"I see nothing loveable in you," said Amabel with her inflexible gentleness. "I loved you because I thought you n.o.ble and magnanimous; but you were neither. You only did not cast me off, as I deserved, because you could not; and you were kind partly because you are kind by nature, but partly because my money was convenient to you. I do not say that you were ign.o.ble; you were in a very false position. And I had wronged you; I had committed the greater social crime; but there was nothing n.o.ble; you must see that; and it was for that I loved you."

Sir Hugh now got up and paced up and down near her.

"So you are going to cast me off because I had no opportunity for showing n.o.bility. How do you know I couldn't have behaved as you believed I did behave, if only I'd had the chance? You know--you are hard on me."

"I see no sign of n.o.bility--towards anyone--in your life," Amabel answered as dispa.s.sionately as before.

Sir Hugh walked up and down.

"I did feel like a brute about the money sometimes," he remarked;--"especially that last time; I wanted you to have the house as a sort of salve to my conscience; I've taken almost all your money, you know; it's quite true. As to the rest--what Augustine calls my dissoluteness--I can't pretend to take your view; a nun's view." He looked at her. "How beautiful you are with that white round your face,"

he said. "You are like a woman of snow."

She looked back at him as though, from the unhesitating steadiness of her gaze, to lend him some of her own clearness.

"Don't you see that it's not real? Don't you see that it's because you suddenly find me beautiful, and because, as a woman of snow, I allure you, that you think you love me? Do you really deceive yourself?"

He stared at her; but the ray only illumined the bewilderment of his dispossession. "I don't pretend to be an idealist," he said, stopping still before her; "I don't pretend that it's not because I suddenly find you beautiful; that's one reason; and a very essential one, I think; but there are other reasons, lots of them. Amabel--you must see that my love for you is an entirely different sort of thing from what my love for her ever was."

She said nothing. She could not argue with him, nor ask, as if for a cheap triumph, if it were different from his love for the later mistress. She saw, indeed, that it was different now, whatever it had been yesterday. Clearly she saw, glancing at herself as at an object in the drama, that she offered quite other interests and charms, that her attractions, indeed, might be of a quality to elicit quite new sentiments from Sir Hugh, sentiments less shadowing than those of yesterday had been. And so she accepted his interpretation in silence, unmoved by it though doing it full justice, and for a little while Sir Hugh said nothing either. He still stood before her and she no longer looked at him, but down at her folded hands that did not tremble at all tonight, and she wondered if now, perhaps, he would understand her silence and leave her. But when, in an altered voice, he said: "Amabel;"

she looked at him.

She seemed to see everything tonight as a disembodied spirit might see it, aware of what the impeding flesh could only dimly manifest; and she saw now that her husband's face had never been so near beauty.

It did not attain it; it was, rather, as if the shadow, lifting entirely for a flickering moment, revealed something unconscious, something almost innocent, almost pitiful: it was as if, liberated, he saw beauty for a moment and put out his hands to it, like a child putting out its hands to touch the moon, believing that it was as near to him, and as easily to be attained, as pleasure always had been.

"Try to forgive me," he said, and his voice had the broken note of a sad child's voice, the note of ultimate appeal from man to woman. "I'm a poor creature; I know that. It's always made me ashamed--to see how you idealise me.--The other day, you know,--when you kissed my hand--I was horribly ashamed.--But, upon my honour Amabel, I'm not a bad fellow at bottom,--not the devil incarnate your son seems to think me. Something could be made of me, you know;--and, if you'll forgive me, and let me try to win your love again;--ah Amabel--"--he pleaded, almost with tears, before her unchangingly gentle face. And, the longing to touch her, hold her, receive comfort and love, mingling with the new reverential fear, he knelt beside her, putting his head on her knees and murmuring: "I do so desperately love you."

Amabel sat looking down upon him. Her face was unchanged, but in her heart was a trembling of astonished sadness.

It was too late. It had been too late--from the very first;--yet, if they could have met before each was spoiled for each;--before life had set them unalterably apart--? The great love of her life was perhaps not all illusion.

And she seemed to sit for a moment in the dark church, dreaming of the distant Spring-time, of brooks and primroses and prophetic birds, and of love, young, untried and beautiful. But she did not lay her hand on Sir Hugh's head nor move at all towards him. She sat quite still, looking down at him, like a Madonna above a pa.s.sionate supplicant, pitiful but serene.

And as he knelt, with his face hidden, and did not hear her voice nor feel her touch, with an unaccustomed awe the realisation of her remoteness from him stole upon Sir Hugh.

Pa.s.sion faded from his heart, even self-pity and longing faded. He entered her visionary retrospect and knew, like her, that it was too late; that everything was too late; that everything was really over.

And, as he realised it, a chill went over him. He felt like a strayed reveller waking suddenly from long slumber and finding himself alone in darkness.

He lifted his face and looked at her, needing the rea.s.surance of her human eyes; and they met his with their remote gentleness. For a long moment they gazed at each other.

Then Sir Hugh, stumbling a little, got upon his feet and stood, half turned from her, looking away into the room.

When he spoke it was in quite a different voice, it was almost the old, usual voice, the familiar voice of their friendly encounters.

"And what are you going to do with yourself, now, Amabel?"

"I am going to tell Augustine," she said.

"Tell him!" Sir Hugh looked round at her. "Why?"

"I must."

He seemed, after a long silence, to accept her sense of necessity as sufficient reason. "Will it cut him up very much, do you think?" he asked.

"It will change everything very much, I think," said Amabel.

"Do you mean--that he will blame you?--"

"I don't think that he can love me any longer."

There was no hint of self-pity in her calm tones and Sir Hugh could only formulate his resentment and his protest--and they were bitter,--by a muttered--"Oh--I say!--I say!--"

He went on presently; "And will you go on living here, perhaps alone?"

"Alone, I think; yes, I shall live here; I do not find it dismal, you know."

Sir Hugh felt himself again looking reluctantly into darkness. "But--how will you manage it, Amabel?" he asked.

And her voice seemed to come, in all serenity, from the darkness; "I shall manage it."

Yes, the awe hovered near him as he realised that what, to him, meant darkness, to her meant life. She would manage it. She had managed to live through everything.

A painful a.n.a.logy came to increase his sadness;--it was like having before one a martyr who had been bound to rack after rack and still maintained that strange air of keeping something it was worth while being racked for. Glancing at her it seemed to him, still more painfully, that in spite of her beauty she was very like a martyr; that queer touch of wildness in her eyes; they were serene, they were even sweet, yet they seemed to have looked on horrid torments; and those white wrappings might have concealed dreadful scars.

He took out his watch, nervously and automatically, and looked at it. He would have to walk to the station; he could catch a train.

"And may I come, sometimes, and see you?" he asked. "I'll not bother you, you know. I understand, at last. I see what a blunder--an ugly blunder--this has been on my part. But perhaps you'll let me be your friend--more really your friend than I have ever been."

And now, as he glanced at her again, he saw that the gentleness was remote no longer. It had come near like a light that, in approaching, diffused itself and made a sudden comfort and sweetness. She was too weary to smile, but her eyes, dwelling gently on him, promised him something, as, when they had dwelt with their pa.s.sion of exiled love on her son, they had promised something to Augustine. She held out her hand. "We are friends," she said.

Sir Hugh flushed darkly. He stood holding her hand, looking at it and not at her. He could not tell what were the confused emotions that struggled within him; shame and changed love; awe, and broken memories of prayers that called down blessings. It was "G.o.d bless you," that he felt, yet he did not feel that it was for him to say these words to her.

And no words came; but tears were in his eyes as, in farewell, he bent over her hand and kissed it.

XII

When Amabel waked next morning a bright dawn filled her room. She remembered, finding it so light, that before lying down to sleep she had drawn all her curtains so that, through the open windows, she might see, until she fell asleep, a wonderful sky of stars. She had not looked at them for long. She had gone to sleep quickly and quietly, lying on her side, her face turned to the sky, her arms cast out before her, just as she had first lain down; and so she found herself lying when she waked.

It was very early. The sun gilded the dark summits of the sycamores that she could see from her window. The sky was very high and clear, and long, thin strips of cloud curved in lessening bars across it. The confused chirpings of the waking birds filled the air. And before any thought had come to her she smiled as she lay there, looking at and listening to the wakening life.

Then the remembrance of the dark ordeal that lay before her came. It was like waking to the morning that was to see one on the scaffold: but, with something of the light detachment that a condemned prisoner might feel--nothing being left to hope for and the only strength demanded being the pa.s.sive strength to endure--she found that she was thinking more of the sky and of the birds than of the ordeal. Some hours lay between her and that; bright, beautiful hours.

She put out her hand and took her watch which lay near. Only six.

Augustine would not expect to see her until ten. Four long hours: she must get up and spend them out of doors.