"I really don't know," she said honestly.

"You don't care for me?" he exclaimed. "I'm not the sort of chap who--"

"Oh, it's not that!"

"Then, what?"

She met his eyes steadily. "It's--am I the sort of woman?"

He came close to her side, took her hand reverently as though its preciousness made him fear the harm his heavy grip might do. And there, under the network of apple branches interwoven with the patches of a deep, blue sky, with now and then the sound of an apple tumbling heavily to the ground, or a flight of starlings whirring overhead, and in the distance the hollow monotonous beating on the tin drums of the boy who scared the birds, he told her roughly, unevenly, in words cut out of the solid vein of his emotion, what kind of a woman he thought she was.

"No," she kept on whispering; "no, no."

But he paid no attention. He scarcely heard the word in the gentleness of her voice. When he had finished, she took away her hand.

"That means nothing to you, then?" he said bitterly.

She gazed away through the lines of apple trees that hid the greater distance from view.

"It means more than you think," she replied. "But I can't let you say it--I can't let you continue to think it, until--until"--she took a deep breath--"until I tell you."

"Tell me what?"

"I'll write to you."

"But you can tell me. Why can't you tell me?" His lips were white.

The little switch snapped in his fingers. Neither of them noticed it. Neither heard the sound. "Why can't you tell me?" he repeated.

"I can't, that is all. After what you've said--after what you've been so generous to tell me that you thought of me, I--couldn't. I'll write it."

He threw the pieces of the switch away into the gra.s.s.

"You're going to be married?" he muttered. "You're in love, you're engaged to some one else?"

"No, no, it's not that. Please don't ask me. I'm not engaged to be married."

"You're married already?" He leant forward, bending over her, the words clicking on his tongue.

"No--no--not even that."

"Then, what is it?"

She looked up to his eyes and let him read them. Then he stood upright--slowly stood erect. His cheeks were patched with white, there was a sweat on his forehead. He wiped it off with his hand.

"My G.o.d!" he whispered. "You, you? Great G.o.d, no!"

He turned, strode a few steps away from her, and stood looking down into the gra.s.s. She could hear him muttering. For a little time she waited, head bent, expectant of the sudden bursting of his revolt against the truth. But it never came. His silence was more pregnant with rebuke than speech could ever have been. She bore with it until she thought she had given him full opportunity to rail against her had he wished, then she walked slowly away, the unconquerable sickness in her heart. She walked slowly; but she did not look back.

Would he follow her? Would he? Would he? She reached the gap in the hedge. Then she turned her head. He was still standing where she had left him, gazing down into the forest of gra.s.s stems.

CHAPTER III

This ended her life at Cailsham. How could she remain, how face the reproach, no matter what effort she knew he would make to conceal it, which at any moment she might find herself compelled to meet in the eyes of Wilfrid Grierson? Cailsham was too small a place, the little set in which her mother moved too narrow and confined to ever hope of avoiding it. This must end her life at Cailsham.

With the readiness of this realization, then, why had she told? Cry the woman a fool! She was a fool. Most good women are. But just as the matter is vital in the mind of a man, so is it in the woman the crucial test of honour. A thousand reasons--her happiness--the happiness of content,--the sheltering of her name, the sheltering of her position, all the cared-for security of her life to follow--these can be placed in the scale, weighty arguments against that little drachm of abstract honour, to plead for her silence. A thousand times she could have been justified in saying nothing; but had she done so she would have been a different woman. Fine things must be done sometimes; mean things will be done always. There are men and women to do them both.

That no pa.s.sion was in the heart of her may have been an aid to her honesty. With pa.s.sion to lift the scale on to the agate, there would have been a deed worthy of eulogy then! But even as it was, she sacrificed much; she sacrificed her all. For now she knew that she must go; and there could he no more joy in life for her in the love of little Maurice. To face that, she clutched her hands that afternoon as she walked back into Cailsham. How it was to be accomplished, how endured, was more than she could realize, more than the listless energy of her mind could grasp.

"I am leaving Cailsham almost immediately," she wrote that evening to Grierson. "You will understand my reasons. I am sorry to have caused you the pain that I did. As you realized, I tried to avoid it. I am not presuming at all in my mind that you will ever wish to see me again; but if your generosity should make you think that you owe me any explanation of your silence this afternoon, please believe me that I already understand it, expected it and sympathize from my heart with the position in which I placed you. All that you said to me before you knew, which, of course, I know you cannot think now, I shall treasure in my mind as the opinions of a generous man which were once believed of me. What I have told, or what I have left untold, I know you will hold in your confidence. Good-bye."

Grierson read that letter the next morning in his bedroom. He sat down on the bed, and read it through again; then he railed at women, railed at life, railed at himself that such things should mean so much.

A scene no less dramatic than this was being enacted over the breakfast table at No. 17, Wyatt Street. There, it was the custom for Dora to read such pieces of information from the newspaper as were considered essential to those who, ruling the lives of the sons of gentlemen and being pioneers of education in Cailsham, must be kept up with the times. On this morning, she had given extracts from the foreign intelligence, had read in full the account of the latest London sensation. Then she stopped with an exclamation.

"Mother!"

"What?"

"Mrs. Priestly!"

"Mrs. Priestly?"

"Yes."

"What about her?"

"She's--she's in the divorce court!"

Mrs. Bishop slowly laid down her egg-spoon. "Pa.s.s me the paper," she said.

"Yes; just one minute. The case came on--"

"Dora--the paper!"

The printed sheets were handed to her across the table, and Sally's eyes--pained, terrified--watched her face as she read. When she had finished, she laid down the paper, took off her spectacles and laid them gla.s.s downwards on the table. The long steel wires to pa.s.s over the ears stood upright, formidably bristling.

"I always had my suspicions about that woman," she said, with thin lips. "Oh, it's monstrous, it's abominable! That boy can't stop here another minute."

"Oh, but, mother--why?" Sally exclaimed importunately. "What's he done--he's done nothing."

"If you had a little more understanding about the laws of propriety, you wouldn't ask a ridiculous question like that. The boy must go at once. I've often thought since you came down here that the effect of London upon you was to make you extremely lax in your judgment of other people's morals. I've noticed it once or twice in different things you've said. But you'll kindly leave this matter entirely to me. That boy--I feel ashamed to think he's ever been under this roof--is illegitimate!"

"Mother!" exclaimed the two girls.

"So I gather from this report," she said coldly.