I have come to know so much of love that I know now what love might be.

We loved, scarred and stained; we parted--basely and inevitably, but at least I met love.

I remember as we sat in a Canadian canoe, in a reedy, bush-masked shallow we had discovered operating out of that pine-shaded Woking ca.n.a.l, how she fell talking of the things that happened to her before she met me again....

She told me things, and they so joined and welded together other things that lay disconnected in my memory, that it seemed to me I had always known what she told me. And yet indeed I had not known nor suspected it, save perhaps for a luminous, transitory suspicion ever and again.

She made me see how life had shaped her. She told me of her girlhood after I had known her. "We were poor and pretending and managing. We hacked about on visits and things. I ought to have married. The chances I had weren't particularly good chances. I didn't like 'em."

She paused. "Then Carnaby came along."

I remained quite still. She spoke now with downcast eyes, and one finger just touching the water.

"One gets bored, bored beyond redemption. One does about to these huge expensive houses I suppose--the scale's immense. One makes one's self useful to the other women, and agreeable to the men. One has to dress.... One has food and exercise and leisure, It's the leisure, and the s.p.a.ce, and the blank opportunity it seems a sin not to fill. Carnaby isn't like the other men. He's bigger.... They go about making love.

Everybody's making love. I did.... And I don't do things by halves."

She stopped.

"You knew?"--she asked, looking up, quite steadily. I nodded.

"Since when?"

"Those last days.... It hasn't seemed to matter really. I was a little surprised."

She looked at me quietly. "Cothope knew," she said. "By instinct. I could feel it."

"I suppose," I began, "once, this would have mattered immensely. Now--"

"Nothing matters," she said, completing me. "I felt I had to tell you. I wanted you to understand why I didn't marry you--with both hands. I have loved you"--she paused--"have loved you ever since the day I kissed you in the bracken. Only--I forgot."

And suddenly she dropped her face upon her hands, and sobbed pa.s.sionately--

"I forgot--I forgot," she cried, and became still....

I dabbled my paddle in the water. "Look here!" I said; "forget again!

Here am I--a ruined man. Marry me."

She shook her head without looking up.

We were still for a long time. "Marry me!" I whispered.

She looked up, twined back a whisp of hair, and answered dispa.s.sionately--

"I wish I could. Anyhow, we have had this time. It has been a fine time--has it been--for you also? I haven't nudged you all I had to give.

It's a poor gift--except for what it means and might have been. But we are near the end of it now."

"Why?" I asked. "Marry me! Why should we two--"

"You think," she said, "I could take courage and come to you and be your everyday wife--while you work and are poor?"

"Why not?" said I.

She looked at me gravely, with extended finger. "Do you really think that--of me? Haven't you seen me--all?"

I hesitated.

"Never once have I really meant marrying you," she insisted. "Never once. I fell in love with you from the first. But when you seemed a successful man, I told myself I wouldn't. I was love-sick for you, and you were so stupid, I came near it then. But I knew I wasn't good enough. What could I have been to you? A woman with bad habits and bad a.s.sociations, a woman smirched. And what could I do for you or be to you? If I wasn't good enough to be a rich man's wife, I'm certainly not good enough to be a poor one's. Forgive me for talking sense to you now, but I wanted to tell you this somehow."

She stopped at my gesture. I sat up, and the canoe rocked with my movement.

"I don't care," I said. "I want to marry you and make you my wife!"

"No," she said, "don't spoil things. That is impossible!"

"Impossible!"

"Think! I can't do my own hair! Do you mean you will get me a maid?"

"Good G.o.d!" I cried, disconcerted beyond measure, "won't you learn to do your own hair for me? Do you mean to say you can love a man--"

She flung out her hands at me. "Don't spoil it," she cried. "I have given you all I have, I have given you all I can. If I could do it, if I was good enough to do it, I would. But I am a woman spoilt and ruined, dear, and you are a ruined man. When we are making love we're lovers--but think of the gulf between us in habits and ways of thought, in will and training, when we are not making love. Think of it--and don't think of it! Don't think of it yet. We have s.n.a.t.c.hed some hours.

We still may have some hours!"

She suddenly knelt forward toward me, with a glowing darkness in her eyes. "Who cares if it upsets?" she cried. "If you say another word I will kiss you. And go to the bottom clutching you.

"I'm not afraid of that. I'm not a bit afraid of that. I'll die with you.

Choose a death, and I'll die with you--readily. Do listen to me! I love you. I shall always love you. It's because I love you that I won't go down to become a dirty familiar thing with you amidst the grime. I've given all I can. I've had all I can.... Tell me," and she crept nearer, "have I been like the dusk to you, like the warm dusk? Is there magic still? Listen to the ripple of water from your paddle. Look at the warm evening light in the sky. Who cares if the canoe upsets? Come nearer to me. Oh, my love! come near! So."

She drew me to her and our lips met.

III

I asked her to marry me once again.

It was our last morning together, and we had met very early, about sunrise, knowing that we were to part. No sun shone that day. The sky was overcast, the morning chilly and lit by a clear, cold, spiritless light. A heavy dampness in the air verged close on rain. When I think of that morning, it has always the quality of greying ashes wet with rain.

Beatrice too had changed. The spring had gone out of her movement; it came to me, for the first time, that some day she might grow old. She had become one flesh with the rest of common humanity; the softness had gone from her voice and manner, the dusky magic of her presence had gone. I saw these things with perfect clearness, and they made me sorry for them and for her. But they altered my love not a whit, abated it nothing. And when we had talked awkwardly for half a dozen sentences, I came dully to my point.

"And now," I cried, "will you marry me?"

"No," she said, "I shall keep to my life here."

I asked her to marry me in a year's time. She shook her head.

"This world is a soft world," I said, "in spite of my present disasters.

I know now how to do things. If I had you to work for--in a year I could be a prosperous man."

"No," she said, "I will put it brutally, I shall go back to Carnaby."

"But--!" I did not feel angry. I had no sort of jealousy, no wounded pride, no sense of injury. I had only a sense of grey desolation, of hopeless cross-purposes.