第56章

"I can't tell you! You don't understand!" he said in a broken voice.

"I understand everything.Amy has told me-poor little Amy! She is not wholly to blame.I blame you more.You may have been in love with your idea of her, but anything like that idea she never has been and never will be; and who is responsible for your idea, then, but yourself? It is a mistake that many a man makes; and when the woman disappoints him, he blames her, and deserts her or makes her life a torment.Of course a woman may make the same mistake; but, as a rule, women are better judges of men than men are of women.Besides, if they find themselves mistaken, they bear their disappointment better and show it less: they alone know their tragedy; it is the unperceived that kills."The first tears that he had ever seen gathered and dimmed her eyes.She was too proud either to acknowledge them or to hide them.Her lids fell quickly to curtain them in, and the lashes received them in their long, thick fringes.But she had suffered herself to go too far.

"Ah, if you had loved her! loved her!" she cried with an intensity of passion, a weary, immeasurable yearning, that seemed to come from a life in death.The strength of that cry struck him as a rushing wind strikes a young eagle on the breast, lifting him from his rock and setting him afloat on the billows of a rising storm.His spirit mounted the spirit of her unmated confession, rode it as its master, exulted in it as his element and his home.But the stricken man remained motionless on the bench a few feet from the woman, looking straight across the garden, with his hands clinched about his knees, his hat hiding his eyes, his jaws set sternly with the last grip of resolution.

It was some time before either spoke.Then her voice was very quiet.

"You found out your mistake in time; suppose it had been too late? But this is all so sad; we will never speak of it again.Only you ought to feel that from this time you can go on with the plans of your life uninterrupted.

Begin with all this as small defeat that means a larger victory! There is no entanglement now, not a drawback; what a future! It does look as though you might now have everything that you set your heart on."She glanced up at him with a mournful smile, and taking the knitting which had lain forgotten in her lap leaned over again and measured the stitches upon his wrist.

"When do you start?" she asked, seeing a terrible trouble gathering in his face and resolved to draw his thoughts to other things.

"Next week."

The knitting fell again.

"And you have allowed all this time to go by without coming to see us! You are to come everyday till you go: promise!"He had been repeating that he would not trust himself to come at all again, except to say good-bye.

"I can't promise that."

"But we want you so much! The major wants you, I want you more than the major.Why should meeting Amy be so hard? Remember how long it will be before you get back.When will you be back?"He was thinking it were better never.

"It is uncertain," he said.

"I shall begin to look for you as soon as you are gone.I can hear your horse's feet now, rustling in the leaves of October.But what will become of me till then? Ah, you don't begin to realize how much you are to me!""Oh!"

He stretched his arms out into vacancy and folded them again quickly.

"I'd better go."

He stood up and walked several paces into the garden, where he feigned to be looking at the work she had left.Was he to break down now? Was the strength which he had relied on in so many temptations to fail him now, when his need was sorest?

In a few minutes he wheeled round to the bench and stopped full before her, no longer avoiding her eyes.She had taken up the book which he had laid on his end of the seat and was turning the pages.

"Have you read it?"

"Over and over."

"Ah! I knew I could trust you! You never disappoint.Sit down a little while.""I'd--better go!"

"And haven't you a word? Bring this book back to me in silence? After all Isaid to you? I want to know how you feel about it--all your thoughts."She looked up at him with a reproachful smile--The blood had rushed guiltily into his face, and she seeing this, without knowing what it meant, the blood rushed into hers.

"I don't understand," she said proudly and coldly, dropping her eyes and dropping her head a little forward before him, and soon becoming very pale, as from a death-wound.

He stood before her, trembling, trying to speak, trying not to speak.Then he turned and strode rapidly away.