The harshness, which Henry had noticed, was again unmistakable in her manner. William flinched and was silent. Such severity, accompanied by something indescribably cold and impersonal in her manner, had constantly been meted out to him during the last few days, always in the company of others. He had recouped himself by some ridiculous display of vanity which, as he knew, put him still more at her mercy. Now that he was alone with her there was no stimulus from outside to draw his attention from his injury. By a considerable effort of self-control he forced himself to remain silent, and to make himself distinguish what part of his pain was due to vanity, what part to the certainty that no woman really loving him could speak thus.
‘What do I feel about Katharine?’ he thought to himself. It was clear that she had been a very desirable and distinguished figure, the mistress of her little section of the world; but more than that, she was the person of all others who seemed to him the arbitresscg of life, the woman whose judgment was naturally right and steady, as his had never been in spite of all his culture. And then he could not see her come into a room without a sense of the flowing of robes, of the flowering of blossoms, of the purple waves of the sea, of all things that are lovely and mutable on the surface but still and passionate in their heart.
‘If she were callous all the time and had only led me on to laugh at me I couldn’t have felt that about her,’ he thought. ‘I’m not a fool, after all. I can’t have been utterly mistaken all these years. And yet, when she speaks to me like that! The truth of it is,’ he thought, ‘that I’ve got such despicable faults that no one could help speaking to me like that. Katharine is quite right. And yet those are not my serious feelings, as she knows quite well. How can I change myself? What would make her care for me?’ He was terribly tempted here to break the silence by asking Katharine in what respects he could change himself to suit her; but he sought consolation instead by running over the list of his gifts and acquirements, his knowledge of Greek and Latin, his knowledge of art and literature, his skill in the management of metres, and his ancient west-country blood. But the feeling that underlay all these feelings and puzzled him profoundly and kept him silent was the certainty that he loved Katharine as sincerely as he had it in him to love any one. And yet she could speak to him like that! In a sort of bewilderment he lost all desire to speak, and would quite readily have taken up some different topic of conversation if Katharine had started one. This, however, she did not do.
He glanced at her, in case her expression might help him to understand her behaviour. As usual, she had quickened her pace unconsciously, and was now walking a little in front of him; but he could gain little information from her eyes, which looked steadily at the brown heather, or from the lines drawn seriously upon her forehead. Thus to lose touch with her, for he had no idea what she was thinking, was so unpleasant to him that he began to talk about his grievances again, without, however, much conviction in his voice.
‘If you have no feeling for me, wouldn’t it be kinder to say so to me in private?’
‘Oh, William,’ she burst out, as if he had interrupted some absorbing train of thought, ‘how you go on about feelings! Isn’t it better not to talk so much, not to be worrying always about small things that don’t really matter?’
‘That’s the question precisely,’ he exclaimed. ‘I only want you to tell me that they don’t matter. There are times when you seem indifferent to everything. I’m vain, I’ve a thousand faults; but you know they’re not everything; you know I care for you.’
‘And if I say that I care for you, don’t you believe me?’
‘Say it, Katharine! Say it as if you meant it! Make me feel that you care for me!’
She could not force herself to speak a word. The heather was growing dim around them, and the horizon was blotted out by white mist. To ask her for passion or for certainty seemed like asking that damp prospect for fierce blades of fire, or the faded sky for the intense blue vault of June.
He went on now to tell her of his love for her, in words which bore, even to her critical senses, the stamp of truth; but none of this touched her, until, coming to a gate whose hinge was rusty, he heaved it open with his shoulder, still talking and taking no account of his effort. The virility of this deed impressed her; and yet, normally, she attached no value to the power of opening gates. The strength of muscles has nothing to do on the face of it with the strength of affections; nevertheless, she felt a sudden concern for this power running to waste on her account, which, combined with a desire to keep possession of that strangely attractive masculine power, made her rouse herself from her torpor.
Why should she not simply tell him the truth—which was that she had accepted him in a misty state of mind when nothing had its right shape or size? that it was deplorable, but that with clearer eyesight marriage was out of the question? She did not want to marry any one. She wanted to go away by herself, preferably to some bleak northern moor, and there study mathematics and the science of astronomy. Twenty words would explain the whole situation to him. He had ceased to speak; he had told her once more how he loved her and why. She summoned her courage, fixed her eyes upon a lightning-splintered ash-tree, and, almost as if she were reading a writing fixed to the trunk, began:
‘I was wrong to get engaged to you. I shall never make you happy. I have never loved you.’
‘Katharine!’ he protested.
‘No, never,’ she repeated obstinately. ‘Not rightly. Don’t you see, I didn’t know what I was doing?’
‘You love some one else?’ he cut her short.
‘Absolutely no one.’
‘Henry?’ he demanded.
‘Henry? I should have thought, William, even you—’
‘There is some one,’ he persisted. ‘There has been a change in the last few weeks. You owe it to me to be honest, Katharine.’
‘If I could, I would,’ she replied.
‘Why did you tell me you would marry me, then?’ he demanded.
Why, indeed? A moment of pessimism, a sudden conviction of the undeniable prose of life, a lapse of the illusion which sustains youth midway between heaven and earth, a desperate attempt to reconcile herself with facts—she could only recall a moment, as of waking from a dream, which now seemed to her a moment of surrender. But who could give reasons such as these for doing what she had done? She shook her head very sadly.
‘But you’re not a child—you’re not a woman of moods,’ Rodney persisted. ‘You couldn’t have accepted me if you hadn’t loved me!’ he cried.
