“Are you ill?”
In the profound shadow that slept under the eastern parapet of the tower, he saw something he had not previously noticed—an oblong shape. It was a mattress, and someone was lying on it. Since that first memorable night on the tower, Mary had slept out every evening; it was a sort of manifestation of fidelity.
“It gave me a fright,” she went on, “to wake up and see you waving your arms and gibbering there. What on earth were you doing?”
Denis laughed melodramatically. “What, indeed!” he said. If she hadn’t woken up as she did, he would be lying in pieces at the bottom of the tower; he was certain of that, now.
“You hadn’t got designs on me, I hope?” Mary inquired, jumping too rapidly to conclusions.
“I didn’t know you were here,” said Denis, laughing more bitterly and artificially than before.
“What IS the matter, Denis?”
He sat down on the edge of the mattress, and for all reply went on laughing in the same frightful and improbable tone.
An hour later he was reposing with his head on Mary’s knees, and she, with an affectionate solicitude that was wholly maternal, was running her fingers through his tangled hair. He had told her everything, everything: his hopeless love, his jealousy, his despair, his suicide—as it were providentially averted by her interposition. He had solemnly promised never to think of self-destruction again. And now his soul was floating in a sad serenity. It was embalmed in the sympathy that Mary so generously poured. And it was not only in receiving sympathy that Denis found serenity and even a kind of happiness; it was also in giving it. For if he had told Mary everything about his miseries, Mary, reacting to these confidences, had told him in return everything, or very nearly everything, about her own.
“Poor Mary!” He was very sorry for her. Still, she might have guessed that Ivor wasn’t precisely a monument of constancy.