He did not understand her at all. He, too, was absorbed in his inner image of loss, yet he, too, was almost as aware of her as she of him, and his eyes, with their austere gentleness, dwelt on her, as if treasuring, of this last encounter, his completed vision of her.
“Yes, you will be. I shall never forget you and what you’ve been to me. I’ll do my best,” he promised her. “But I seem to have lost everything. I could be strong for her; I don’t know that I can be strong enough for myself.”
“That’s what I mean,” said Mrs. Delafield. “It takes years to be strong enough for one’s self, and even when one’s old one hasn’t sometimes learned how to be. I’m not sure, after this morning, that I’ve learned yet. But I know that I could be strong for you. Will you let me try? Will you let me take care of you a little and guard you from the Rhodas until the right person comes?”
“What do you mean?” he asked; and, answering the look in her face, tears sprang to his eyes.
“We belong to each other. Didn’t you say it?” she smiled. “We are friends. We ought not to lose each other now.”
“Oh! But—” He gazed at her. “How could you! After what I’ve done!”
“You’ve done nothing that makes me like you less.”
“Oh—I can’t! I can’t!” said Christopher Darley. “How could I accept it from you? Already you’ve been unbelievably beautiful to me. It’s not as if you were a Bohemian sort of creature, like me. Appearances must count for you. And the appearance of being friends with your niece’s discarded lover—no—I can’t see it for you. I can imagine you being above the law, but I can’t imagine you being above appearances. I don’t think that I should want you to be. I care about appearances, too, when they are yours.”
It crossed her mind, with almost a mirthful sense of the sort of appearances she would have to deal with, that Parton’s face would be worth watching. Poor Tim’s hovered more grievously in the background. But, after all, it would be a Tim with wounds well salved.
“It’s just because mine are so secure and recognized, don’t you see, that I can do what I like with them,” she said. “It’s not for me a question of appearances, but of realities. After all, my dear young man, what am I going to get out of it all? My roots have been torn up too, you know.”