“Because of me! Because of me!” Christopher groaned. “Do you think you need remind me of that? Shall I ever forgive myself for it? Get out of it? You’ll get nothing. You’ve been tormented between us all, and you lose Jane Amoret.”
“Then don’t let me lose you too,” said Mrs. Delafield.
Again, with the tears, his blush sprang to his face, and he stood there incredulous, looking down at her, almost as helpless in the shyness the unexpected gift brought upon him as he had been when he first came in to her.
“Really you mean it?” he murmured. “Really I can do something for you, too? Because, unless I can, I couldn’t accept it.”
“You can make me much less lonely, when she’s gone,” said Mrs. Delafield.
She knew that this was to give the gift in such a way as to ensure its acceptance; but he murmured, stung again intolerably by the thought of Jane Amoret, “Oh—I can’t bear it for you!”
“You can help me to bear it.”
Still he pressed upon her what he saw as her sacrifice. “You mean that I may see you when I like? I may always write and you’ll always answer? I can sometimes, even, come and stay, like any other friend? Please realize that if you let me come down on you like that, I may come hard. I’m frightfully lonely, too.”
“As hard as you like. I want you to come hard. Like any friend. Yes.”
She was smiling up at the young man, and, as she had promised herself years for Jane Amoret, she promised herself now years—though not so many would be needed—for Christopher Darley. It was in the thought of what she could do for Christopher Darley that she saw Rhoda’s punishment. Not for having left him, but for having taken him; for not having known what to do with him without taking him. And Rhoda would see it with her, if no one else did.