“Oh, I knew that well enough! And do you think that was flattering to me?”
“That has nothing to do with it. I only know that I love you, and that I couldn’t help wishing to show it even when I wouldn’t acknowledge it to myself. That is all. And now when I am free to speak, and you own that you love me, you won’t—I give it up!” he cried desperately. But in the next breath he implored, “Why do you drive me from you, Lina?”
“Because you have humiliated me too much.” She was perfectly steady, but he knew her so well that in the twilight he knew what bitterness there must be in the smile which she must be keeping on her lips. “I was here in the place of her mother, her best friend, and you made me treat her like an enemy. You made me betray her and cast her off.”
“I?”
“Yes, you! I knew from the very first that you did not really care for her, that you were playing with yourself, as you were playing with her, and I ought to have warned her.”
“It appears to me you did warn her,” said Colville, with some resentful return of courage.
“I tried,” she said simply, “and it made it worse. It made it worse because I knew that I was acting for my own sake more than hers, because I wasn’t—disinterested.” There was something in this explanation, serious, tragic, as it was to Mrs. Bowen, which made Colville laugh. She might have had some perception of its effect to him, or it may have been merely from a hysterical helplessness, but she laughed too a little.
“But why,” he gathered courage to ask, “do you still dwell upon that? Mr. Waters told me that Mr. Morton—that there was—”
“He is mistaken. He offered himself, and she refused him. He told me.”
“Oh!”
“Do you think she would do otherwise, with you lying here between life and death? No: you can have no hope from that.”
Colville, in fact, had none. This blow crushed and dispersed him. He had not strength enough to feel resentment against Mr. Waters for misleading him with this ignis fatuus.
“No one warned him, and it came to that,” said Mrs. Bowen. “It was of a piece with the whole affair. I was weak in that too.”
Colville did not attempt to reply on this point. He feebly reverted to the inquiry regarding himself, and was far enough from mirth in resuming it.
“I couldn’t imagine,” he said, “that you cared anything for me when you warned another against me. If I could—”
“You put me in a false position from the beginning. I ought to have sympathised with her and helped her instead of making the poor child feel that somehow I hated her. I couldn’t even put her on guard against herself, though I knew all along that she didn’t really care for you, but was just in love with her own fancy for you. Even after you were engaged I ought to have broken it off; I ought to have been frank with her; it was my duty; but I couldn’t without feeling that I was acting for myself too, and I would not submit to that degradation. No! I would rather have died. I dare say you don’t understand. How could you? You are a man, and the kind of man who couldn’t. At every point you made me violate every principle that was dear to me. I loathed myself for caring for a man who was in love with me when he was engaged to another. Don’t think it was gratifying to me. It was detestable; and yet I did let you see that I cared for you. Yes, I even tried to make you care for me—falsely, cruelly, treacherously.”
“You didn’t have to try very hard,” said Colville, with a sort of cold resignation to his fate.
“Oh no; you were quite ready for any hint. I could have told her for her own sake that she didn’t love you, but that would have been for my sake too; and I would have told you if I hadn’t cared for you and known how you cared for me. I’ve saved at least the consciousness of this from the wreck.”
“I don’t think it’s a great treasure,” said Colville. “I wish that you had saved the consciousness of having been frank even to your own advantage.”
“Do you dare to reproach me, Theodore Colville? But perhaps I’ve deserved this too.”
“No, Lina, you certainly don’t deserve it, if it’s unkindness, from me. I won’t afflict you with my presence: but will you listen to me before I go?”
She sank into a chair in sign of assent. He also sat down. He had a dim impression that he could talk better if he took her hand, but he did not venture to ask for it. He contented himself with fixing his eyes upon as much of her face as he could make out in the dusk, a pale blur in a vague outline of dark.
“I want to assure you, Lina—Lina, my love, my dearest, as I shall call you for the first and last time!—that I do understand everything, as delicately and fully as you could wish, all that you have expressed, and all that you have left unsaid. I understand how high and pure your ideals of duty are, and how heroically, angelically, you have struggled to fulfil them, broken and borne down by my clumsy and stupid selfishness from the start. I want you to believe, my dearest love—you must forgive me!—that if I didn’t see everything at the time, I do see it now, and that I prize the love you kept from me far more than any love you could have given me to the loss of your self-respect. It isn’t logic—it sounds more like nonsense, I am afraid—but you know what I mean by it. You are more perfect, more lovely to me, than any being in
