LITMIR.BIZ

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assured himself once more that she was more beautiful than ever. Her hair, which he had known in short, fluffy curls, lay in soberly waved masses, but it was still bright and dark, like a chestnut fresh from the husk. Her eyes were the same as of old, and her hands. Her mouth only had changed. It was a sad mouth now, in repose – and he had known it so merry. Yet he could not but see that its sadness added to its beauty. The lower lip had been, perhaps, too full, too flexible. It was set now, not in sternness, but in a dignified self-control. He had left a Greuze girl – he found a Madonna of Bellini. Yet those were the lips he had kissed – the eyes that —

      The silence had grown to the point of embarrassment. She broke it, with his eyes on her.

      "Well," she said, "tell me all about yourself."

      "There's nothing much to tell. My cousin's dead, and I'm a full-fledged squire with estates and things. I've done with the gorgeous East, thank God! But you – tell me about yourself."

      "What shall I tell you?" She had taken the fan from him, and was furling and unfurling it.

      "Tell me" – he repeated the words slowly – "tell me the truth! It's all over – nothing matters now. But I've always been – well – curious. Tell me why you threw me over!"

      He yielded, without even the form of a struggle, to the impulse which he only half understood. What he said was true: he had been – well – curious. But it was long since anything alive, save vanity, which is immortal, had felt the sting of that curiosity. But now, sitting beside this beautiful woman who had been so much to him, the desire to bridge over the years, to be once more in relations with her outside the conventionalities of a ball-room, to take part with her in some scene, discreet, yet flavoured by the past with a delicate poignancy, came upon him like a strong man armed. It held him, but through a veil, and he did not see its face. If he had seen it, it would have shocked him very much.

      "Tell me," he said softly, "tell me now – at last – "

      Still she was silent.

      "Tell me," he said again; "why did you do it? How was it you found out so very suddenly and surely that we weren't suited to each other – that was the phrase, wasn't it?"

      "Do you really want to know? It's not very amusing, is it – raking out dead fires?"

      "Yes, I do want to know. I've wanted it every day since," he said earnestly.

      "As you say – it's all ancient history. But you used not to be stupid. Are you sure the real reason never occurred to you?"

      "Never! What was it? Yes, I know: the next waltz is beginning. Don't go. Cut him, whoever he is, and stay here and tell me. I think I have a right to ask that of you."

      "Oh – rights!" she said. "But it's quite simple. I threw you over, as you call it, because I found out you didn't care for me."

      "I– not care for you?"

      "Exactly."

      "But even so – if you believed it – but how could you? Even so – why not have told me – why not have given me a chance?" His voice trembled.

      Hers was firm.

      "I was giving you a chance, and I wanted to make sure that you would take it. If I'd just said, 'You don't care for me,' you'd have said, 'Oh, yes I do!' And we should have been just where we were before."

      "Then it wasn't that you were tired of me?"

      "Oh, no," she said sedately, "it wasn't that!"

      "Then you – did you really care for me still, even when you sent back the ring and wouldn't see me, and went to Germany, and wouldn't open my letters, and all the rest of it?"

      "Oh, yes!" – she laughed lightly – "I loved you frightfully all that time. It does seem odd now to look back on it, doesn't it? but I nearly broke my heart over you."

      "Then why the devil – "

      "You mustn't swear," she interrupted; "I never heard you do that before. Is it the Indian climate?"

      "Why did you send me away?" he repeated.

      "Don't I keep telling you?" Her tone was impatient. "I found out you didn't care, and – and I'd always despised people who kept other people when they wanted to go. And I knew you were too honourable, generous, soft-hearted – what shall I say? – to go for your own sake, so I thought, for your sake, I would make you believe you were to go for mine."

      "So you lied to me?"

      "Not exactly. We weren't suited – since you didn't love me."

      "I didn't love you?" he echoed again.

      "And somehow I'd always wanted to do something really noble, and I never had the chance. So I thought if I set you free from a girl you didn't love, and bore the blame myself, it would be rather noble. And so I did it."

      "And did the consciousness of your own nobility sustain you comfortably?" The sneer was well sneered.

      "Well – not for long," she admitted. "You see, I began to doubt after a while whether it was really my nobleness after all. It began to seem like some part in a play that I'd learned and played – don't you know that sort of dreams where you seem to be reading a book and acting the story in the book at the same time? It was a little like that now and then, and I got rather tired of myself and my nobleness, and I wished I'd just told you, and had it all out with you, and both of us spoken the truth and parted friends. That was what I thought of doing at first. But then it wouldn't have been noble! And I really did want to be noble – just as some people want to paint pictures, or write poems, or climb Alps. Come, take me back to the ball-room. It's cold here in the Past."

      But how could he let the curtain be rung down on a scene half finished, and so good a scene?

      "Ah, no! tell me," he said, laying his hand on hers; "why did you think I didn't love you?"

      "I knew it. Do you remember the last time you came to see me? We quarrelled – we were always quarrelling – but we always made it up. That day we made it up as usual, but you were still a little bit angry when you went away. And then I cried like a fool. And then you came back, and – you remember – "

      "Go on," he said. He had bridged the ten years, and the scene was going splendidly. "Go on; you must go on."

      "You came and knelt down by me," she said cheerfully. "It was as good as a play – you took me in your arms and told me you couldn't bear to leave me with the slightest cloud between us. You called me your heart's dearest, I remember – a phrase you'd never used before – and you said such heaps of pretty things to me! And at last, when you had to go, you swore we should never quarrel again – and that came true, didn't it?"

      "Ah, but why?"

      "Well, as you went out I saw you pick up your gloves off the table, and I knew– "

      "Knew what?"

      "Why, that it was the gloves you had come back for and not me – only when you saw me crying you were sorry for me, and determined to do your duty whatever it cost you. Don't! What's the matter?"

      He had caught her wrists in his hands and was scowling angrily at her.

      "Good God! was that all? I did come back for you. I never thought of the damned gloves. I don't remember them. If I did pick them up, it must have been mechanically and without noticing. And you ruined my life for that?"

      He was genuinely angry; he was back in the past, where he had a right to be angry with her. Her eyes grew soft.

      "Do you mean to say that I was wrong– that it was all my fault – that you did love me?"

      "Love you?" he said roughly, throwing her hands from him; "of course I loved you – I shall always love you. I've never left off loving you. It was you who didn't love me. It was all your fault."

      He leaned his elbows on his knees and his chin on his hands. He was breathing quickly. The scene had swept him along in its quickening flow. He shut his eyes, and tried to catch at something to steady himself – some rope by which he could pull himself to land again.

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