"But I _have_ found one who's sure to suit you."

"You've actually selected her?--you have her waiting for me?"

She nodded, trying to smile back at him now with a deceiving gayety.

"May I know who the fair lady is?"

"Of course. She's--Charlotte! She is just the woman for you, Peter."

"Never," he said promptly. "She is charming and clever and handsome and kind, _but_--she's not the woman for me."

"Peter"--and Sheila dropped her pretense of playfulness--"Peter, she's all that you need. She'd make a great man of you."

"At this late date?" he inquired a little ruefully. "She'd make a great man of me at forty-six?"

"Yes, she would. Charlotte's very--strong. She could accomplish anything she wished. She'd do much for a man--with a man--if she loved him."

"I have no reason to believe that she loves me," said Peter.

"Perhaps I shouldn't tell you, but _I_ have reason to believe that--she loves you."

He leaned forward and searchingly studied her face: "I'm sure you are mistaken. But--granting that Charlotte may love me--is it for her sake that you want me to marry her?"

"For hers--and for yours. I want to see you in a home of your own, Peter--with a wife to love you, with children. I want--I want you to be happy!"

"I would not be happy if I married Charlotte."

"Why, Peter?"

"Because I do not love her."

"You would come to love her."

"No, Sheila--I am not free to do that."

"Do you--do you love some one else?" And her voice shook now in spite of her attempt to keep it firm.

"Yes," he answered quietly, "I love some one else."

"Some one you can--marry?" She could not look at him, but question him she must.

"No--not some one I can marry."

The room was very still for a moment; but she seemed to hear the sorrow of his voice echoing and re-echoing through it.

"You will get over that in time," she whispered.

"I will never get over it," he answered.

And now she looked at him. She had wondered if he loved her; looking into his sad eyes, she knew. A sob swelled her throat and broke from her lips. And then they sprang up and faced each other.

So they stood, gazing at each other. And though they neither spoke nor touched each other, the heart of each was clear to the other--more clear, indeed, than speech or touch could have made them. So they stood, looking into each other's eyes, and unbearable pain and unbelievable ecstasy were mingled in those few, silent moments. Then the ecstasy died; the pain became cruelly intense. And more than pain shone dark in Sheila's eyes; fear crouched there, and Peter saw it.

She loved him--and she was afraid of him. More intolerably than anything else, that hurt him--that she should have to be afraid of him.

"Peter," she said--and her voice trembled so that he could scarcely understand her words, "Peter, I want you to marry Charlotte for--_for my sake_." And her fear stared at him out of her eyes, stared at him and implored him.

She was asking him to put Charlotte between them. He realized that now. She was telling him that Ted and Eric were not enough to keep them apart.

"I will do it--or something which will answer as well," he a.s.sured her gently. "You may trust me for that, Sheila."

And then, still without touching her, without even looking at her again, he was gone. He was gone and everything was ended for them--for them who had not known even the beginnings.

CHAPTER XVI

Peter had engaged to dine with Charlotte that night, but after his talk with Sheila, his first impulse was to excuse himself. It seemed to him impossible to get back, at once, to the safe level of everyday life, of commonplace affairs. It seemed impossible, too, to meet Charlotte without betraying embarra.s.sment. But after an hour's solitude, he had sufficient command of himself to fill the appointment, and he appeared at the Davis house with all his usual placidity of manner. After all, he had to go on as if nothing had happened, and it was as well, he told himself, to begin immediately. That was, perhaps, the worst of secret disasters like his and Sheila's--that one had to go on as if nothing had happened; that one had to wear, from the first, a bright mask of concealment. But it was, in a way, the best, too--this necessity for taking up tangible, practical matters, for continuing duties, obligations, enterprises that, perforce, diverted at least a part of one's mind from the contemplation of an inner tragedy. There was effort in having to talk, to listen intelligently, to laugh, but there was relief, too, and the sense of safety that, when adrift on chaotic seas, one feels at the touch of something solid. So he talked and listened and laughed with conscientious care. And watching Charlotte across the dinner table, he considered Sheila's plea.

As he had said to Sheila, he thought Charlotte clever and handsome and kind. Whole-heartedly he liked and admired her; he enjoyed her; he was stimulated by her. He was even prepared to admit that, if she would marry him, she might actually make something of him, middle-aged though he was. His attainments, his really brilliant qualities of mind, were there to build with--and she was, by nature, a builder. He could see her taking hold of his life and creating out of its. .h.i.therto negative stuff a thing worth while. He could see her thus active for him and with him, and feel a certain pleasure in the picture. To think of himself as dear to a woman like Charlotte could not but touch a man pleasantly and warmly. And yet, thus touched, thus drawn, he knew still that his whole-hearted admiration and liking would never be followed by whole-hearted love. His pa.s.sion for Sheila had gone too deep to be effaced. Unhappily for himself, he was not one of those whose heart can be enlisted sincerely more than once. He looked across the table at Charlotte and noted the strong, rich gold of her hair, the dark, definite blue of her eyes, the gracious lines of her shoulders; he heard her clear, positive, courageous voice, her blithe laughter; he looked and listened and thought of her as his--and his heart clung to its dream of a woman far less compellingly vital and lovely. Against Charlotte's vivid reality, he set a little ghost with a pale face and wistful gray eyes and a plaintive voice, a little ghost too sensitive to be quite strong, too shy to be self-confident and self-sufficient, too tender to be altogether brave; and with this very sensitiveness, this shyness, this uncourageous tenderness, the little ghost held him.

She held him because her eyes were wistfully gray instead of triumphantly blue, because her voice was hauntingly plaintive instead of firmly buoyant; she held him because in her soul there was a strain of weakness, of timidity, of childlike helplessness and innocence that to him was at once piteous and exquisite. She held him by all those qualities--and shortcomings--most unlike Charlotte. He saw that Charlotte was, as Sheila had a.s.serted, just the woman for a man of his indolent, dallying temperament; he saw that he needed such a woman.

But he saw, too, that Sheila needed him, that she had always needed him, that she would always need him; and from that consciousness of her need he could not wrench himself free.

He would never be free of his little, pale ghost. If he married Charlotte, it would be for Sheila's sake. _If_ he married Charlotte----!

Well, he might marry Charlotte. Sheila had said that he could, and perhaps she had been right. In these later years, since Charlotte had been a woman, a cordial friendship had sprung up between them.

Whenever she had been in Shadyville, he had been much with her, and in her absences there had been letters. For several years, whether in Shadyville or away, she had been a presence in his life; they had many tastes and interests in common; she was kind to him--encouragingly kind. It seemed probable that he could marry her; at least there was ground for trying to do so. Yet how could he offer less than his best to a creature so fine, so honest, so loyal as he knew Charlotte to be?

That something weighed on his mind, that he was observing her with unwonted gravity, Charlotte perceived before the dinner was over.

Afterward she took him with her into the garden and they sat down there in the mild spring night, surrounded by flowers, regarded by innumerable stars. The night, the flowers, the stars, all appeared to be conspiring for Charlotte. They created an atmosphere of poetry for her; they threw over her a glamour that, with her obvious type of beauty, her downright and positive nature, she had missed. It was as if the night, with its stars and flowers, were striving to invest her with that subtler allurement which, in Sheila, was so poignant and enchanting to Peter. And instinctively Charlotte took up the night's cue; sat a little in shadow; spoke with unusual softness.

"What have you been thinking of so seriously all evening?" she asked.

"I've been wondering," said Peter, "whether a man whose heart is committed, in spite of himself, to a hopeless love, has any right to marry."

Charlotte did not answer at once; she stirred, moved deeper into protecting shadow. "That depends, I believe, on whether he's sure that the love his heart is committed to is really hopeless--will be hopeless always," she replied finally.

"In the case I was considering--the man is sure of that."

"Then he would get over his unfortunate love in time--wouldn't he?

Ill-fated love does not often last forever. Life--life is more merciful than that, isn't it?"

It was his chance with her; he realized that she was giving it to him--giving it to him understandingly and deliberately. He had only to agree that an "ill-fated" love--that his ill-fated love--would die at last. But he could not take his chance like that. He could not be less than honest with her.

"He would never get over it altogether," he said. "The woman he could not marry would always be--dearest to him. And, granting that, would it be fair for him to ask another woman to take what was left of--of his affection? Would it be fair to ask her to take--a spoiled life?"

"She might feel that what was left of his life was well worth having--the woman he _could_ marry. She might feel that--even if he had suffered much, missed what he supremely wanted--his life need not be spoiled after all. She might feel that she could prevent its being spoiled. If he were frank with her, and she felt like that about it, I think it would be fair for him to marry her--perfectly honorable and fair."