“Great heavens!” Maurice dropped his forehead on clenched hands, “it was to spare you!”
“I guessed it,” said Angela, while her hand still passed lightly over the azaleas.
They were silent for a moment, and presently in a voice, steady, even gentle, she went on, “I have wished, sincerely wished, to be your wife’s friend. Even after she refused my friendship, I have wished to guard her, at least, from malicious gossip. You know what London is. You and I and your wife live in among people who regard old-fashioned scruples intellectually, not morally; but your wife’s position is not great enough to allow her to be reckless. Even without such knowledge as mine to reveal it, Geoffrey’s love for her makes her conspicuous. They are here together to-night. I saw them at a concert the other day; met them in the Park before that. When last I went to your house I found them together, alone, and—I understand your wife, Maurice—she would think no harm of it—I think she had just kissed him; no harm, Maurice,”—before his start her voice did not quicken, “she would imagine that she kissed him as a brother. He held her hand, I think. I felt it my duty to put petty conventions and reticences aside, and for her sake, for your sake, Maurice, to warn her father, with all delicacy, all caution. I believe it, with all my soul, to be a perilous intimacy. That is my betrayal.”
Maurice’s brain swam with the picture she flashed upon it. Only for a moment;—Felicia’s smile went like a benison over it. Even if it were true, he could look at the picture, after that first pause of breathlessness, steadily. Even if it were true, he could smile back, understanding.
“Geoffrey has all my trust,” he said; “I have all Felicia’s love.”
“You think so,” said Angela quietly. Again her eyes fell before his, but her face remained fixed in its conviction of sincerity.
“How dare you, Angela.”
Still looking down, she went on as steadily as before, her voice anchored with its weight of woe,—how he loved Felicia!—“I dare because I believe that she loves him most. Her love for you and your weakness is maternal by now. I know it, I feel it; I can see it when she looks at you and at him. She loves him as she has never loved you. And I! Oh, Maurice—Maurice—I!” She suddenly cast her arms upon the table, her head fell upon them; terror, regret, and passionate longing swept over her; her voice broke and she burst into sobs. “Couldn’t I have let her go from you? Has it not been nobility in me to guard her—for you? She has never loved you, and I—Maurice, you know, you know—how I have loved you, how I love you! Forgive me! Have pity on me!”
Maurice, frowning darkly, sick with unwilling pity, hating to feel that she deserved pity and that he hated her, turned his eyes away. She had terrified him too much; had dared to lay desecrating hands on the thing dearest to him in the world. Something, and not the least best thing in him, froze before her cry for pity and made him incapable of forgiveness. For once in his life he hardened into resistant strength.
His silence was more horrible to Angela than any look, any word. She raised her head and saw his averted eyes. Only humiliation remained for her. She rose. Her wreath of flowers, loosened, had slipped to one side, she put up a vague hand to it, moaning “Maurice!”