Phases of an Inferior Planet Part 50

"Won't you speak to me?" she asked, and her voice wavered like a harp over which the player has lost control.

As she looked at him she saw that he had grown thinner since she had last seen him, and that his eyes shone with an unnatural l.u.s.tre.

"What is there for me to say?" he returned, arresting her wavering glance.

Her lips quivered.

"I may go away," she said, "and this is the last chance. There is something I must tell you. Will you turn and walk back with me?"

He shook his head.

"What is the use?" he asked, impatiently. "There is nothing to be said that cannot better be left--unsaid."

"No! No!" she said. "You must not think worse of me than--than I deserve."

He was smiling bitterly.

"What I think of you," he returned, "matters very little." Then the smile pa.s.sed, and he looked at her gravely. "I have little time," he said. "My days are not my own." And he added, slowly: "If you wish it, I will walk back with you for a short distance."

"Thank you," she replied, and they pa.s.sed the clump of pines on their way in the park.

For a time they were silent, he was looking ahead, and her eyes followed their shadows as they flitted before her on the ground. The two shadows drew nearer, almost melted into one, and fell away.

Suddenly he turned to her.

"There was something you wished to say?" he asked, as he had asked his paris.h.i.+oners a hundred times; then he added: "Even though it were better left unsaid?"

Her eyes left the shadows, and were raised to his face. She thought suddenly that there was a line of cruelty about his mouth, and shrank from him. Had she really seen that face illuminated by pa.s.sion, or was memory a lie? She spoke rapidly, her words tripping upon one another.

"I want you to know," she said, "how it happened--how I did it--how--"

He looked at her again, and the mocking smile flamed in his eyes.

"What does it matter how it happened," he questioned, "since it did happen? In these days we have become impressionists in all things--even in our experiences. Details are tiresome." Then, as she was silent, he went on. "And these things are done with. There is nothing between Mrs.--Gore and the Reverend Anthony Algarcife except a meeting in a studio and a morning walk in the park. The air is spring-like."

"Don't," she said, suddenly. "You are hard."

He laughed shortly.

"Hard things survive," he answered. "They aren't easy to smash."

She looked at the shadows and then into his face.

"Have you ever forgiven me?" she asked.

He did not answer.

"I should like to feel," she went on, "that you see it was not my fault--that I was not to blame--that you forgive me for what you suffered."

But he looked ahead into the blue-gray distance and was silent.

"Tell me that I was not to blame," she said, again.

He turned to her.

"It was as much your fault," he said, slowly, "as it is the fault of that feather that the wind is blowing it into the lake. What are you that you should conquer the wind?"

She smiled sadly.

"And you have forgiven me?"

His eyes grew hard and his voice cut like steel.

"No."

"And yet you see that I was not to blame."

He smiled again.

"It is the difference," he answered, "between logic and life. What have they in common?"

She spoke almost pa.s.sionately. "Do you think that I have not suffered?"

she asked. "Do you think that you have had all--all the pain?"

He shook his head.

"I do not suffer," he replied. "My life is calm."

She paid no heed to him.

"I have been tortured," she went on; "tortured night and day with memory--and remorse."

His voice was cold, but a sudden anger blazed in his eyes.

"There are drugs for both," he said.

She s.h.i.+vered.

"I have tried to buy happiness as I bought diamonds," she continued. "I have gone from place to place in pursuit of it. I have cheated myself with the belief that I might find it. I did not know that the lack lay in myself--always in myself."

She was silent, and he softened suddenly. "And you have never found it?"

he asked. "Of all the things that you craved in youth there is lacking to you now--only your ambition."

She raised her head.

"And love," she finished.

His voice grew hard again.