“Alan Chichester told me,” said the young man hoarsely. “The other was true too. The shot in the breast would have been enough to kill him. It was instantaneous; the most merciful death. And he was not disfigured, Tony.”
She rested pitying eyes upon him. She pitied him. “His features were not touched; not on the side he turned to her,” she answered. “But Cicely saw that half his head was shot away.”
His busy mind, while they spoke, was nimbly darting here and there with an odd, agile avoidance of certain recognitions. This was the moment of moments in which to show no fear. And his mind was not afraid.—Clairvoyance; clairvoyance; it repeated, while the horror clotted round his heart. As if pushing against a weight he forced his will through the horror and went back to his place at the other end of the mantelpiece; and, with a conscious volition, he put his hand on hers and drew it from the shelf. “Tony dear,” he said, “come sit down. Let us talk quietly.”—Heaven knew they had been quiet enough!—“Here; let me keep beside you. Don’t take your hand away. I shan’t trouble you. Listen, dear. Even if it were true, even if Malcolm came—and I do not believe he comes—it need not mean that we must part.”
She had suffered him to draw her down beside him on the leathern divan and, as she felt his kindly hand upon her and heard his voice, empty of all but an immense gentleness, tears, for the first time, rose to her eyes. Slowly they fell down her cheeks and she sat there, mute, and let them fall.
“Why should you think it means he wants to part us?” he asked in a gentle and exhausted voice. He asked, for he must still try to save himself and Tony; yet he knew that Miss Latimer had indeed done something to him; or that Malcolm had. The wraith of that inscrutability hovered between him and Tony, and in clasping her would he not always clasp its chill? The springs of ardour in his heart were killed. Never had he more loved and never less desired her. Poor, poor Tony. How could she live without him? And wretched he, how was he to win her back from this antagonist?
He had asked his question, but she knew his thoughts.
“He has parted us, Bevis. We are parted. You know it, too.”
“I don’t! I don’t!” Holding her hand he looked down at it while his heart mocked the protestation. “I don’t know it. Life can cover this misery. We must be brave, and face it together.”
“It can’t be faced together. He would be there, always. Seeing us.”
“We want him to be there; happy; loving you; loving your happiness.”