"Darling," I said, taking her soft left hand within both my own, "I cannot tell exactly what you wish to tell me; but listen--I had finished all, and had things not turned out as they have I should have been starting now to come to you and say, 'Lucia I am free now to be your slave.' All this year we have been separated I have thought only of you, waking and sleeping, longed for you, dreamed of you, lived in the hour of our re-union, desired with an intensity beyond all words that day that gives you to me; and, forty hours back, that day, Lucia, seemed so near, but now--dearest"--

I stopped, choked, suffocated with the weight of hopeless, despairing pa.s.sion that fell back upon itself within me.

Lucia leant forward, the beating, palpitating bosom was close to me, her white, nerveless hand lay close in mine.

"And now, Victor?"

"Now all is vanished. I am exactly in the position where I was when I left you in England a year ago."

"And what do you mean--what are we--what?"--

"My sweet, what can we do? I must recommence. I must work on another year."

I felt the burning, tremulous fingers grow cold in mine. Her face paled till it was like white stone. Then suddenly she withdrew her hand from my clasp, and started to her feet.

"Victor, I cannot! no, I cannot! I cannot wait another year! It will kill me!" she said, pa.s.sionately, looking away from me, and pacing a short length of the floor backwards and forwards before me, as I rose, too, and stood watching dizzily the incomparable figure pa.s.s and repa.s.s, hardly master of myself.

"Dearest," she continued; "this is what I came to say--let us marry now. I thought you would have successfully finished your work, and we might do so; but now, now, even as it is, let it be as it is, let it be unfinished, and still, still let us marry. There is no real bar as there might be. There is no question of wrong to any one. We are to be married--it cannot matter to any one when we are. Continue to work afterwards. I am willing to be second always, in every thing, to your work. But don't drive me from you altogether. Let me stay with you now I have come. Let us marry now--here. Let us go before some official--the Maire, or some one, or English consul, no matter whom--this afternoon! Victor, if not now, that day you desire will never come. I shall never be your own. Think how it has receded and receded into time! We have been engaged now more than three years!"

She paused in front of me, and lifted her face--brilliant, glowing, appealing--with an intensity of pa.s.sionate, eager longing in it that defied her words to express. Her whole form quivered with excitement, till I saw the laces of her dress tremble. On the bodice beneath my eyes, the lace fell from the shoulders, and its folds on each side divided slightly in the centre, leaving a depression there in which the rose-colour glowed crimson. It riveted my eyes this line--this channel of colour burnt fiercely beneath my lids.

I could see nothing but it; it seemed everywhere, to fill the room, to scorch into my brain, this palpitating, throbbing, crimson line. That terrible impulse of blind excitement was rapidly drawing me into itself--the impulse that counts nothing, knows nothing, reckons nothing but itself; that will buy the present hour at any sacrifice--that accepts everything, ignores everything but that one moment it feels approaching. This impulse urged me, pressed me, strained violently upon me.

It left me barely conscious of anything except the absorbing longing to take her, draw her close, hard into my arms, and say, "Yes, let all go; from this day henceforward you are mine." But almost unconsciously to myself my reason rebelled against being thus thrust down and trampled upon by this sudden, brute instinct rushing furiously through my frame, and my reason clutched me and clung to me and maintained its hold, and, feeling myself wrenched asunder by these two opposite forces, I stood immovable and silent.

"Victor," she said, after a minute, and the warm, white uncertain hand sought mine again and held it, "I have been working hard since you left, and the canvas is nearly finished, but I am willing to relinquish it for the present, to let it go. In all this time you have been away from me I have been slowly learning that one's own life and one's own life's happiness is of more worth than these abstract ideas, than one's work or talent or anything else. I have been feeling that you and I are letting day after day go by and are working for a to-morrow that for us may never come. Is this your philosophy?"

I looked down on her as she clasped my hand and drew it up to her breast, her eyes were on mine, and all my mental perceptions were blinded and forced down under the pressure of the physical senses.

"Take me into your life, Victor. I swear I won't interfere with your work. Let me sit somewhere beside you all day long while you write, and let me lie all night long watching you while you write, if you like!

Oh, do let me! do speak to me?"

She pressed my hand in, convulsively, upon her breast, until it seemed to be in the midst of tremulous warmth, close upon the throbbing heart itself. I could not think. Thought seemed slipping from me. I felt sinking deeper each minute into the quicksand of desire. Nothing seemed clear any longer. All within my brain was merged into one hot, clinging haze, in which still loomed the idea that I must not yield. It would be dishonourable to my father, disappointing to myself, destructive to my work. I could not realise it then, could not see it, but I knew and remembered in a dim way that it was so, that it had been so decided, and I must adhere to it.

"It is impossible, Lucia."

"Why?"

"Because I promised my father we should not marry until I had got out some book."

"But rescind the promise! Say that you cannot carry it out! Give up all help from him, and let us live our lives apart!"

"I have no means to do it with."

"You can make them! Surely with all your knowledge you can get some ordinary work to do till you can get your works out!"

"Even if I had the means I could not, after the understanding between us, after all he has done for me, throw him over at a moment's notice."

"He has no right to ask such a sacrifice!"

"It has all been thought out," I said dully, "and settled before. I can't re-argue it all now. I decided it finally before I left England, and I am in the same position now as I was then."

A scarlet colour stole into the rose glow on Lucia's face.

"You don't care for me, Victor!" she said pa.s.sionately. "You can't! No man could and speak so!" and she threw my hand from her and herself into the long chair in a sudden, wild storm of excited tears.

I hardly knew what I was doing. I felt as if I had been struck sharply on the eyes as I heard her words. I fell on my knees beside her chair, and put both my arms up and clasped them round the soft waist, and let them lean hard on the hips, in a spasm of angry pa.s.sion.

"What are you thinking of? You know there is nothing I covet like yourself," I said savagely, the blood flowing over my face as hotly as it burnt in her own. "But we can't do this. We should both despise ourselves afterwards. You should be the last person to urge it on me.

What do I ask you? To wait another nine months! That's all. You should help me."

"Help you?" she said, her eyes blazing upon me with anger, shame and pa.s.sion. "Help you in making a fatal mistake? No, I will not! You can refuse me if you like, but all the responsibility is with you. I warn you against it. I have come to warn you. When it is too late you will wish this day back again. You are not tied now after a whole year's work, and after a misfortune you could not help. If you always wait in life until you have settled and arranged everything just to your satisfaction you will find that you lose your desires. They will slip like sand through your hands while you are arranging your circ.u.mstances. Life is never, never quite as we would have it. We must take our pleasures one by one as they are offered to us; it is hopeless to think we can gain them all together. Oh, Victor dearest!" she added, stretching out two rounded, glowing arms in a sort of half-timid desperation and clasping them round my neck, while mine still held her heaving waist, "love now, and win your name by-and-by."

There was delirium in my brain. The whole woman's form swam before my sight. My arms locked themselves violently round the yielding, pulsating waist.

"I would if I could," I muttered, and that was as much as I could say.

"You can," she urged in a soft, desperate voice. "Why not? I can't believe you love me if you let me go back now."

"I can't believe you love me if you urge me to do what I think is dishonourable."

Her arms dropped from my neck.

"Oh, it is a mistake," she said.

"Perhaps so."

We had both risen. The floor seemed to bend beneath my feet. I felt her pulses still beating against my arms. I looked at her. Our eyes met, and the gaze seemed locked, fixed, and we neither of us could transfer it. My throat seemed rigid, dry as a desert; her voice was choked, suffocated in tears. But "Kiss me, at least; oh, kiss me!" was written on the whole imploring face, on the wildly quivering lips, in the burning, distracted eyes. But what use? Rather such a kiss, here, now, might bring an irremediable loss. In any case, the pain of parting after would be ten times intensified for us both. Could I then go?

Would any force then be left in me? Would my will stand beyond a certain point? I did not know. It seemed the only safety for us both, the one rock still left in the wild ocean of our pa.s.sion--an absolute denial to the rushing feelings to find expression in the least of acts or words.

I did not believe nor think she could misunderstand me. I felt sure the struggle and the suffering and the desire must be printed in my face. I knew she must see in it that I was not cold before the despairing, pa.s.sionate longing I saw stirring all her pained, excited frame. To me it seemed as if she must see me ageing and my face lining before her eyes. I held her hand in mine hard for a moment. Then I dropped it gently, and she looked at me--stunned. And so, unkissed, untouched by my lips that ached so desperately for hers, I left her and went out through the pa.s.sages and down the steps and out of the hotel into the brilliant streets with my nerves strung tense to sheer agony.

I had acted, of course, in a correct and orthodox manner. No one could reproach me for the interview just past, but in my heart there was a self-condemning voice. Pleasure seldom unveils her face and offers herself to us twice, and Venus is a dangerous G.o.ddess to offend. I said, "Wait, wait," and "to-morrow," but those ominous lines beat dully through my brain--

"to daurion tis oiden; os oun et eudi estin."

When I reached my hotel, thought, intelligent thought, seemed collapsing, and my brain spinning round and round within my skull.

"The end of me," I muttered, "at this rate will certainly be a cell in a lunatic asylum."

For the first time, I released my rule against drugs. I sent the hotel porter for a draught of chloral. When it came I drank it, and, in the middle of the brilliant afternoon sunshine, threw myself on the bed, conscious of nothing but a longing for oblivion. Unaccustomed to it, the drug seized well upon me. For long, merciful, quiet hours I knew nothing.

After this there came a blank of many days: idle, barren days, in which I did nothing, knew nothing except that I suffered. My brain seemed blank, empty, like a quarry of black slate. The power that seemed to dwell there at times was gone now; crushed all that impersonal emotion of the writer's mind by the blighting personal emotion of the man.

A fortnight pa.s.sed, and at the end of it I had done nothing; another week, and then another, and I had still not written a line.

At last one night, sitting idle in the cafe after dinner, I felt the old impulse stir in me, a rush of eager inclination to write went through me. A sudden sense of power filled me. The brain, empty and idle a few minutes before, became charged with energy and desire to expend it. A corresponding current of activity poured along each vein.

The old familiar impetus swayed me.