“Shall I force her to tell me everything?” he thought to himself.
Did she divine the obscure struggle in his mind? At any rate she seemed anxious to cut short their tête-à-tête. She asked him to come and look at some engravings which the Duchess had sent round for the embellishment of the dining-room. Then she summoned Madame Bornier, and asked him a number of questions on Léonie’s behalf, with reference to some little investment of the ex-governess’s savings, which had been dropping in value. Meanwhile, as she kept him talking, she leaned herself against the lintel of the door, forgetting every now and then that anyone else was there, and letting the true self appear, like some drowned thing floating into sight. Delafield disposed of Madame Bornier’s affairs, hardly knowing what he said, but showing in truth his usual conscience and kindness. Then when Léonie was contented, Julie saw the little cripple crossing the hall, and called to her.
“Ah, ma chérie! How is the poor little foot?”
And turning to Delafield, she explained volubly that Thérèse had given herself a slight twist on the stairs that morning, pressing the child to her side the while with a tender gesture. The child nestled against her.
“Shall maman keep back supper?” Thérèse half whispered, looking at Delafield.
“No, no, I must go!” cried Delafield, rousing himself and looking for his hat.
“I would ask you to stay,” said Julie, smiling, “just to show off Léonie’s cooking; but there wouldn’t be enough for a great big man. And you’re probably dining with dukes.”
Delafield disclaimed any such intention, and they went back to the drawing-room to look for his hat and stick. Julie still had her arm round Thérèse and would not let the child go. She clearly avoided being left alone with him; and yet it seemed, even to his modesty, that she was loath to see him depart. She talked first of her little ménage, as though proud of their daily economies and contrivances; then of her literary work and its prospects; then of her debt to Meredith. Never before had she thus admitted him to her domestic and private life. It was as though she leaned upon his sympathy, his advice, his mere neighborhood. And her pale, changed face had never seemed to him so beautiful—never, in fact, truly beautiful till now. The dying down of the brilliance and energy of the strongly marked character, which had made her the life of the Bruton Street salon, into this mildness, this despondency, this hidden weariness, had left her infinitely more lovely in his eyes. But how to restrain himself much longer from taking the sad, gracious woman in his arms and coercing her into sanity and happiness!
At last he tore himself away.
“You won’t forget Wednesday?” she said to him, as she followed him into the hall.
“No. Is there anything else that you wish—that I could do?”
“No, nothing. But if there is I will ask.”
Then, looking up, she shrank from something in his face—something accusing, passionate, profound.
He wrung her hand.
“Promise that you will ask.”
She murmured something, and he turned away.
She came back alone into the drawing-room.
“Oh, what a good man!” she said, sighing. “What a good man!”
And then, all in a moment, she was thankful that he was gone—that she was alone with and mistress of her pain.
The passion and misery which his visit had interrupted swept back upon her in a rushing swirl, blinding and choking every sense. Ah, what a scene, to which his coming had put an end—scene of bitterness, of recrimination, not restrained even by this impending anguish of parting!
It came as a close to a week during which she and Warkworth had been playing the game which they had chosen to play, according to its appointed rules—the delicacies and restraints of friendship masking, and at the same time inflaming, a most unhappy, poisonous, and growing love. And, finally, there had risen upon them a storm-wave of feeling—tyrannous, tempestuous—bursting in reproach and agitation, leaving behind it, bare and menacing, the old, ugly facts, unaltered and unalterable.
Warkworth was little less miserable than herself. That she knew. He loved her, as it were, to his own anger and surprise. And he suffered in deserting her, more than he had ever suffered yet through any human affection.
But his purpose through it all remained stubbornly fixed; that, also, she knew. For nearly a year Aileen Moffatt’s fortune and Aileen Moffatt’s family connections had entered into all his calculations of the future. Only a few more years in the army, then retirement with ample means, a charming wife, and a seat in Parliament. To jeopardize a plan so manifestly desirable, so easy to carry out, so far-reaching in its favorable effects upon his life, for the sake of those hard and doubtful alternatives in which a marriage with Julie would involve him, never seriously entered his mind. When he suffered he merely said to himself, steadily, that time would heal the smart for both of them.
“Only one thing would be absolutely fatal for all of us—that I should break with Aileen.”
Julie read these obscure processes in Warkworth’s mind with perfect clearness. She was powerless to change them; but that afternoon she had, at any rate, beaten her wings against the bars, and the exhaustion and anguish of her revolt, her reproaches, were still upon her.
The spring night had fallen. The room was hot, and she threw a window open. Some thorns in the garden beneath had thickened into leaf. They rose in a dark mass beneath the window. Overhead, beyond the haze of the great city, a few stars twinkled, and the dim roar of London life beat from all sides upon this quiet corner
