"Why?" he repeated. "If you don't know human nature, would it be wise, do you think, for me to spell it out to you?"

She knit her brows, trying to see, trying to think, but finding nothing save the blank and gaping question. Through her mind it swept, that her fainting was some cause of it. She could not really believe that that could have brought so much abhorrence to his mind; yet she tried it. To say anything, to propose any cause, she struggled for that in order to know the why.

"It was because I fainted?" she said quickly. "You hate a woman to be weak; I know I was weak; you hate scenes of that sort. Do you think I can't understand it?" She worked herself into the belief that this was the reason, and her spirit of defence rose with it. "Of course I can understand. If I were a man, I should hate it too! But you're quite wrong if you think I shall get unnerved again, as I did this--"

"It's not that at all!" he said firmly. "Do you think I'm such a fool, do you even think I'm such a brute as to blame you, to think poorly, inconsiderately of you for something that was entirely my own fault?

I shouldn't have let myself be carried away by the excitement of that fight. There are many things I shouldn't have done beside that. I shouldn't have stopped as I pa.s.sed along King Street that night. When I saw that little gold head of yours in the window, I should have gone on, taken no notice. I shouldn't have followed, I shouldn't have spoken to you as I did."

"But why?" she entreated.

He gripped the bowl of his pipe in his fingers. "For the very reason you gave me yourself, on the 'bus that day, and afterwards when we were having lunch together."

"What was that?"

"That I didn't know you."

She looked her bewilderment. "I don't understand," she said simply.

"Then I can explain no further. We must leave it at that."

"Oh! but why can't you explain?" She had nearly added, "When it means so much to me," but shut her teeth, drew in her breath on the words, inducing the physical act to aid her in preventing their utterance.

"I think you would be--perhaps sorry--perhaps hurt--if I did."

"I'm sure I wouldn't--and I'd sooner know."

He looked at her fixedly as the pendulum of decision swung in his mind. To tell her would be to crush it, kill it utterly, the blow of the sword of Damocles falling at last--falling inevitably. He knew how she would take it; just as she had taken his advances to her on the 'bus that night. Did he think that of her? Was that all the depth of their acquaintance! Oh, she loathed him! Therefore, why let it end that way? Why not with this little mystery in her mind, which would not prevent their sometimes meeting again, even if she never came to his rooms?

He stood up from the table, crossed the room to where her hat was lying and picked it up.

"It's nearly eleven," he said quietly. "You'd better think of getting home."

She took the hat from him, then the pins. He watched her silently as she secured it to her head, not even appealing to him if it were straight. Slowly she drew on her gloves, shivering as her fingers fitted into the cold skin.

"I'm ready," she said, when all these things were done.

Traill went the round of the candles, blowing them out one by one, until the scent of the smoking wick was pungent in the air. Before the last, he stopped.

"You get to the door," he said.

Instead of obeying him, Sally walked firmly across to his side.

"We're not to meet again?" she asked.

"I didn't say that."

"But you will never bring me up to your rooms here again? As far as that goes, it finishes here?" She did not even stop to wonder at herself. The fears of losing him were spurs in her side.

"Yes."

"Then if you have any respect for me, you'll tell me why?"

"It's because I have respect for you, I suppose, that I don't tell you."

She stepped back from him. "Is it anything about me?" she asked, "or--or about yourself that you cannot tell me?" Then it was that she feared he had discovered her love for him and loathed her for the disclosing of her secret.

In this persistent determination of Sally's, Janet would scarcely have recognized her. But she was driven, the hounds of despair were at her heels. In such a moment as this, any woman drops the cloak and stands out, limbs free, to win her own.

"Is it about yourself?" she repeated.

Another suspicion now that he was married--engaged--bound in some way from which there was no escape--was throbbing, like the flickering shadow that a candle casts, in a deeply-hidden corner of her mind. She dared not let it advance, dared not let it become a palpable fear, yet there it was. And all this time, Traill was looking at her with steady eyes, behind which the pendulum was once more set a-swinging.

Should he tell her, should he not? Should he rip out the knife that would cut this knot which circ.u.mstances seemed to be tying?

"You want to know exactly what it is," he said suddenly. "Then it's this. I'm not the type of man who marries. I've seen marriage with other men and I've seen quite enough of it. My sister's married; marriage has the making of women as a rule, it gives them place, power, they want that--so much the better for them. With marriage, they get it. My sister has often tried to persuade me to marry, drop my life, adopt the social ent.i.ty, and worship the G.o.d of respectability. I'd sooner put a rope round my neck and swing from the nearest lamp-post.

And so, you see, I'm no fit company for you. I don't live the sort of life you'd choose a man to live. I'm not really the sort of man you take me for in the least. At dinner, this evening, you called me a gentleman. I'm not even the sort of gentleman as you understand him; though I've been trying to live up to my idea of the genus, ever since you said it. My dear Sally"--he took her hand--she let him hold it--"you don't know anything about the world, and I don't want to teach you the lesson that I suppose some man or circ.u.mstances will bring you to learn one day. Take my advice and have no truck with me."

He blew out the last remaining candle, took her arm and led her to the door. They walked down the one flight of stairs together, their footsteps echoing up through the empty house; out on the pavement he called a hansom, held his arm across the wheel as she stepped in; turned to the cabby, gave him his fare, told him Waterloo Station; then he leant across the step of the cab and held out his hand.

"Good-bye, Sally," he said.

She tried to answer him, but her words were dry and clung in her throat.

CHAPTER XVIII

The hour of twelve was tolling out across the water from the little church on Kew Green, when Sally fitted her borrowed latch-key into the door. She had performed the journey back to Kew Bridge in a stupor of mind that could hold no single thought, review no single event with any clearness of vision. It was as if not one evening, but three days, had pa.s.sed by since she had left the office of Bonsfield & CO.--the day they had dined together--the day on which they had watched that terrible fight--the day, the last of all, when she had awakened from unconsciousness, had struggled through a cruel agony of mind, and had finally said good-bye to him for ever. How was it possible, with the length, breadth and depth of three days all crushed into the microscopic s.p.a.ce of five hours--a dizzy whirling acceleration of time--how was it possible for her to think logically, consecutively, to even think at all? She could not think. She had lain back in the carriage, her head lax against the cushions, and simply permitted the whole procession of events, like some retreating army with death at its heels, to stagger across her brain.

Down the old river-path to the Hewsons' house, she had walked as if asleep, the glazed eyes of the somnambulist, staring in front, but seeing nothing. Up to her bedroom she had climbed with but one thought in her mind, the fear of waking any one. She had struck a match outside the door, lest the scratching of it in the room should rouse Janet.

Such considerations as these her mind could grasp. It needed a night of sleep to nurse her comprehension back to all that she had been through. As yet, she was unable to realize it.

One by one, she took off her clothes, in the same mechanical way as she would have done if she had returned exhausted from working overtime at the office. When she put on her night-dress, she knelt down unpremeditatedly upon the floor, held her hands together, and looked up to the ceiling, watching a fly that was braving the cold of winter, as it crept in a sluggish, hibernated way across the white plaster. When she rose to her feet and blew out the candle, she was under the vague impression that she had said her prayers. Then she climbed into bed, pulled the clothes about her, and, as her hand touched the pillow, its softness, the remembrance of the many nights when in loneliness she had wept herself to sleep, all rushed back with their thousand a.s.sociations, and the dam against her soul broke.

The flood of tears poured through, and she sobbed convulsively.

Suddenly then, with a grasp of the breath, she stopped, though the tears still toppled down. She had heard her name.

"Sally--"

It was Janet. Before she could resist, before she could explain, two thin arms were clasped round her breast and a close, warm body was next to hers.

"What is it, Sally--little Sally? tell Janet--tell Janet--whisper--"

The pa.s.sionate sobbing, which had begun again immediately Sally knew it was Janet, commenced now to break into uneven, uncontrolled breaths, that by degrees became quieter and quieter as Janet whispered the fond, meaningless things into her ear. Meaningless?

They would have had no meaning to any who might have overheard; but in Sally's heart, as it was meant they should be, they were charged to the full--a cup beneath an ever-flowing fountain that brims over--with such kindness and sympathy, as only a woman of Janet's nature knows how to bestow to another and more gentle of her s.e.x.

"Are you unhappy, Sally?" she asked, when, from the sounds of her weeping, she had become more rational.