"I should have no pity," he said, gravely, "for my own selfishness and cowardice, if I took advantage of this moment of weakness on your part. It is weakness, I hope—I will not call it by any other name. You will recover from it when the stress of this painful time is over, and you will be glad to forget it as I shall do. Believe me, I will not think of it again. It shall be in my mind as though you had not said it; and, though it will be impossible for us to continue on our former terms of friendship, I shall always wish for your welfare, and hope that time will bring you happiness and peace."
She made no answer. She lay where he had placed her, her head buried amongst the cushions, crushed to the very earth. She would not look at him, would not make semblance to have heard. And he, without hesitation, went deliberately to the door and let himself out. He gained the street without being intercepted, and drew a long breath of relief when he felt the soft night air playing on his heated brow. The moralist would have said that he came off victor; but he had a sense, as he went out along the pavement, of being only a defeated and degraded man. There was not even the excitement of gratified vanity, for an offered love which did not include perfect trust in his honor was an insult in itself. And Caspar Brooke's integrity of soul was dear to him.
It was perhaps impossible for him—a mere man—to estimate the extent of suffering to which his scorn had subjected the woman that he left behind. Rosalind remained as he had seen her, crouching on the ground, with her head on the sofa cushions, for full two hours or more. When she rose she went to her own room and lay upon her bed, refusing for many hours either to eat or to speak. She did not sleep: she lay broad awake all night, recalling every tone of Caspar's voice, and every passing expression of his face. She was bitterly humiliated and ashamed. But she was not ashamed in the sense of shame for wrong-doing: she was only ashamed because he had rebuffed her. She was sick with mortification. She had offered him everything in her power—peace, safety, love: she had offered him herself even, and been rejected with scorn. Nothing crushes a woman like this humiliation. And in some women's natures such an experience will produce dire results; for loss of self-respect is resented as the worst injury that man can inflict, and is followed by deadly hatred to the man who has inflicted it. It may be argued by the more logical male that the woman has brought it all upon herself; but no affronted, humiliated, shame-stricken woman will ever allow this to be the fact. The sacrifice she conceives to have been all her own; but the pain has come from him.
This was the way in which Rosalind looked at the matter. And mistaken as she was in her view of the moralities and proprieties of the situation, she suffered an amount of pain which may well arouse in us more pity than Caspar Brooke felt for her. The burning, stinging sense of shame seemed to make her whole soul an open wound. It was intolerable. The only way out of it, she said to herself at first, is to die. There was an old song that rang in her ears continually, as if somebody were repeating it over and over again. She could not remember it all—only a line here and there. "When lovely woman stoops to folly," it began, what art can wash her tears and stains and shame away? And the answer was what Rosalind herself had already given: the only way "to rouse his pity" was "to die!" She almost laughed at herself for repeating the well-worn, hackneyed, century-old ditty. People did not die
now-a-days, either of broken hearts or of chloral, when their lovers deserted them. And Caspar Brooke had never been her lover. No, he had only given her pain; and she wished that she could make him suffer, too. "Revenge" was too high-flown a word; but if she could see him heartbroken, ruined, disgraced, she would be—not satisfied, but she would feel her pain allayed.
Caspar Brooke walked for an hour before he was calm enough to remember that he ought to go home. When this idea once occurred to him, he felt a pang of shame for his own forgetfulness. What would Alice think of him? And this was the first day that she had been with him in his house for so many years. He must go home and make his apologies. Not that she would expect very much attention from him. Had she not said that she was only trying to do her duty? Probably she disliked him still.
He let himself in with his latch-key, and walked straight into the study. A shaded lamp had been lighted, and but faintly illuminated the corners of the room. But there was light enough for him to see that Lady Alice was sitting in his chair. He came up to the table, and looked at her without speaking. There was a strange tumult of feeling in his heart. He wished that he could tell her how gratified he was by her trust in him, how much he prized the very things that had once irritated him against her—her reserve, her fine perception, her excellent fastidiousness of taste, even that little air of coldness that became her so well. To come into her presence was like entering a fragrant English garden, after stifling for an hour in a conservatory where the air was heavy with the perfume of stephanotis.
She rose, as he continued silent, and stood on the rug, almost face to face with him. She did not find it easy to speak, and there was something in his air which frightened her a little. She made a trivial remark at last, but with great difficulty.
"You have been away a long time," she said.
She was not prepared for the answer. He put out his hand and drew her close to him. "You were away a great deal longer," he said, looking down at her fair, serious face. She could not reply. "Twelve years, is it not?" he went on. "That's a long time out of one's life, Alice. I feel myself an old man now."