He walked on, slowly, unwillingly, helplessly, walked on, as he now knew, into some far other form of suffering than any that had been foreseen by him that afternoon.
A rustic seat ran round the summer-house. On the side most hidden he sank down. He did not choose the hidden side. He had no feeling of will or choice; had they come out upon him he would have looked at them with the same bewildered eyes. But, dully, he felt that he must know,—know,—why Kitty was unhappy.
Sunken on the seat, among the traveller's-joy, exhausted, yet alert, his head dizzy and his heart stilled, as it were, to listen, it was this amazement and curiosity that Holland felt rather than anger, jealousy, or grief.
Kitty was unhappy; Sir Walter loved her, and she loved Sir Walter. Sir Walter was imploring her to come away with him. "But you do love me," was the phrase that he repeated again and again, the strong protest of fact against her refusal.
The dizziness lifting, the heart beating more normally, Holland knew more. Kitty was unhappy and loved Sir Walter, but, deeper than that, was the truth that she was happy in her knowledge of his love, deeper than that—though this depth was of thankfulness in her husband's heart—was the truth that the love was as yet a beautiful pastime; there was joy for her in her own sadness, drama in her pain; she was a child with a strange toy in her hand; it charmed her and she had not learned to dread it.
Her husband's comprehension of her, of her childishness, her fluidity, her weakness, actually touched with respect his comprehension of Sir Walter; for Sir Walter's strength was reverent, even in his recklessness there was dignity. Holland knew that he spoke the truth when he said to Kitty that she might trust him for life.
It was the real thing with Sir Walter. With Kitty the real thing could be little more than the response to reality in others. There was the danger that her husband steadied himself to look at, as he sat in the sunlight outside the summer-house and listened.
The dizziness was quite gone. He had never felt a greater mental clarity. He knew that he must be suffering; but suffering seemed relegated to some region of mere physical sensation. He saw and understood so many things that he had never seen or understood before. He felt no jealousy, not a pang of the defrauded, injured male, not a throb of the broken-hearted lover; yet it was not indifference to Kitty that gave him his immunity; he had never cared more for Kitty; it was, perhaps, in a tenderer key, as he cared for the station-master, as he cared, now, for Sir Walter. He was himself soon to die and, as personalities, as related to his own life, people had ceased to count; but as lives that were to go on after he was dead, they counted as they had never done till then; and Kitty most of all. It was this intense consciousness of her youth, of all the years of life she had to live, that pressed with such clearness and such fear upon him. She had all her life before her and she held in her hands a terrible, a beautiful toy that, suddenly transformed to an engine of destruction, might shatter her.
Sir Walter was going. He said that he would come again to-morrow.
"Nicholas will be here," said Kitty. She no longer wept. Her voice, now that the stress of the situation was over, had regained its pensive sweetness.