These thoughts drove him to tramp a beat up and down the pavement before the Hilberys’ gate. He did not trouble himself to make any plans for the future. Something of an unknown kind would decide both the coming year and the coming hour. Now and again, in his vigil, he sought the light in the long windows, or glanced at the ray which gilded a few leaves and a few blades of grass in the little garden. For a long time the light burnt without changing. He had just reached the limit of his beat and was turning, when the front door opened, and the aspect of the house was entirely changed. A black figure came down the little pathway and paused at the gate. Denham understood instantly that it was Rodney. Without hesitation, and conscious only of a great friendliness for any one coming from that lighted room, he walked straight up to him and stopped him. In the flurry of the wind Rodney was taken aback, and for the moment tried to press on, muttering something, as if he suspected a demand upon his charity.
‘Goodness, Denham, what are you doing here?’ he exclaimed, recognizing him.
Ralph mumbled something about being on his way home. They walked on together, though Rodney walked quick enough to make it plain that he had no wish for company.
He was very unhappy. That afternoon Cassandra had repulsed him; he had tried to explain to her the difficulties of the situation, and to suggest the nature of his feelings for her without saying anything definite or anything offensive to her. But he had lost his head; under the goad of Katharine’s ridicule he had said too much, and Cassandra, superb in her dignity and severity, had refused to hear another word, and threatened an immediate return to her home. His agitation, after an evening spent between the two women, was extreme. Moreover, he could not help suspecting that Ralph was wandering near the Hilberys’ house, at this hour, for reasons connected with Katharine. There was probably some understanding between them—not that anything of the kind mattered to him now. He was convinced that he had never cared for anyone save Cassandra, and Katharine’s future was no concern of his. Aloud, he said, shortly, that he was very tired and wished to find a cab. But on Sunday night, on the Embankment, cabs were hard to come by, and Rodney found himself constrained to walk some distance, at any rate, in Denham’s company. Denham maintained his silence. Rodney’s irritation lapsed. He found the silence oddly suggestive of the good masculine qualities which he much respected, and had at this moment great reason to need. After the mystery, difficulty, and uncertainty of dealing with the other sex, intercourse with one’s own is apt to have a composing and even ennobling influence, since plain speaking is possible and subterfuges of no avail. Rodney, too, was much in need of a confidant; Katharine, despite her promises to help, had failed him at the crucial moment; she had gone off with Denham; she was, perhaps, tormenting Denham as she had tormented him. How grave and stable he seemed, speaking little, and walking firmly, compared with what Rodney knew of his own torments and indecisions! He began to cast about for some way of telling the story of his relations with Katharine and Cassandra that would not lower him in Denham’s eyes. It then occurred to him that, perhaps, Katharine herself had confided in Denham; they had something in common; it was likely that they had discussed him that very afternoon. The desire to discover what they had said of him now came uppermost in his mind. He recalled Katharine’s laugh; he remembered that she had gone, laughing, to walk with Denham.
‘Did you stay long after we’d left?’ he asked abruptly.
‘No. We went back to my house.’
This seemed to confirm Rodney’s belief that he had been discussed. He turned over the unpalatable idea for a while, in silence.
‘Women are incomprehensible creatures, Denham!’ he then exclaimed.
‘Um,’ said Denham, who seemed to himself possessed of complete understanding, not merely of women, but of the entire universe. He could read Rodney, too, like a book. He knew that he was unhappy, and he pitied him, and wished to help him.
‘You say something and they—fly into a passion. Or for no reason at all, they laugh. I take it that no amount of education will—’ The remainder of the sentence was lost in the high wind, against which they had to struggle; but Denham understood that he referred to Katharine’s laughter, and that the memory of it was still hurting him. In comparison with Rodney, Denham felt himself very secure; he saw Rodney as one of the lost birds dashed senseless against the glass; one of the flying bodies of which the air was full. But he and Katharine were alone together, aloft, splendid, and luminous with a twofold radiance. He pitied the unstable creature beside him; he felt a desire to protect him, exposed without the knowledge which made his own way so direct. They were united as the adventurous are united, though one reaches the goal and the other perishes by the way.
‘You couldn’t laugh at some one you cared for.’
This sentence, apparently addressed to no other human being, reached Denham’s ears. The wind seemed to muffle it and fly away with it directly. Had Rodney spoken those words?
‘You love her.’ Was that his own voice, which seemed to sound in the air several yards in front of him?
‘I’ve suffered tortures, Denham, tortures!’
‘Yes, yes, I know that.’
‘She’s laughed at me.’
‘Never—to me.’
The wind blew a space between the words—blew them so far away that they seemed unspoken.
‘How I’ve loved her!’
This was certainly spoken by the man at Denham’s side. The voice had all the marks of Rodney’s character, and recalled, with strange vividness, his personal appearance. Denham could see him against the blank buildings and towers of the horizon. He saw him dignified, exalted, and tragic, as he might have appeared thinking of Katharine alone in his rooms at night.
‘I am in love with Katharine myself. That is why I am here tonight.’
Ralph spoke distinctly and deliberately, as if Rodney’s confession had made this statement necessary.
Rodney exclaimed something inarticulate.
‘Ah, I’ve always known it,’ he cried, ‘I’ve known it from the first. You’ll marry her!’
The cry had a note of despair in it. Again the wind intercepted their words. They said no more. At length they drew up beneath a lamp-post, simultaneously.
‘My God, Denham, what fools we both are!’3 Rodney exclaimed. They looked at each other, queerly, in the light of the lamp. Fools! They seemed to confess to each other the extreme depths of their folly. For the moment, under the lamp-post, they seemed to be aware of some common knowledge which did away with the
