Viola looked white and abstracted all day, but it was not till after dinner, when we were taking our coffee on the verandah, that she gave me any clew to her thoughts. Then she said suddenly:

"Trevor, I want you to let me go away from you for a year."

I gazed at her in astonishment. She looked very wretched. All the usual bright colour of her face had fled. Her eyes were large, with the pupils widely dilated in them. There was a determined, fixed expression on the pale lips that frightened me.

"Why?" I said, merely drawing my chair close to hers and putting my arm round her shoulders.

"That is just what I can't tell you," she answered. "Not now. When I come back I will tell you, but I don't want to now. But I have a good reason, one which you will understand when you know it. But do just let me go now as I wish, without questions. I have thought it over so much, and I am sure I am doing the right thing."

"You have thought it over?" I repeated in surprise. "Since when?

Since this morning, do you mean?"

"No, long before that. Suzee's letter has only decided me to speak now. I have been meaning to ask you to let me go for some time, only I put it off because I thought you would dislike it so and would feel dull without me. But now, if you let me leave you, you can go to Suzee for a time, and she will amuse and occupy you, and if you want me at the end of the year I will come back."

The blood surged up to my head as I listened. How could she deliberately suggest such things?

Did she really care for me or value our love at all?

In any case, for no reason on earth would I let her go.

"No, I shall not, certainly not, consent to anything so foolish," I said coldly; "I can't think how you can suggest or think such a thing is possible."

Viola was silent for a moment. Then she said:

"When I come back I would tell you everything, and you would see I was right."

"I don't know that you ever would come back," I said, with sudden irrepressible anger.

"If you go away I might want you to stay away. You talk as if our emotions and pa.s.sions were mere blocks of wood we could take up and lay down as we pleased, put away in a box for a time, and then bring them out again to play with. It's absurd. You talk of going away and driving me to another woman, and then my coming back to you, as if it was just a simple matter of our own will. Once we separate and allow our lives to become entangled with other lives we cannot say what will happen. We might never come together again."

Viola inclined her head.

"I know," she said in a low tone. "I have thought of all that. But if I stay there will be a separation all the same, and perhaps something worse."

"What do you mean by a separation?" I demanded hotly.

"Well, I cannot respond to you any more as I used. I must have rest for a time," she answered in a low tone.

I looked at her closely, and it struck me again how delicate she looked. She was thinner, too, than she had been. Her delicate, almost transparent hand shook as it rested on the chair arm.

The colour rushed burning to my face as I leant over her.

"But, darling girl, if you want more rest you have only to say so.

Perhaps I have been thoughtless and selfish. If so, we must alter things. But there is no need to separate, to go away from me for that."

"No, I know," returned Viola in a very tender tone; "I should not for that alone. You are always most good. It is not that only. There are other reasons why I would rather be away from you until we can live together again as we have done."

"And you propose to go away, and suggest my living with another woman till you come back?" I said incredulously; dismay and apprehension and anger all struggling together within me for expression.

"Would it be more reasonable of me to expect to leave you and you to wait absolutely faithful to me till I came back?" she asked, looking at me with a slow, sad smile, the saddest look I had ever seen, I thought, on a woman's face. I bent forwards and seized both little hands in mine and kissed them many times over.

"Of the two I would rather you did that. Yes," I said pa.s.sionately.

"But there is no question of your going away; whatever happens, we'll stick to each other. If you want rest you shall have it; if you are ill I will nurse you and take care of you; but I shan't allow you to go away from me."

She put her arms round my neck. "Dear Trevor, if you would trust me just this once, and let me go, it would be so much better."

"No, I cannot consent to such an arrangement," I answered; "it's absurd. I can't think what you have in your own mind, but I know nothing would be a greater mistake than what you propose. The chances are we should never come together again."

There was silence for a moment, broken only by a heavy sigh from Viola.

"Won't you tell me everything you have in your own mind?" I said persuasively. "I thought we never made mysteries with one another; it seems to me you are acting just like a person in an old-fashioned book. You can tell me anything, say anything you like, nothing will alter my love for you, except deception--that might."

"And you seem to think separation might," returned Viola sadly.

"I don't think it's a question of separation altering my love for you, but in separation sometimes things happen which prevent a reunion."

Viola was silent.

"Do tell me," I urged. "Tell me what you have in your mind. Why has this cloud come up between us?"

"You see," Viola said very gently, "there are some things, if you tell a man, he is obliged to say and do certain things in return. If you take the matter in your own hands you can do better for him than he can do for himself."

"It is something for me then?" I said smiling. "I am to gain by your leaving me for a year?"

"Yes, I think so," she answered doubtfully. "But princ.i.p.ally it is for myself. I know there is a great risk in going away, but I think a greater one if I stay."

I was silent, wondering what it could possibly be that she would not tell me. Although she said she had formed the idea before Suzee's letter came, I kept returning to that in my thoughts as the main reason that must be influencing her.

I waited, hoping if I did not press her she would perhaps begin to confide in me of her own accord. But she sat quite silent, looking intensely miserable and staring out into s.p.a.ce before her. I felt a vague sense of fear and anxiety growing up in me.

"Dearest, do tell me what is the matter," I said, drawing her close up to me and kissing her white lips.

"Don't let us make ourselves miserable for nothing, like stupid people one reads about. Life has everything in it for us. Let us be happy in it and enjoy it."

Viola burst into a storm of tears against my neck and sobbed in a heart-breaking way for some minutes.

"Is it that you have ceased to love me, that you feel your own pa.s.sion is over?" I asked gently.

"No, certainly not that."

"Is it that you think I want to, or ought to be free from you?"

"No, not that."

"Well, tell me what it is."

"I can't. I think we shall be happy again, after the year, if you let me come back to you."

I felt my anger grow up again.