Meanwhile, for Delafield, this fortnight of waiting—waiting for the African letters, waiting for the revival of life in Aileen—was a period of extraordinary tension, when all the powers of nerve and brain seemed to be tested and tried to the utmost. He himself was absorbed in watching Julie and in dealing with her.
In the first place, as he saw, she could give no free course to grief. The tragic yearning, the agonized tenderness and pity which consumed her, must be crushed out of sight as far as possible. They would have been an offence to Lady Blanche, a bewilderment to Aileen. And it was on her relation to her newfound cousin that, as Delafield perceived, her moral life for the moment turned. This frail girl was on the brink of perishing because death had taken Warkworth from her. And Julie knew well that Warkworth had neither loved her nor deserved her—that he had gone to Africa and to death with another image in his heart.
There was a perpetual and irreparable cruelty in the situation. And from the remorse of it Julie could not escape. Day by day she was more profoundly touched by the clinging, tender creature, more sharply scourged by the knowledge that the affection developing between them could never be without its barrier and its mystery, that something must always remain undisclosed, lest Aileen cast her off in horror.
It was a new moral suffering, in one whose life had been based hitherto on intellect, or passion. In a sense it held at bay even her grief for Warkworth, her intolerable compassion for his fate. In sheer dread lest the girl should find her out and hate her, she lost insensibly the first poignancy of sorrow.
These secrets of feeling left her constantly pale and silent. Yet her grace had never been more evident. All the inmates of the little pension, the landlord’s family, the servants, the visitors, as the days passed, felt the romance and thrill of her presence. Lady Blanche evoked impatience of ennui. She was inconsiderate; she was meddlesome; she soon ceased even to be pathetic. But for Julie every foot ran, every eye smiled.
Then, when the day was over, Delafield’s opportunity began. Julie could not sleep. He gradually established the right to read with her and talk with her. It was a relation very singular, and very intimate. She would admit him at his knock, and he would find her on her sofa, very sad, often in tears, her black hair loose upon her shoulders. Outwardly there was often much ceremony, even distance between them; inwardly, each was exploring the other, and Julie’s attitude towards Delafield was becoming more uncertain, more touched with emotion.
What was, perhaps, most noticeable in it was a new timidity, a touch of anxious respect towards him. In the old days, what with her literary cultivation and her social success, she had always been the flattered and admired one of their little group. Delafield felt himself clumsy and tongue-tied beside her. It was a superiority on her part very natural and never ungraceful, and it was his chief delight to bring it forward, to insist upon it, to take it for granted.
But the relation between them had silently shifted.
“You judge—you are always judging,” she had said once, impatiently, to Delafield. And now it was round these judgments, these inward verdicts of his, on life or character, that she was perpetually hovering. She was infinitely curious about them. She would wrench them from him, and then would often shiver away from him in resentment.
He, meanwhile, as he advanced further in the knowledge of her strange nature, was more and more bewildered by her—her perversities and caprices, her brilliancies and powers, her utter lack of any standard or scheme of life. She had been for a long time, as it seemed to him, the creature of her exquisite social instincts—then the creature of passion. But what a woman through it all, and how adorable, with those poetic gestures and looks, those melancholy, gracious airs that ravished him perpetually! And now this new attitude, as of a child leaning, wistfully looking in your face, asking to be led, to be wrestled and reasoned with.
The days, as they passed, produced in him a secret and mounting intoxication. Then, perhaps for a day or two, there would be a reaction, both foreseeing that a kind of spiritual tyranny might arise from their relation, and both recoiling from it. …
One night she was very restless and silent. There seemed to be no means of approach to her true mind. Suddenly he took her hand—it was some days since they had spoken of Warkworth—and almost roughly reminded her of her promise to tell him all.
She rebelled. But his look and manner held her, and the inner misery sought an outlet. Submissively she began to speak, in her low, murmuring voice; she went back over the past—the winter in Bruton Street; the first news of the Moffatt engagement; her efforts for Warkworth’s promotion; the history of the evening party which had led to her banishment; the struggle in her own mind and Warkworth’s; the sudden mad schemes of their last interview; the rush of the Paris journey.
The mingled exaltation and anguish, the comparative absence of regret with which she told the story, produced an astonishing effect on Delafield. And in both minds, as the story proceeded, there emerged ever more clearly the consciousness of that imperious act by which he had saved her.
Suddenly she stopped.
“I know you can find no excuse for it all,” she said, in excitement.
“Yes; for all—but for one thing,” was his low reply.
She shrank, her eyes on his face.
“That poor child,” he said, under his breath.
She looked at him piteously.
“Did you ever realize what you were doing?” he asked
