Cyril stopped short in his wild walk. The soft ground yielded under his boots, and the wet fog wrapped him round in a damp embrace; but he heeded neither. That moment was to him as a "soul's awakening;" an awakening full of pain, and into darkness. For he knew that it had come too late.
He had proposed to Emmie Lucas. Emmie would accept him. He had cut himself off for life from Jean.
For life!
Like a stab from a spear this thought came, rending away all disguises, showing him his own state, his own true self . . . Emmie Lucas! What was Emmie Lucas to him compared with Jean . . . A dear little girl; sweet and charming! . . . But Jean!—He had grown-up into a close union with Jean. His whole being was twined in and out with Jean's being. To be cut off from Jean! How could he endure it?
Had he been mad? Was his seeming love for Emmie all a delusion? It wavered, flickered, went out, this hour, in the rush of his old passionate devotion to Jean. He felt that he could live for Jean, could die for Jean, could wait any number of years for Jean—if only he might hope to win her in the end. But to be cut off from her utterly—! And by his own action—!
And all these weeks past he had honestly counted himself in love with Emmie Lucas.
"Emmie!" he laughed aloud, out on the dreary marshland. "O Jean! What an utter fool I have been!"
He could not yet turn homeward. To meet Miss Devereux's shallow curiosity and shallower solicitude, at the dinner-table, would be insupportable. He knew that he had not control of his own face. She would guess something to have happened out of the common, and would pester him with looks and questions. So he went on and on, thinking hard while trying not to think, going over the past, reckoning up the innumerable points at which his life had been interlaced with Jean's, finding out how necessary to him she always had been, always would be!
And to have discovered this, just too late!
If only he had not spoken that day! But then, would the awakening love have come?