“The servant followed her with a light, and then went out and closed the door. Her face looked pale in the lamplight, but her voice was as clear as a bell.
“‘Well,’ she said, ‘you see I’ve come.’
“I started toward her with hands outstretched. ‘You’ve come—you’ve come!’ I stammered.
“Yes; it was like her to come in that way—without dissimulation or explanation or excuse. It was like her, if she gave at all, to give not furtively or in haste, but openly, deliberately, without stinting the measure or counting the cost. But her quietness and serenity disconcerted me. She did not look like a woman who has yielded impetuously to an uncontrollable impulse. There was something almost solemn in her face.
“The effect of it stole over me as I looked at her, suddenly subduing the huge flush of gratified longing.
“‘You’re here, here, here!’ I kept repeating, like a child singing over a happy word.
“‘You said,’ she continued, in her grave clear voice, ‘that we couldn’t go on as we were—’
“‘Ah, it’s divine of you!’ I held out my arms to her.
“She didn’t draw back from them, but her faint smile said, ‘Wait,’ and lifting her hands she took the pins from her hat, and laid the hat on the table.
“As I saw her dear head bare in the lamplight, with the thick hair waving away from the parting, I forgot everything but the bliss and wonder of her being here—here, in my house, on my hearth—that fourth rose from the corner of the rug is the exact spot where she was standing….
“I drew her to the fire, and made her sit down in the chair you’re in, and knelt down by her, and hid my face on her knees. She put her hand on my head, and I was happy to the depths of my soul.
“‘Oh, I forgot—’ she exclaimed suddenly. I lifted my head and our eyes met. Hers were smiling.
“She reached out her hand, opened the little bag she had tossed down with her hat, and drew a small object from it. ‘I left my trunk at the station. Here’s the check. Can you send for it?’ she asked.
“Her trunk—she wanted me to send for her trunk! Oh, yes—I see your smile, your ‘lucky man!’ Only, you see, I didn’t love her in that way. I knew she couldn’t come to my house without running a big risk of discovery, and my tenderness for her, my impulse to shield her, was stronger, even then, than vanity or desire. Judged from the point of view of those emotions I fell terribly short of my part. I hadn’t any of the proper feelings. Such an act of romantic folly was so unlike her that it almost irritated me, and I found myself desperately wondering how I could get her to reconsider her plan without—well, without seeming to want her to.
“It’s not the way a novel hero feels; it’s probably not the way a man in real life ought to have felt. But it’s the way I felt—and she saw it.
“She put her hands on my shoulders and looked at me with deep, deep eyes. ‘Then you didn’t expect me to stay?’ she asked.
“I caught her hands and pressed them to me, stammering out that I hadn’t dared to dream….
“‘You thought I’d come—just for an hour?’
“‘How could I dare think more? I adore you, you know, for what you’ve done! But it would be known if you—if you stayed on. My servants—everybody about here knows you. I’ve no right to expose you to the risk.’ She made no answer, and I went on tenderly: ‘Give me, if you will, the next few hours: there’s a train that will get you to town by midnight. And then we’ll arrange something—in town—where it’s safer for you—more easily managed…. It’s beautiful, it’s heavenly of you to have come; but I love you too much—I must take care of you and think for you —’
“I don’t suppose it ever took me so long to say so few words, and though they were profoundly sincere they sounded unutterably shallow, irrelevant and grotesque. She made no effort to help me out, but sat silent, listening, with her meditative smile. ‘It’s my duty, dearest, as a man,’ I rambled on. The more I love you the more I’m bound—’
“‘Yes; but you don’t understand,’ she interrupted.
“She rose as she spoke, and I got up also, and we stood and looked at each other.
“‘I haven’t come for a night; if you want me I’ve come for always,’ she said.
“Here again, if I give you an honest account of my feelings I shall write myself down as the poor-spirited creature I suppose I am. There wasn’t, I swear, at the moment, a grain of selfishness, of personal reluctance, in my feeling. I worshipped every hair of her head—when we were together I was happy, when I was away from her something was gone from every good thing; but I had always looked on our love for each other, our possible relation to each other, as such situations are looked on in what is called society. I had supposed her, for all her freedom and originality, to be just as tacitly subservient to that view as I was: ready to take what she wanted on the terms on which society concedes such taking, and to pay for it by the usual restrictions, concealments and hypocrisies. In short, I supposed that she would ‘play the game’—look out for her own safety, and expect me to look out for it. It sounds cheap enough, put that way—but it’s the rule we live under, all of us. And the amazement of finding her suddenly outside of it, oblivious of it, unconscious of it, left me, for an awful minute, stammering at her like a graceless dolt…. Perhaps it wasn’t even a minute; but in it she had gone the whole round of my thoughts.
“‘It’s raining,’ she said, very low. ‘I suppose you can telephone for a trap?’
“There was no irony or resentment in her voice. She walked slowly across the room and paused before the Brangwyn etching over there. ‘That’s a good impression.
“I found my voice again, and with it the power of movement. I followed her and dropped at her feet. ‘You can’t go like this!’ I cried.
“She looked down on me from heights and heights. ‘I can’t stay like this,’ she answered.
“I stood up and we faced each other like antagonists. ‘You don’t know,’ I accused her passionately, ‘in the least what you’re asking me to ask of you!’
“‘Yes, I do:
