“She came down the staircase quietly, and only on the point of opening the door and because of the discovery that it was unfastened, she remembered Captain Anthony’s threat to stay in the garden all night. She hesitated. She did not understand the mood of that man clearly. He was violent. But she had gone beyond the point where things matter. What would he think of her coming down to him—as he would naturally suppose. And even that didn’t matter. He could not despise her more than she despised herself. She must have been lightheaded because the thought came into her mind that should he get into ungovernable fury from disappointment, and perchance strangle her, it would be as good a way to be done with it as any.
“ ‘You had that thought,’ I exclaimed in wonder.
“With downcast eyes and speaking with an almost painstaking precision (her very lips, her red lips, seemed to move just enough to be heard and no more), she said that, yes, the thought came into her head. This makes one shudder at the mysterious ways girls acquire knowledge. For this was a thought, wild enough, I admit, but which could only have come from the depths of that sort of experience which she had not had, and went far beyond a young girl’s possible conception of the strongest and most veiled of human emotions.
“ ‘He was there, of course?’ I said.
“ ‘Yes, he was there.’ She saw him on the path directly she stepped outside the porch. He was very still. It was as though he had been standing there with his face to the door for hours.
“Shaken up by the changing moods of passion and tenderness, he must have been ready for any extravagance of conduct. Knowing the profound silence each night brought to that nook of the country, I could imagine them having the feeling of being the only two people on the wide earth. A row of six or seven lofty elms just across the road opposite the cottage made the night more obscure in that little garden. If these two could just make out each other that was all.
“ ‘Well! And were you very much terrified?’ I asked.
“She made me wait a little before she said, raising her eyes: ‘He was gentleness itself.’
“I noticed three abominable, drink-sodden loafers, sallow and dirty, who had come to range themselves in a row within ten feet of us against the front of the public-house. They stared at Flora de Barral’s back with unseeing, mournful fixity.
“ ‘Let’s move this way a little,’ I proposed.
“She turned at once and we made a few paces; not too far to take us out of sight of the hotel door, but very nearly. I could just keep my eyes on it. After all, I had not been so very long with the girl. If you were to disentangle the words we actually exchanged from my comments you would see that they were not so very many, including everything she had so unexpectedly told me of her story. No, not so very many. And now it seemed as though there would be no more. No! I could expect no more. The confidence was wonderful enough in its nature as far as it went, and perhaps not to have been expected from any other girl under the sun. And I felt a little ashamed. The origin of our intimacy was too gruesome. It was as if listening to her I had taken advantage of having seen her poor bewildered, scared soul without its veils. But I was curious, too; or, to render myself justice without false modesty—I was anxious; anxious to know a little more.
“I felt like a blackmailer all the same when I made my attempt with a lighthearted remark.
“ ‘And so you gave up that walk you proposed to take?’
“ ‘Yes, I gave up the walk,’ she said slowly before raising her downcast eyes. When she did so it was with an extraordinary effect. It was like catching sight of a piece of blue sky, of a stretch of open water. And for a moment I understood the desire of that man to whom the sea and sky of his solitary life had appeared suddenly incomplete without that glance which seemed to belong to them both. He was not for nothing the son of a poet. I looked into those unabashed eyes while the girl went on, her demure appearance and precise tone changed to a very earnest expression. Woman is various indeed.
“ ‘But I want you to understand, Mr. …’ she had actually to think of my name … ‘Mr. Marlow, that I have written to Mrs. Fyne that I haven’t been—that I have done nothing to make Captain Anthony behave to me as he had behaved. I haven’t. I haven’t. It isn’t my doing. It isn’t my fault—if she likes to put it in that way. But she, with her ideas, ought to understand that I couldn’t, that I couldn’t … I know she hates me now. I think she never liked me. I think nobody ever cared for me. I was told once nobody could care for me; and I think it is true. At any rate I can’t forget it.’
“Her abominable experience with the governess had implanted in her unlucky breast a lasting doubt, an ineradicable suspicion of herself and of others. I said:
“ ‘Remember, Miss de Barral, that to be fair you must trust a man altogether—or not at all.’
“She dropped her eyes suddenly. I thought I heard a faint sigh. I
