“That’s less common,” Carlyon answered. “Women generally show us up to ourselves and we hate them for it. I suppose that man would love the woman who showed him up.”
She suddenly dropped her seriousness and laughed. “Poor man,” she mocked, “and you hate this friend of yours because he’s shown you up. What a fool you are to waste your time on such a hate.”
He made a small motion with his hands towards the fire, as though he wished to seize its light and heat, and bear them to his brain. “Yes,” he said. “I hate him,” and then waited, with his eyes peeping, as it were beseechingly, from his low skull in a longing to be convinced of his own futility and of his own hate.
“But what, after all, could you do if you met him?” she protested.
“I should make sure that I was right,” he answered, “and then I should kill him.”
“And what would be the use of that?” she asked.
He edged a little away from her and threw back his head, as though he were protecting something infinitely dear. “There would be no use,” he said, “no use, but I have a mission.”
He saw her lift eyes full of a pleading friendship. “You are in danger of something worse than the law,” she said.
He looked at her with suspicion. “Why all these arguments?” he asked. “Did you like the man?” He eyed her with regret and disgust as he would have done a lovely picture soiled with ordure. “Did you get fond of him in a night?”
“No,” she said simply. “But I have lived with hate since I was a child. Why don’t you escape from the country? If you stay you’ll only injure yourself or else something you never intended to harm. That’s always the way.”
He took no notice of her words, but watched her face with curiosity and fascination. “If I could take you with me,” he murmured, “I should have with me peace and charity. Have you noticed,” he said softly, his eyes peering like a dog’s between the bars of a cage, “how in the middle of a storm there’s always a moment of silence?” He half raised his arms as though he were about to protest at the necessity which drove him back into the storm, and then let them drop in a kind of tired despair.
“You are free,” she whispered, her eyes watching him not through bars but through the gold mist which the flames of the fire shed, “you are not bound.”
He shrugged his shoulders and said with a resentful carelessness. “Oh, there’s no peace for me.” He turned on his heel decisively, but he had taken only three steps to the door, when he came back.
He did not look at her but said with a touch of embarrassment:
“You say he went north?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Of course. I know that,” he commented. “We nearly met.” He shifted a little on his feet. “I don’t know your name,” he continued. “I don’t want you to come to any harm. If he should come back, you mustn’t shelter him or warn him.”
“Is that a command?” she asked with gentle mockery.
“Yes,” he said, and then added in stumbling haste, “but I will beg you, too. You cannot be mixed up in this. You don’t belong to our world, noise, hate. Stay with peace.”
“Are the two so separate?” she asked.
He listened with his head a little on one side and eyes half-closed, like a man in the presence of a faint music. Then he covered his eyes for a moment with his hand. “You muddle me,” he said.
“Are they so separate?” she repeated.
“Let them remain separate,” he said vehemently and bitterly, “you can’t come to us, and it’s too easy for us to come to you.”
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“To look for him,” he answered. “I’ll find him. I know him too well to lose him.”
“And he knows you,” she added.
Carlyon came nearer to her again. “Was he laughing at me the whole time,” he asked, “while we were friends? He’s a coward and cowards are cunning. I told him all the things I liked. I read him things, shared what I loved with him. I can only make him forget what I told him by killing him,” he added with an incongruous pathos.
Elizabeth said: “Were they as secret as that?”
He backed away from her suspiciously, as though he feared that she too had designs on his most intimate thoughts. “I’ve warned you,” he said abruptly. “I won’t bother you any longer. You had better not tell your brother that I have been. I don’t wish any harm to him either.” He turned and walked very quickly to the door, as though he were afraid that some word might delay him further. When he opened the door a cold draught filled the room with smoke and mist. He shivered a little. As he closed it he shut away from himself the sight of Elizabeth’s face, its serenity troubled by a faint and obscure pity.
V
Andrews put the closed knife back into his pocket. The dark which had been cold to him grew warm with friendliness. He was overwhelmed with an immense gratitude, so that he was unwilling to open the door and remind Elizabeth of his presence. She was as unapproachable to him in this mood as a picture, as holy as a vision. He remembered his first entrance to the cottage and his last sight of her before he sank exhausted, the pale resolute face set between two yellow flames.
Quietly as though he were in the presence of a mystery he turned the handle of the door and remained on the threshold unresolved and diffident. She was standing by the table cleaning the cups and
