look back to but indifference or unkindness--nothing to look forward to but anxiety.She saw I was sorry for her and it touched her.She made too much of it--she exaggerated it.I ought to have seen the danger, but I didn't.There's no possible excuse for what I did."Anna listened to him in speechless misery.Every word he spoke threw back a disintegrating light on their own past.

He had come to her with an open face and a clear conscience --come to her from this! If his security was the security of falsehood it was horrible; if it meant that he had forgotten, it was worse.She would have liked to stop her ears, to close her eyes, to shut out every sight and sound and suggestion of a world in which such things could be; and at the same time she was tormented by the desire to know more, to understand better, to feel herself less ignorant and inexpert in matters which made so much of the stuff of human experience.What did he mean by "a moment's folly, a flash of madness"? How did people enter on such adventures, how pass out of them without more visible traces of their havoc? Her imagination recoiled from the vision of a sudden debasing familiarity: it seemed to her that her thoughts would never again be pure...

"I swear to you," she heard Darrow saying, "it was simply that, and nothing more."She wondered at his composure, his competence, at his knowing so exactly what to say.No doubt men often had to make such explanations: they had the formulas by heart...Aleaden lassitude descended on her.She passed from flame and torment into a colourless cold world where everything surrounding her seemed equally indifferent and remote.For a moment she simply ceased to feel.

She became aware that Darrow was waiting for her to speak, and she made an effort to represent to herself the meaning of what he had just said; but her mind was as blank as a blurred mirror.Finally she brought out: "I don't think Iunderstand what you've told me."

"No; you don't understand," he returned with sudden bitterness; and on his lips the charge of incomprehension seemed an offense to her.

"I don't want to--about such things!"

He answered almost harshly: "Don't be afraid...you never will..." and for an instant they faced each other like enemies.Then the tears swelled in her throat at his reproach.

"You mean I don't feel things--I'm too hard?""No: you're too high...too fine...such things are too far from you."He paused, as if conscious of the futility of going on with whatever he had meant to say, and again, for a short space, they confronted each other, no longer as enemies--so it seemed to her--but as beings of different language who had forgotten the few words they had learned of each other's speech.

Darrow broke the silence."It's best, on all accounts, that I should stay till tomorrow; but I needn't intrude on you;we needn't meet again alone.I only want to be sure I know your wishes." He spoke the short sentences in a level voice, as though he were summing up the results of a business conference.

Anna looked at him vaguely."My wishes?""As to Owen----

At that she started."They must never meet again!""It's not likely they will.What I meant was, that it depends on you to spare him..."She answered steadily: "He shall never know," and after another interval Darrow said: "This is good-bye, then."At the word she seemed to understand for the first time whither the flying moments had been leading them.Resentment and indignation died down, and all her consciousness resolved itself into the mere visual sense that he was there before her, near enough for her to lift her hand and touch him, and that in another instant the place where he stood would be empty.

She felt a mortal weakness, a craven impulse to cry out to him to stay, a longing to throw herself into his arms, and take refuge there from the unendurable anguish he had caused her.Then the vision called up another thought: "I shall never know what that girl has known..." and the recoil of pride flung her back on the sharp edges of her anguish.

"Good-bye," she said, in dread lest he should read her face;and she stood motionless, her head high, while he walked to the door and went out.