“I mean to tell you nothing. Che diavolo! What are you to me that you should call me to account? Signor Zinco said I was very foolish to let you come here. It was only because my aunt and the boy liked you that I let you come. And you took us on the river, which was pleasant. One must have someone.”
“You will have me no more until we understand each other,” cried Sefton, furiously. “Voglio finirla. I will not be fooled. I will not be duped. I will not be your abject slave as I have been, going night after night to feast upon your beauty, to drink the music of your voice, giving you my whole mind and heart, and getting nothing for my pains, not even the assurance that you are growing fonder of me, that love will come in good time. Do you think I am the man to endure that sort of torture forever?”
“I do not think at all about you. Voglio finirla, io! I have made up my mind that it will be better for you not to come here any more. We shall miss you and your clever talk, and the days on the river—but we can live without you—and as for love, that is over and done with. I shall never love anybody but Paolo and la Zia. I have cared for two people in this world—and my love ended badly with both. The one who loved me died. The one I loved the most never loved me. There, you have my confession without questioning. Are you satisfied now?”
“Not quite. The man you love is the man who left you just now—Paolo’s father?”
He came nearer to her as he asked this daring question; the question he had been longing to ask from the beginning of things. He took hold of her arm almost roughly, and drew her towards him, scrutinizing her face, and trying to read her secret in her eyes.
She answered him with a mocking laugh.
“You are very clever at guessing riddles,” she said. “I have made my confession. You will get no more out of me. And now, with your permission, I will put on my hat. It takes me a long time to get to the theatre—I always go by the steamboat on fine evenings—and it takes me a still longer time to dress for the stage.”
She went to the door and opened it for him, waiting with a courteous air for him to go out; but he took hold of her again, even more roughly than before, shut the door violently, and drew her back into the room.
“There is time enough for you to talk to me,” he said. “I will answer for your being at the theatre—but you must hear me out. We must have an explanation. I never knew how fond I was of you till just now, when I met that man leaving your house. I was satisfied to go dangling on—playing with fire—so long as I was the only one. But now that he is hanging about you, there must be no more uncertainty. I must know my fate. Lisa, you know how I love you. There is no use in talking of that. If I were to talk for an hour I could say no more than every word I have spoken for the last year and a half—ever since we sat together in the tent that Sunday night at Hawberk’s—has been telling you. I love you. I love you, Lisa: with a love that fuses my life into yours, which makes life useless, purposeless, hopeless without you.”
He had not loosened his hold. That strong, sinewy hand of his was grasping her firm, round arm, his other hand and arm drawing her against his heart. She could feel how furiously that heart was beating; she could see his finely cut face whitening as it looked into hers; his eyes with a wild light in them. He stood silent, holding her thus, like a bird caught in a springe, while she struggled to release herself from him. He stood thinking out his fate, with the woman he loved in his arms.
In those few moments he was asking himself the crucial question, Could he live without this woman? Passion—a passion of slow and silent growth—answered no. Then came another question, Would she be his mistress? Was it any use to sing the old song, to offer her the market price for her charms—a house at the West End, a carriage, a settlement; all except his name and the world’s esteem? Common sense answered him sternly no. This woman, struggling to escape from an unwelcome caress, was not the woman to accept dishonourable proposals. She had been showing him for the last year and a half, in the plainest manner, that he was positively indifferent to her. She was no fonder of him now than at the beginning of their acquaintance. Love could not tempt her. Wealth could hardly tempt her, since she could earn an income which was more than sufficient for her needs. To such a woman as this, peasant born as she was, uncultivated, friendless, he must offer the highest price—that price which he had told himself he would offer to no woman living. He must offer his name, and he must enter upon that solemn contract between man and woman which had always seemed to him an anomaly in the legislature of a civilized people—a contract which only death or dishonour could break.
“Lisa,” he said, “I am not the enemy you think me. There is no sacrifice I would not make for you. You know so little of the world that perhaps you hardly know how much a man of good birth sacrifices when he takes a wife who can bring him nothing but his heart’s desire. Try and understand that, Lisa. I love you too well to
