He was still writing his letter in the inner room. When she heard him move she would slide her feet to the floor and sit up.
She wanted to lie still with her hands over her shut eyes, making the four long, delicious days begin again and go on in her head.
Richard would take hansoms. You couldn’t stop him. Perhaps he was afraid if you walked too far you would drop down dead. When it was all over your soul would still drive about London in a hansom forever and ever, through blue and gold rain-sprinkled days, through poignant white evenings, through the streaming, steep, brown-purple darkness and the streaming flat, thin gold of the wet nights.
They were not going to have any more tiring parties. There wasn’t enough time.
When she opened her eyes he was sitting on the chair by the foot of the couch, leaning forward, looking at her. She saw nothing but his loose, hanging hands and straining eyes.
“Oh, Richard—what time is it?” She swung her feet to the floor and sat up suddenly.
“Only nine.”
“Only nine. The evening’s nearly gone.”
“Is that why you aren’t sleeping, Richard? … I didn’t know. I didn’t know I was hurting you.”
“What-did-you-think? What-did-you-think? Isn’t it hurting you?”
“Me? I’ve got used to it. I was so happy just being with you.”
“So happy and so quiet that I thought you didn’t care. … Well, what was I to think? If you won’t marry me.”
“That’s because I care so frightfully. Don’t let’s rake that up again.”
“Well, there it is.”
She thought: “I’ve no business to come here to his rooms, turning him out, making him so wretched that he can’t sleep. No business. … Unless—”
“And we’ve got to go on living with it,” he said.
He thinks I haven’t the courage … I can’t tell him.
“Yes,” she said, “there it is.”
Why shouldn’t I tell him? … We’ve only ten days. As long as I’m here nothing matters but Richard … If I keep perfectly still, still like this, if I don’t say a word he’ll think of it. …
“Richard—would you rather I hadn’t come?”
“No.”
“You remember the evening I came—you got up so suddenly and left me? What did you do that for?”
“Because if I’d stayed another minute I couldn’t have left you at all.”
He stood up.
“And you’re only going now because you can’t see that I’m not a coward.”
This wouldn’t last, the leaping and knocking of her heart, the eyelids screwing themselves tight, the jerking of her nerves at every sound: at the two harsh rattling screams of the curtain rings along the pole, at the light click of the switches. Only the small green-shaded lamp still burning on Richard’s writing table in the inner room. She could hear him moving about, softly and secretly, in there.
He was Richard. That was Richard, moving about in there.
V
Richard thought his flat was a safe place. But it wasn’t. People creeping up the stairs every minute and standing still to listen. People would come and try the handle of the door.
“They won’t, dear. Nobody ever comes in. It has never happened. It isn’t going to happen now.”
Yet you couldn’t help thinking that just this night it would happen.
She thought that Peters knew. He wouldn’t come out of his door till you had turned the corner of the stairs.
She thought the woman in the basement knew. She remembered the evening at Greffington: Baxter’s pinched mouth and his eyes sliding sideways to look at you. She knew now what Baxter had been thinking. The woman’s look was the female of Baxter’s.
As if that could hurt you!
VI
“Mary, do you know you’re growing younger every minute?”
“I shall go on growing younger and younger till it’s all over.”
“Till what’s all over?”
“This. So will you, Richard.”
“Not in the same way. My hair isn’t young any more. My face isn’t young any more.”
“I don’t want it to be young. It wasn’t half so nice a face when it was young. … Some other woman loved it when it was young.”
“Yes. Another woman loved it when it was young.”
“Is she alive and going about?”
“Oh, yes; she’s alive and she goes about a lot.”
“Does she love you now?”
“I suppose she does.”
“I wish she didn’t.”
“You needn’t mind her, Mary. She was never anything to me. She never will be.”
“But I do mind her. I mind her awfully. I can’t bear to think of her going about and loving you. She’s no business to. … Why do I mind her loving you more than I’d mind your loving her?”
“Because you like loving more than being loved.”
“How do you know?”
“I know every time I hold you in my arms.”
There have been other women then, or he wouldn’t know the difference. There must have been a woman that he loved.
I don’t care. It wasn’t the same thing.
“What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking nothing was ever the same thing as this.”
“No. … Whatever we do, Mary, we mustn’t go back on it. … If we could have done anything else. But I can’t see. … It’s not as if it could last long. Nothing lasts long. Life doesn’t last long.”
He sounded as if he were sorry, as if already, in his mind, he had gone back on it. After three days.
“You’re not sorry, Richard?”
“Only when I think of you. The awful risks I’ve made you take.”
“Can’t you see I like risks? I always have liked risks. When we were children my brothers and I were always trying to see just how near we could go to breaking our necks.”
“I know you’ve courage enough for anything. But that was rather a different sort of risk.”
“No. No. There are no different sorts of risk. All intense moments of danger are the same. It’s always the same feeling. I don’t know whether I’ve courage or not, but I do know that when danger comes you don’t care. You’re hoisted up above caring.”
“You do care, Mary.”
“About my ‘reputation’? You wouldn’t like to think I didn’t care about it. … Of course, I care frightfully. If I didn’t, where’s
