"You wanted to die!" she repeated, accusing him. "You wanted to kill yourself! But why? Osbert, you have got to tell me why."

"You know why well enough. To undo the harm I have done you. To set you free."

"Then," she pursued swiftly, "I suppose I am right in my other suspicion, too? You don't want me here! You married me, not because you loved me or wanted me, but to be revenged upon mother through me....

And now that you find you are too soft-hearted--or that you have ceased to think that I deserve punishment--you want to get rid of me! But surely there are other ways to do that! You needn't kill yourself! If you don't want me, I can go?... Why did you make such a point of my coming back if--if----"

He made a sound of speechless scorn; but he had turned pale. Clearly this view of the question took him aback. "Of course you know that you are talking nonsense," he said at last.

She was now too much roused to feel nervous. "You call it nonsense,"

said she, "but if those are your feelings----"

"My feelings!" he broke in. "You know it's not a question of that at all, but of your happiness. But if my feelings must be dragged in--if you will have it so--why, use your own sense for a moment! Look at yourself and then look at me! How can any future together be possible?

Think of how I have treated you, and how you have requited me! You see the hopelessness of it all.... Child, you made your first mistake yesterday. You should have let me die quietly. It didn't hurt a bit, and I was not loath. I was slipping away so easily, it seemed far less trouble to go on than to come back. Nothing but your voice could have compelled me. And, if you had let me go, what a future for you! A few weeks bother, perhaps--and perhaps even a little regret. Then freedom.

You would have been set at liberty, as you once told me you longed to be! And _clean_, Virginia, as you also wished! You would have been rich, you might have sent for Pansy, for Tony, for mother! Nothing of mine would have remained but the name you bear, and that you would have changed so soon! And you would have thought kindly of me in the end, because the last thing I did was to bring your lover back to you."

She drew herself up and gazed upon him with scarlet face and eyes br.i.m.m.i.n.g with indignant tears. "_My lover!_ What have I done that you should speak so to me? You know very well that I have no lover,"

she said.

He could see that she was deeply wounded. "I don't understand you a bit," she cried, pushing all her work to the ground, and leaning her forehead on her hands. "When I came back, you seemed so glad--really glad. I hoped ... we might be friends. But what could I do? You didn't like me even to take your hand. If you would really rather have died, of course I am sorry I interfered. I didn't stop to think. It seemed too important, there was only time to act.... I just felt that I--I couldn't let you die like that!" her voice sank away till the concluding words were half inaudible.

"But why not?" he urged, "why could you not? That is the whole point, don't you see?"

She raised her tearful eyes and looked at him as though he were a riddle she could not read. Then, without speaking, she rose, went to her little work-table, opened it and took out a package. She laid it upon his knee, returning to her own seat. "That was why," she said.

His colour rose. "You found that?"

"Dr. Dymock tore open your shirt to make sure whether there was any perceptible movement of the heart. He pulled this out of the--the inner pocket in your shirt, and flung it on the gra.s.s. I s.n.a.t.c.hed it up, so that n.o.body should pry into your private affairs; and then, of course, I could not help seeing that they are--my letters."

She added, as he held the package doubtfully, and said no word: "You see I cannot make things fit together in my mind. If you wanted to be rid of me, why should you keep my letters--_there_?"

"Well, since you have discovered my folly, I had better make a clean breast of it. After all, you have a right to know. It must sound pretty ridiculous, but I suppose that even monsters fall in love. Caliban himself had the taste to desire Miranda, which is horrible and revolting. However, that is what has happened to me.... During all the days of your absence, my heart was in the post-bag. Every letter you wrote is here, h.o.a.rded like a miser's gold." He slipped the elastic band which held them, and smiled wryly as he showed the worn corners of the paper. "I studied these, and you in them," he went on hurriedly. "I learned each day more of your honesty, your scrupulous accuracy, your economy in spending money which was, as you thought, not your own!...

Virginia, in my youth your mother wrote me pages of love-letters! The whole of them were not worth one line of this unconscious self-revelation of yours.... You marvellous creature! How you managed to spend so little is what puzzles me. And Tony, too! Yes, old Grover let that out. Were _you_ paying for Tony? And if so, from what fund did his expenses come?"

His tone had changed insensibly from tense emotion to frank interest.

He raised his head, interrogating her with a look which was almost a smile. She responded eagerly.

"Oh, I managed that quite easily, out of my own allowance. It cost so little! I only paid ten shillings a week for his small top-floor bedroom. Then I paid in ten shillings a week to the board money, and that was all, except his railway journey. You see, I could not send him back to Wayhurst, he would have been so miserable, all alone in the house, poor darling. It would have been hard for him, would it not?

When we were all at the sea, and he had not seen the sea for so long!

It did him so much good, he enjoyed it all so hugely." ... She forgot her own affairs and his in the glow of her sisterly affection. He smiled upon her a little sadly.

"But you must be penniless yourself?" he said. "Surely your private account is overdrawn?"

"Oh, _no_, Osbert! You forget how much you gave me and how little I am used to make do with! I have not wanted anything, and I have quite a big balance----"

"You have a positive genius for sacrifice," he said, laying aside the packet of letters, and studying her. "You would give up everything for Pansy, for Tony, for mother. And now--it being, from your point of view, your duty--you are ready to make the final act of self-abnegation, to sacrifice yourself for Osbert, too?"

His voice had changed. It seemed as if he strove to keep to his old ironic note; but some other force throbbed in his undertone, and it affected Virginia strangely.

"Of course I am. I promised," she a.s.sured him instantly, raising her sweet, puzzled eyes to his tense face.

He gave a laugh which startled her, tossed the package of letters upon the table, rose, and went to the window.

"And are you so ignorant of the meaning of things that you think, after the confession I have just made, that this will satisfy me?" he flung over his shoulder.

She rose too. "I--I don't think I understand," she faltered.

"I'm only a man, just a human man. I want love," he blurted out, his face still averted.

"But isn't that love?" she wondered, as though thinking out a problem aloud for herself. "You are ready to sacrifice everything for me--even your life--because you love me. I am ready to sacrifice--I mean, to do and be what you would have me do and be. Isn't that love?"

"No, it isn't," he bluntly answered.

She grew pale, and twisted her hands tightly together. "Then--then what is it?" she breathed.

Taking no notice of her, he came back to the hearth and rang the bell.

Having done so, he remained with one hand on the mantel and one foot on the fender, gazing at the fire, ignoring, as it seemed, her very presence.

"Hemming," said he, when his summons was answered, "will you please bring back the statue and the pedestal which I told you to take away the night Mrs. Gaunt returned?"

The man departed, reappearing in a minute, with one of the other servants, and bringing in first a shaft of black marble, and then a dazzling white figure. They set up both pedestal and statue, in the open s.p.a.ce in the centre of the bay window recess.

Virginia had seated herself when she heard the mysterious order given.

Gaunt remained silent until the servants had left the room.

Then he moved slowly away from the fire.

"Come and look at it," he said.

Virginia rose, much puzzled, and went to him. They stood side by side contemplating the delicate thing. For a while she was at a loss. Then her eye fell upon the inscription which ran around the base of the figure:

_Qui que tu sois, voici ton maitre!_

Then the colour rushed to her face, for she remembered.

"Oh! Where did you get it?"

"I had it made. I thought it would complete the room."

She stood in the sunlight, which poured through the window, and made a glory of her hair. Many thoughts flowed about her, many memories. Yet as he watched her narrowly, hungrily, he could see that these memories were not bitter.

"How little I knew about it! How little I understood--then," she murmured presently.

"Little blind girl, you understand no better now," said Gaunt.

She lifted to him a solemn gaze. "Osbert, are you sure?"