"No, that won't do. Not when it is Marise who is in question. The best, the very best I can conceive is what I must give to Marise. A cage could not hold her, not anything but her body, and to force her decision would be to make a cage. No, I mustn't use the children either. They are hers as much as mine. If all is not right between us, what would it avail them to be with us? They must take what life brings them, like the rest of us. If the years Marise and I have pa.s.sed together, if what we have been to each other, and are to each other, if that is not enough, then nothing is enough. That would be a trick to play on her ... to use my knowledge of her vulnerable points to win. That is not what I want. What _do_ I want? I want Marise to be happy."

He had advanced a step since the last time he had told himself this, for now he said it with a dreadful calm, his heart aching but not faltering.

But he could go no further. There were limits to what he could endure.

He fell into a trance-like state of pa.s.sivity, his body and mind exhausted.

As he lay thus, fallen and prostrate, there soared up out of a part of him that was neither mind nor body, but was nevertheless himself, something swift and beautiful and living, something great enough at last to measure its greatness with the immensity of his love for Marise.

What was it?

It was this ... for a moment he had it all clear, as though he had died and it were something told him in another world ... he did not want Marise for himself; he did not even want her to be happy; he wanted her to be herself, to be all that Marise could ever grow to be, he wanted her to attain her full stature so far as any human being could do this in this life.

And to do that she must be free.

For an instant he looked full at this, his heart flooded with glory. And then the light went out.

He was there in the blackness again, unhappy beyond any suffering he had thought he could bear.

He lay still, feeling Marise beside him, the slow, quiet rhythm of her breathing. Was she awake or sleeping? What would happen if he should allow the fear and suffering which racked him to become articulate? If he should cry out to her, she would not turn away. He knew Marise. She would never turn away from fear and suffering. "But I can't do that. I won't work on her sympathy. I've promised to be true to what's deepest and truest in us both. I have been, by G.o.d! and I will be. If our married life has been worth anything, it's because we've both been free and honest ... true with one another. This is her ordeal. She must act for herself. Better die than use my strength to force her against her own nature. If I decide ... no matter how sure I am I'm right ... it won't be her decision. Nothing would be decided. I must go on just as before ..." he groaned, "that will take all the strength I have."

It was clear to him now; the only endurable future for them, such as they were to each other, would come from Marise's acting with her own strength on her own decision. By all that was sacred, he would never by word or act hamper that decision. He would be himself, honestly. Marise ought to know what that self was.

He had thought that this resolve would bring to him another of these terrible racking instants of anguish, but instead there came almost a calm upon him, as though the pain had pa.s.sed and left him in peace, or as though a quiet light had shone out in the darkness. Perhaps the dawn had come. No, the square of the window was still only faintly felt in the blacker ma.s.s of the silent room.

Then he knew why the pain had left him. It had been driven away by the certainty that there was a worse fear than any he knew, or ever would know. No matter what risk or catastrophe lay before them, Marise would never look at him out her clear eyes and act a thing that was not true.

Marise would always be Marise. Why then, whatever came he could bear it.

Life might be cruel and pitiless, but it was not base, when it had among its gifts such a certainty as that, rock-like under his feet, bearing him up in his pain.

He moved to her in the bed, felt for her hand and put it gently to his lips.

Then, holding it in his, on his breast, he turned his eyes towards the window, waiting for the dawn.

CHAPTER XIX

MR. WELLES LIGHTS THE FUSE

July 2.

That early morning talk with Mr. Welles had left Marise trembling with helpless sorrow and exasperation. She sat on the bench where he had left her, and felt the nervous tears stinging her eyes. When she looked up and saw Vincent Marsh was standing there, extremely pale, as visibly shaken as she, as visibly little in control of himself, she burst out, "So you too know. He has just told me that he is really going. The very date is set. His cousin has a room in her boarding house engaged for him. He's going to work as a clerk to pay for the extra expenses of the life there. _Oh!_" She struck her hand on the back of the bench.

Vincent Marsh sat down beside her, his eyes on hers. He said in a curious, low voice, rough and husky, "I wish you would do something for me. I wish you would think with all your might, deeply, just why you are so opposed to his doing what evidently seems to him a very saintly and heroic action; and then tell me why it is."

Marise felt this as a challenge. He was always challenging everything.

This time she was more than ready. "I don't need any time to think of reasons!" she cried. "It's obvious to anyone with any sense for the reality of human values, who isn't fooled by threadbare old words. It's one of those wasteful, futile, exasperating tricks people play on themselves in the name of 'duty.' He's throwing away something real and true, something that could add to the richness of human life, he's throwing away the happiness that comes of living as suits his nature, and so creating a harmony that enriches everybody who touches him. And what's he doing it for? To satisfy a morbid need for self-sacrifice.

He's going to do harm, in all probability, mix up a situation already complicated beyond solution, and why is he? So that he can indulge himself in the perverse pleasure of the rasp of a hair-shirt. He doesn't really use his intelligence to think, to keep a true sense of proportions; he takes an outworn and false old ideal of self-sacrifice, and uses it not to do anybody any real good, but to put a martyr's crown on his head."

She became conscious that her words were having a singular effect upon Vincent. A dark flush had come over all his face. His gaze on her was extraordinary in its intentness, in its eagerness, in its fierceness.

She stopped suddenly, as though he had broken in on what she was saying.

He did not stir from his place, but to her he seemed to tower taller.

Into his dark, intent face came an exultant look of power and authority which fell on her like a hot wind. With a loud knocking of her heart she knew. Before he spoke, she knew what he would say. And he saw that.

He opened those burning lips and said in the same low voice, rough with its intensity, "You see what you have done. You have spoken for me. You have said at last what I have been silently and desperately calling out to you. You know what has happened. You have said it, it is obvious to anyone with any sense of human values. Make an end! Make an end! Come away from a position where only an outworn old ideal holds you to futility and waste. Come away where you will really live and know the fullness of life. Come away from that false notion of duty which makes you do for the children what you know is not best for them, only because it is the traditional thing to do, only because it gives you a martyr's crown to wear. I don't say anything now, as I would to any other woman in the world, as I would have said to you weeks ago before I knew all that you are ... I don't say anything about the imbecility of keeping such a woman as you are here in this narrow, drab hole, this sordid prison ... you born, if ever a human being was, to rich and warm and harmonious living! It is your birthright. Let me give it to you. All that, even that, a whole world of beauty and fullness waiting for you to create it to glorious being, all that is nothing compared to what has come to pa.s.s between us, you and me; compared to that other world of impa.s.sioned living existence that is waiting for you. Come away from the man who is nothing more to you than the house you live in ... nothing but a habit."

She started at this, moving out of the stony immobility in which she gazed at him, listened to him. She did not know that she had moved, was incapable of willing to do so. It had been a mere reflex start as though she had been struck. But at the sight of it, the flame in his eyes leaped up. "No, no, no!" he cried with an insistent triumph, "he is nothing more to you than a habit. And you are nothing more to him. You were right, on that evening when you shrank away from the sight of the place in Italy where in your ignorant youth you made the mistake of trying to join your life to his. There is not a breath you draw, not a turn of your head or body ... I know them all ... that does not prove that he is nothing to you now. I have seen you take a handkerchief from his pocket as you would take it from a bureau-drawer. I have seen him set you on one side, to pa.s.s through a door, as he would set a chair on one side. You don't even see him any more when you look at him, and he doesn't see you. Whatever there may have been between you, if there was ever anything real, it is dead now, dead and buried ... and you the most living woman who ever wore flesh and blood! And I am a living man! You know, I don't need to say it, you know what happens when our looks meet.

Our looks only! Life flares up like a torch in both of us. You know if I but brush against your skirt, how I cannot speak! You know how when our hands touch, every drop of blood in our two bodies burns! You are a grown woman. You know life as well as I do. You know what this means.

You are no longer even a part of his life. You are all of mine. Look at me now."

He flung out his hands, shaking uncontrollably. "Do you see how I show this, say this anywhere, tell this to you here, now, where anyone could hear me? I am not ashamed of it. It is not a thing to hide. It is a thing to glory in. It is the only honestly living thing in all our miserable human life, the pa.s.sion of a man and a woman for each other.

It is the only thing that moves us out of our cowardly lethargy of dead-and-alive egotism. The thing that is really base and false is to pretend that what is dead is still alive. Your marriage is dead. Your children do not need you as you pretend. Let yourself go in this flood that is sweeping us along. I had never thought to know it. I could fall down and worship you because you have shown it to me. But I will show it to you, that and the significance of what you will be when you are no longer smothered and starved. In all this scrawling ant-heap of humanity, there are only a handful of human beings who ever really live.

And we will be among them. All the rest are nothing, less than nothing, to be stamped down if they impede you. They have no other destiny. But we have! Everything comes down to that in the end. That is the only truth. That ... and you and I!"

In the distance, someone called Marise's name. He thought she made a move, and said, leaning towards her, the heat of his body burning through to her arm where he touched her, "No, no, none of those trivial, foolish interruptions that tie you hand and foot, can tie us any longer.

They have no real strength. They can't stand for an instant against something alive. All that rattles in your ears, that keeps you from knowing what you really are ..."

Someone was hurrying down the walk towards them, hidden by the hedge.

Marise could not have turned her head if her life had hung on the action.

Vincent looked straight at her, straight and deep and strong into her eyes, and for an instant his burning lips were pressed on hers. The contact was terrible, momentous.

When he went on speaking, without haste, unafraid although the hurrying steps were almost there, she could scarcely hear his voice, although it was urgent and puissant as the impact of his eyes. "You can't get away from this now. It is here. It has been said. It lives between us, and you are not strong enough, no power on earth is strong enough, to put it down."

And then the outer world broke in on them, swept between them with an outcry. Someone was there, someone who drew short sobbing breaths, who caught at her and clung to her. It was Cousin Hetty's old Agnes ... why in the world was she here? ... and she was saying in a loud voice as though she had no control of it, "Oh, oh! Come quick! Come quick!"

Marise stood up, carrying the old woman with her. She was entirely certain now that she was in a nightmare, from which she would presently awake, wet with cold sweat.

"Come! Come!" cried the old woman, beating her hands on Marise's arm.

"Perhaps it ain't too late. Perhaps you can do something."

"What has happened?" asked Marise, making her voice sharp and imperative to pierce the other's agitation.

"I don't know. I don't know," sobbed Agnes. "She didn't come down for breakfast. I went up to see ... oh, go quick! Go quick!"

She went down, half on the bench, half on the ground.

Marise and Marsh stood for an instant, petrified.

There was only the smallest part of Marise's consciousness which was alive to this. Most of it lay numbed and bewildered, still hearing, like a roll of thunder, the voice of Vincent Marsh.

Then she turned. "Look out for her, will you," she said briefly. "No, don't come with me. I'll go by the back road. It's the quickest, but it's too narrow for a car. You drive to Ashley and bring the doctor in your car."