He felt a tinge of that feeling towards himself now. Up to this Rochester had been for him a mechanical figure, an abstraction, but the fact of this woman's love had suddenly converted the abstraction into a human being.

He could not possibly tell her that he had left the remains of this human being, this man she loved, in the hands of unknown strangers, callously, as though it were the remains of an animal.

He could tell her nothing.

The game was up, he would have to quit. Either that, or to continue the masquerade which was impossible; or to tell her all, which was equally impossible.

Yet to quit would be to hit her cruelly. She loved Rochester.

Rochester, despite all his wickedness, frivolity, shiftlessness and general unworthiness--or perhaps because of these things--had been able to make this woman love him, take his part against his family and return to him.

To go away and leave her now would be the cruelest act. Cruel to her and just as cruel to himself, fascinated and held by her as he was. Yet there was no other course open to him. So he told himself--so he tried to tell himself, knowing full well that the only course open to him as a man of honour was a full confession of the facts of the case.

To sneak away would be the act of a coward; to impose himself on her as Rochester, the act of a villain; to tell her the truth, the act of a man.

The result would be terrific, yet only by facing that result could he come clear out of this business. For half an hour he sat, scarcely moving. He was up against that most insuperable obstacle, his own character. Had he been a crook, everything would have been easy; being a fairly straight man, everything was impossible.

He had got to this bed-rock fact when the door opened and a servant made his appearance.

"Dinner is served, my Lord."

Dinner!

He rose up and came into the hall. Standing there for a moment, undecided, he heard a laugh and looked up. She was standing in evening dress looking over the bal.u.s.trade of the first landing.

"Why, you are not dressed!" she said.

"I--I forgot," he answered.

Something fell at his feet, it was a rose. She had cast it to him and now she was coming down the stairway towards him, where he stood, the rose in his hand and distraction at his heart.

"It is perfectly disgraceful of you," said she, looking him up and down and taking the rose from him, "and there is no time to dress now; you usen't to be as careless as that," she put the rose in his coat. "I suppose it's from living alone for a fortnight with Venetia--what would a month have done!" She pressed the rose flat with her little palm.

Then she slipped her fingers through the crook of his elbow and led him to the breakfast-room door.

She entered and he followed her.

The breakfast table had been reduced in size and they dined facing one another across a bowl of blush roses.

That dinner was not a conversational success on the part of Jones, a fact which she scarcely perceived, being in high spirits and full of information she was eager to impart.

It did not seem to matter to her in the least whether the flunkeys in waiting were listening or not, she talked of the family, of "your mater"

and "Blunders" and "V" and other people, touching, it seemed on the most intimate matters and all with a lightness of tone and spirit that would have been delightful, no doubt, had he known the discussed ones more intimately, and had his mind been open to receive pleasurable impressions.

He would have to tell her directly after dinner the whole of his terrible story. It was as though Fate were saying to him, "You will have to kill her directly after dinner."

All that light-hearted chatter and new found contentment, all that brightness would die. Grief for the man she loved, hatred of the man who had supplanted him, anguish, perplexity, terror, would take their places.

When the terrible meal was over, she ordered coffee to be served in the music-room. He lingered behind for a moment, fiddling with a cigarette.

Then, when he came into the hall with the sweat standing in beads upon his forehead, he heard the notes of the piano.

It was a Mazurka of Chopin's, played with gaiety and brilliancy, yet no funeral march ever sounded more fatefully in the ears of mortal.

He could not do it. Then--he turned the handle of the music-room door and entered.

CHAPTER XVII

THE SECOND HONEYMOON

Only three of the electric lights were on in the music-room. In the rosy light and half shadows the room looked larger than when seen in daylight, and different.

She had wandered from the Mazurka into Paderewski's Melodie Op. 8. No.

3, a lonesome sort of tune it seemed to him, as he dropped into a chair, crossed his legs and listened.

Then as he listened he began to think. Up to this his thoughts had been in confusion, chasing one another or pursued by the monstrosity of the situation. Now he was thinking clearly.

She was his, that girl sitting there at the piano with the light upon her hair, the light upon her bare shoulders and the sheeny fabric of her dress. He had only to stretch out his hand and take her. Absolutely his, and he had only met her twice. She was the most beautiful woman in London, she had a mind that would have made a plain woman attractive, and a manner delightful, full of surprises and contrarieties and tendernesses--and she loved him.

The Arabian Nights contained nothing like this, nor had the brain that conceived Tantalus risen to the heights achieved by accident and coincidence.

She finished the piece, rose, turned over some sheets of music and then came across the room--floated across the room, and took her perch on the arm of the great chair in which he was sitting. Then he felt her fingers on his hair.

"I want to feel your b.u.mps to see if you have improved--Ju-ju, your head isn't so flat as it used to be on top. It seems a different shape somehow, nicer. Blunders is as flat as a pancake on top of his head.

Flatness runs in families I suppose. Look at Venetia's feet! Ju-ju, have you ever seen her in felt bath slippers?"

"No."

"I have--and a long yellow dressing gown, and her hair on her shoulders all wet, in rat tails. I'm not a cat, but she makes me feel like one and talk like one. I want to forget her. Do you remember our honeymoon?"

"Yes."

She had taken his hand and was holding it.

"We were happy then. Let's begin again and let this be our second honeymoon, and we won't quarrel once--will we?"

"No, we won't," said Jones.

She slipped down into the chair beside him, pulled his arm around her and held up her lips.

"Now you're kissing me really," she murmured; "you seemed half frightened before--Ju-ju, I want to make a confession."

"Yes?"

"Well--somebody pretended to care for me very much a little while ago."