She leaned against a tree, hiding her face in her arm, and broke into helpless sobs. “I am not engaged,” she said.
“Ah!—then——,” She heard Geoffrey’s voice near her, above her, a voice whose compassion did not conceal a bird-of-prey quality—soaring, noble, yet seeing from afar a triumph.
That he should think her free because she was alone hurt her for him. She must shoot down that soaring hope.
And when she had said swiftly, on in-drawn breaths, “The some one is Maurice—we cannot marry—we love each other,” the silence near her was, indeed, like a slow throbbing to death.
She went on, monotonously, still with her hidden face: “Last autumn when he was here, we became engaged. It was a secret. He was too poor, and I have nothing. This morning I heard from him. He says that he is hopeless. He sets me free.” Her sobbing shook her again, and again the thought of what Geoffrey’s suffering must be smote too unendurably upon her own wound. “Forgive me—I am selfish. But to have you ask me that—this morning. I had hardly known what I felt until you asked me. And I feel as if it must kill me. I cannot bear it. I cannot!”
From her head, leaning against the tree, Geoffrey looked around at the sunlit wood. Her strength had broken to emotion. The disintegrating emotion that he had felt was rapidly solidifying into strength again. And, oddly enough, after hearing who the some one was; above all, after hearing—sharp on its indrawn breath—that “We love each other,” not a flutter of hope remained in him. The sincerity of her young, despairing passion put insurmountable barriers between them. He was able, so shut away from her, to think clearly of Maurice; Maurice’s situation—verging on the desperate as he well knew;—of Felicia; of their love for each other; not consciously crushing back the thought of his own disaster, but feeling it, under the thought for her, like the sea’s deep moan in caverns, far beneath the ground where he must tread firmly.
Felicia wept on: “If I could only see him!—it’s been so long. If I could only appeal to him!—I know—I know it’s for my sake; but if only I could make him see that I would rather starve with him than go on without him.”
Geoffrey looked back at her. Her hat and arm hid her face. The stillness of her attitude strangely contrasted with the shaken, passionate protest of her words.
A strand of her hair had caught in the bark of the birch tree. Geoffrey observed the shining loop for a moment while he thought. His love as well as his Olympian quality was being rapidly humanized. He felt now in her the weakness, the selfish recklessness of youthful love. Something illusory in his own adoration made it already seem far away. Yet it was hardly that he adored her less, but that he loved more nearly and with a new understanding of the child in her, the childishness that made her in her ignorance, her passion, dearer to him than when he had seen in her only splendid truth and courage.
Half automatically, seeing that she would hurt herself, he released the strand of shining hair, so gently that she did not feel the touch.