“Don’t let us talk about the past, Peter,” she murmured at last involuntarily, with a pathetic note of appeal in her voice.
“I mean to talk about it, Rosemary,” he retorted quietly, “just this once more. After that I will fall out of your life. You can cast me out and I will become one of the crowd. I won’t even take your hand, I will try not to see you, not even in my dreams. Though every inflection of your voice makes my bones ache with longing, I shall try not to listen. Just now I held you while we danced; you never once looked at me, but I held you closer than any man ever held woman before. I held you with my soul and heart and body—just now and for the last time. And though you never looked at me once, Rosemary, you allowed me to hold you as I did—not your body only, but your soul—and whilst we danced and your sweet breath fanned my cheek you belonged to me as completely as you did that night on the river, even though you have pledged your word to Jasper. Though why you did that,” he added, with a quaint change of mood, “God alone knows.”
“Jasper wants me,” she murmured. “He loves me. He sets me above his ambition—”
Peter Blakeney gave a harsh, mirthless laugh.
“Dear old Jasper,” he said, “even he would laugh to hear you say that. Ambition! There’s no room for ambition in the scheme of Jasper’s life. How can a man be ambitious when all the beneficent genii of this world presided at his birth and showered gifts into his lap? It is we, poor devils, who have ambitions—and see them unfulfilled.”
“Ambitions which you set above your love, above everything,” Rosemary broke in, and turned to look him straight in the eyes. “You talk of love, Peter,” she went on with sudden vehemence, while the sharp words came tumbling out at last as if from the depths of her overburdened heart. “What do you know of love? You are quite right, I did lay in your arms that night, loving you with my whole being, my soul seeking yours and finding it in that unforgettable kiss. My God! How I could have loved you, Peter! But you? What were your thoughts of me the next day, and the next day after that, whilst I waited in suspense which turned to torture for a word from you that would recall that hour? What were your thoughts? Where were you? I was waiting for you at the Lascelles as you had promised you would come over from Oxford the very next day. You did not come—not for days—weeks—”
“Rosemary!”
“Not for days—weeks—” she insisted, “and I waited for a sign—a letter—”
“Rosemary, at the time you understood!”
“I only understood,” she retorted with cold irony, “that you blamed yourself for having engaged my young affections—that you had your way to make in the world before you could think of asking a girl to share your poverty—and so on—and so on—every time we met—and in every letter you wrote—whilst I—
“Whilst you did not understand, Peter,” she went on more calmly. “Whilst you spoke of the future, of winning fame and fortune—”
“For you, Rosemary!” he cried involuntarily, and buried his head in his hands. “I was only thinking of you—”
“You were not thinking of me, Peter, or you would have known that there was no poverty or toil I would not gladly have shared with the man I loved.”
“Yes! poverty—toil—on an equal footing. Rosemary; but you were rich, famous: already you had the world at your feet—”
“And you did not care for me enough, Peter,” she said with a note of fatality in her voice, “to accept wealth, comfort, help in your career from me—
“Peter Blakeney the cricketer,” he declaimed with biting sarcasm; “don’t you know, he is the husband of Rosemary Fowkes now. What a glorious career for a man, eh, to be the husband of a world-famous wife?”
“It would only have been for a time,” she protested.
“A time during which youth would have flown away on the wings of life, taking with it honour, manhood, dignity—”
“And love?”
“Perhaps.”
There was silence between them after that. The last word had been spoken, the immutable word of Fate. Peter still sat with his head buried in his hands, his elbows resting on his knees—a hunched up figure weighed down by the heavy hand of an inexorable past.
Rosemary looked down at the bent head, and there, in the shadow, where no one could see save the immortal recorder of sorrows and of tears, a look of great tenderness and of pity crept into her haunting eyes. It was only for a moment. With a great effort of will she shook herself free from the spell that for a while had held possession of her soul. With a deliberate gesture she drew back the curtain, so that her face and figure became all at once flooded with light, she looked down upon the kaleidoscopic picture below: the dusky orchestra had once more begun to belch forth hideous sounds, and hellish screams, the puppets on the dancing floor began one by
