第77章

"No, after all, I am not crazy; I see only too clearly--I see what should be; when people see that, you call them crazy. Bernard has no right--he must give you up. If you really care for him, you should help him.

He is in a very false position; you should n't wish to see him in such a position. I can't explain to you--if it were even for my own sake.

But Bernard must have told you; it is not possible that he has not told you?"

"I have told Angela everything, Gordon," said Bernard.

"I don't know what you mean by your having done me a wrong!" the girl exclaimed.

"If he has told you, then--I may say it! In listening to him, in believing him."

"But you did n't believe me," Bernard exclaimed, "since you immediately went and offered yourself to Miss Vivian!"

"I believed you all the same! When did I ever not believe you?"

"The last words I ever heard from Mr. Wright were words of the deepest kindness," said Angela.

She spoke with such a serious, tender grace, that Gordon seemed stirred to his depths again.

"Ah, give me another chance!" he moaned.

The poor girl could not help her tone, and it was in the same tone that she continued--"If you think so well of me, try and be reasonable."

Gordon looked at her, slowly shaking his head.

"Reasonable--reasonable? Yes, you have a right to say that, for you are full of reason. But so am I. What I ask is within reasonable limits. "

"Granting your happiness were lost," said Bernard--"I say that only for the argument--is that a ground for your wishing to deprive me of mine?"

"It is not yours--it is mine, that you have taken! You put me off my guard, and then you took it! Yours is elsewhere, and you are welcome to it!"

"Ah," murmured Bernard, giving him a long look and turning away, "it is well for you that I am willing still to regard you as my best friend!"

Gordon went on, more passionately, to Angela.

"He put me off my guard--I can't call it anything else.

I know I gave him a great chance--I encouraged him, urged him, tempted him. But when once he had spoken, he should have stood to it. He should n't have had two opinions--one for me, and one for himself! He put me off my guard. It was because I still resisted him that I went to you again, that last time.

But I was still afraid of you, and in my heart I believed him.

As I say, I always believed him; it was his great influence upon me. He is the cleverest, the most intelligent, the most brilliant of men. I don't think that a grain less than I ever thought it," he continued, turning again to Bernard.

"I think it only the more, and I don't wonder that you find a woman to believe it. But what have you done but deceive me?

It was just my belief in your intelligence that reassured me.

When Miss Vivian refused me a second time, and I left Baden, it was at first with a sort of relief. But there came back a better feeling--a feeling faint compared to this feeling of to-day, but strong enough to make me uneasy and to fill me with regret.

To quench my regret, I kept thinking of what you had said, and it kept me quiet. Your word had such weight with me!"

"How many times more would you have wished to be refused, and how many refusals would have been required to give me my liberty?" asked Bernard.

"That question means nothing, because you never knew that I had again offered myself to Miss Vivian."

"No; you told me very little, considering all that you made me tell you."

"I told you beforehand that I should do exactly as I chose."

"You should have allowed me the same liberty!"

"Liberty!" cried Gordon. "Had n't you liberty to range the whole world over?

Could n't he have found a thousand other women?"

"It is not for me to think so," said Angela, smiling a little.

Gordon looked at her a moment.

"Ah, you cared for him from the first!" he cried.

"I had seen him before I ever saw you," said the girl.

Bernard suppressed an exclamation. There seemed to flash through these words a sort of retrospective confession which told him something that she had never directly told him. She blushed as soon as she had spoken, and Bernard found a beauty in this of which the brightness blinded him to the awkward aspect of the fact she had just presented to Gordon.

At this fact Gordon stood staring; then at last he apprehended it--largely.

"Ah, then, it had been a plot between you!" he cried out.

Bernard and Angela exchanged a glance of pity.

"We had met for five minutes, and had exchanged a few words before I came to Baden. It was in Italy--at Siena. It was a simple accident that I never told you," Bernard explained.

"I wished that nothing should be said about it," said Angela.

"Ah, you loved him!" Gordon exclaimed.

Angela turned away--she went to the window. Bernard followed her for three seconds with his eyes; then he went on--"If it were so, I had no reason to suppose it. You have accused me of deceiving you, but I deceived only myself. You say I put you off your guard, but you should rather say you put me on mine.

It was, thanks to that, that I fell into the most senseless, the most brutal of delusions. The delusion passed away--it had contained the germ of better things. I saw my error, and I bitterly repented of it; and on the day you were married I felt free."

"Ah, yes, I have no doubt you waited for that!" cried Gordon.

"It may interest you to know that my marriage is a miserable failure."

"I am sorry to hear it--but I can't help it."