"I am going to try to interest myself in others, not to think of you, not to care for you as I have done. We have both been foolish perhaps, as you say, in limiting our lives to each other, let us end the idea between us. Let us be like ordinary married people.

You are free to choose whatever paths of pleasure open before you, I am the same. To-night when you come back you will find this letter instead of me. I shall dine out with one of these men who want me and afterwards spend the evening with him. I will come back early enough to cause no comment, but I will not come to your room, as I do not suppose you will want me. I have had another room put ready, and I shall go there.

"Good-bye, dearest one; if you could know all the agony that has gone before this breaking of the tie between us! Now I seem to feel nothing; I am dead. I can't cry; can't think any more.

"VIOLA."

I read this letter through with an agonised terror coming over me, that gripped and wrung my heart, through the cloud of amaze that filled me. Towards the end the words seemed to stab me. As I came to the conclusion the truth broke upon me in a blinding, lightning flash.

_I_ had lost her. But it was incredible, unthinkable. She was part of my life, part of myself. I still lived; therefore, she was mine. I felt paralysed. I could not grasp fully what she had said, what she intended me to understand. It was as when one is told a loved one is dead. It means nothing to us for a moment. Reason goes down under a flood of sickening fear. I read the last page over again.

Then I sprang to my feet and stared round the empty room as if seeking an explanation from it. It offered none. All round me was orderly, placid. Only within me burned a h.e.l.l, lighted by those written words.

It was very quiet, only an occasional drip of the June rain outside broke the stillness.

An exquisite picture of Viola laughed joyously back at me from a little table covered with vases of white flowers, white as she had been that first night at the studio....

O G.o.d in heaven, what _had_ I done to bring this ruin into my own life? _Had_ I deserved it? Had I? I thought wildly.

What had I done? What did it all mean? Veronica? A few kisses? the impulse of pa.s.sion? It was nothing, everything was nothing to me beside Viola. She must have known that. Then I recalled her appeals to me. She had asked me to give up Veronica, why had I not done so?

Instead, how had I met Viola; how had I answered her? My own words were hurled back upon me by memory and fell upon me like blows, so had they fallen upon her. How could I have been so mad, so blind?

Her favourite chair was pushed a little from the fire; by its side I noticed something white, and stooped mechanically to pick it up. It was her handkerchief, crushed together and soaked through and through.

How she must have been crying to wet it like that! At the corner it was marked with blood, as if she had pressed it to bitten lips.

My own eyes filled with scorching tears as I looked at it.

It was the one sign of the pa.s.sion and agony that had raged in that room before I came back.

If I had only returned sooner! I put the handkerchief in my breast, and took up her letter again. Could I do anything, anything now to follow, to recall her?

I looked at the clock, and ice seemed to close round my heart and chill it. It was already eleven. Then the phrase about the other room struck me. Could she have possibly returned? I opened the door and went upstairs and through all the rooms in the house. All were empty.

I saw the bedroom farthest from mine had been put ready for occupancy, and some few trifles of her own taken from our room and put into it.

Then I came back, sick with apprehension, to the drawing-room again, questioning what I could do.

To whom would she have gone? As the thought came all the blood in my body seemed to seethe and rage, but the question had to be faced. For a moment no definite idea would form itself. Then the recollection of Lawton dashed in upon me. The man's head seemed photographed suddenly on all the pale walls round me; handsome, brilliant, engaging, well born, and well bred, he was the man of all others surely to attract her.

She would go to him, they would dine together, she would return to his chambers with him.... She had not come back yet.

For a few moments I was mad. I laid my hand on the back of the chair near me, and it was smashed in my grip. Then the madness pa.s.sed over, and I could think again. I went upstairs, took out my revolver, and loaded it. I thought I would go round to Lawton's place, ... but, when coming downstairs again, the thought struck me--Suppose it was not Lawton? What would the latter think of my sudden appearance, my enquiries? Twelve had now struck.

There was just a possibility that she would not fulfil her letter, that she would come back to me; but if I by my actions to-night brought any publicity on what she had done, I should make an injury where none existed.

I thought for some time over this, and it seemed impossible for me to do anything but wait for her return--wait till I knew.

The thought of her name, her reputation, and how I might possibly injure them now held me there motionless.

It seemed incredible that she could be so long away and yet her absence mean nothing. But the other supposition, the thought of her pa.s.sing from me, seemed more incredible still.

I know how great her love for me was, and love like ours is not easily swept aside and its claims broken down. Still, in a paroxysm of jealous agony and resentment against me, all might be obscured, and if Lawton were there persuading....

And this, something of this pain, I now felt, she had suffered, as the soaked handkerchief told me.

How I loathed the thought of Veronica! Love, even when it has expired, leaves some tenderness of feeling to us; pa.s.sion once dead leaves nothing but loathing.

I got up and wrote a few lines of dismissal. It was something to do, something to distract my devouring thoughts. I enclosed a cheque for all, and more than the sum due to her. Then I flung the letter on the table, and pushed the thought of her out of my mind.

I paced up and down the room, looking constantly at the clock. What were these fleeting moments taking from me? My brain seemed on fire and full of light. Picture after picture rose before me, vivid, brilliant--all pictures of Viola and hours pa.s.sed with her. What a wonderful personality she had, and I alone had possessed it. How utterly and entirely she had given herself to me, me alone of all the many who coveted her. I had been the first, the only one for her, till my own hand had foolishly cut the ties that bound us together. If I lost her, suppose I gained everything else in the world, would it content me? Could I lose her? Could I let her go? But I _had. I_ glanced at the clock. It was now one. She had not returned. By this time she had pa.s.sed from me to another. The pain, the acute pain of it, of this thought seemed to divide my brain like a two-edged sword.

What had I done?

Why had I not realised that I should feel like this? To have and then to lose while one still desires, this is the most horrible pain in the world. The animals feel it to the point of madness, and they are wise, they do not court it. They will tear their rival, even the female herself, in pieces rather than yield her up. But I! What had I done? A mate had nestled to my breast, and I had not been wise enough to hold it there. And now I suffered; how I suffered! My brain seemed to writhe in those moments of agony like a body on the rack or in the flames. Each thought was a torture: sweet recollections came to me like the breath of flowers, only to turn into a fresh agony of despair.

There is no pain so absolutely black in its hideous agony as jealousy.

The other mental pains of this life may last longer, but there is none that cuts down deeper, that possesses such a ravening tooth, while it lasts, as this.

The vision of Lawton's face was like a brand upon my brain. I saw it everywhere, as it had looked when she smiled upon him at dinner.

Suddenly, as I paced backwards and forwards, I heard a little noise outside, a light footfall on the stairs or landing. I stood still, my heart seeming to knock about inside my chest as if it wanted to leap out between the ribs. Then I went to the door and threw it wide open.

She stood there just outside. The light from within fell upon her, and my eyes ran over her, questioning, devouring, while waves of hope and terror seemed dashing up against my brain like the surf over a rock.

She looked collected, mistress of herself, her dress and hair were perfect in arrangement as when she had started, on her face was a curious look of gladness, of relief, of decision, of triumph. What was its meaning?

I took both her hands and drew her over the threshold. She came gladly. She must have seen the agony of fear, of questioning in my face, for after a swift look up at me she said impulsively:

"I am so glad to be back with you, Trevor."

I could not answer her. I stood silent. The sick fatigue of hours of painful emotion was creeping over me, and the agony of longing to know everything from her lips seemed to paralyse me.

"I could not, after all, dearest," she said, in a very low tone. "I could not do anything on my side to sever myself from you, so I have come back to you."

Her voice seemed to come to me from a long distance, but every word was clear and distinct. The relief of the loosening of the pressure of one hideous idea was intense. I took a chair beside her and put my arm round her shoulders.

"Tell me what has happened, then, since you left me."

She was drawing off her gloves slowly; the flesh of the fingers and wrist was slightly indented from long pressure of the kid. I saw that her glove had not been removed for several hours. A great tide of pleasure and relief broke slowly over me.

"Well, I went straight from here to Lawton's chambers, and he was out; so I sat down in one of his easy chairs by the fire to wait for him. I sat and sat there, looking into the fire, and somehow I forgot all about Lawton and began thinking about you and the pictures and your wonderful voice and all the delightful times we had had together; and then I thought of all I had always tried to do for you, and how you were the first, the very first man I had ever cared for or done anything for, and how I had always belonged to you; and it seemed a pity to spoil it all--if you understand. I felt I could not with my own hands pull down the beautiful fabric of my love for you that I had built up. I felt I could not give myself to any one else, there seemed something irresistible holding me from it. You must do what you like, be faithful or not to me, but I must be faithful to you."

She threw back her head and looked at me. Her elusive loveliness, lying all in colour and bloom and light, was at its height. She was intensely excited, and the excitement paled the skin, widened the l.u.s.trous eyes, heightened the extreme delicacy of the face. I bent over her and kissed her as I had never done yet; it was one of those moments in life when the soul seems to have wings and fly upwards.

After a moment.

"And then," I said, "did you come back to me?"

"Well, gradually, as I sat there, a horror of Lawton, of everything came over me. I did not know how long I had sat there. I looked at my watch: it was two. I was terrified. I only wanted to escape. I got up to go, and just then I heard Lawton coming in. There was a screen near me, and it did just occur to me I might conceal myself and pa.s.s out as he went to the inner room; but I did not like the idea of hiding in any one's rooms, so I stood still, and he came in."

She was silent, and I felt suddenly plunged back into a mist of questioning horror. What had pa.s.sed between these two? Had any links in some new chain been forged?

But she was mine! Mine! and I would never let her go.