“It is not like that, Bevis.” She only needed to remind him. The reality before them mocked his words. “He would not have called to us if he were happy. He would not have appeared to Cicely. He is not angry. I understand it all. He is trying to get through, but it is not because he is angry. It is because he feels I have gone from him. He is lonely, Bevis; and lost. Like the curlew. Like the poor, forgotten curlew.”
When she said that, something seemed to break in his heart, if there were anything left to break. He sat for a little while, still looking down at the hand he held, the piteous, engulfed hand. But it was a pity not only for her, but for himself, and, unendurably, for Malcolm, in that vision she evoked, that brought the slow tears to his eyes. And then thought and feeling seemed washed away from him and he knew only that he had laid his head upon her shoulder, as if in great weariness, and sobbed.
“Oh, my darling!” whispered Tony. She put her arms around him. “Oh, my darling Bevis. I’ve broken your heart, too. Oh, what grief! What misery!”
She had never spoken to him like that before; never clasped him to her. He had a beautiful feeling of comfort and contentment, even while, with her, he felt the waters closing over their heads.
“Darling Tony,” he said. He added after a moment, “My heart’s not broken when you are so lovely to me.”
Pressing her cheek against his forehead, kissing him tenderly, she held him as a mother holds her child. “I’d give my life for you,” she said. “I’d die to make you happy.”
“Ah, but you see,” he put his hand up to her shoulder so that he should feel her more near, “that wouldn’t do any good. You must stay like this to make me happy.”
“If I could!” she breathed.
They sat thus for a long time and, in the stillness, sweetness, sorrow, he felt that it was he and Tony who lay drowned in each other’s arms at the bottom of the sea, dead and peaceful, and Malcolm who lived and roved so restlessly, in the world from which they were mercifully sunken. They were the innocent ghosts and he the baleful, living creature haunting their peace.
“Don’t go. Why do you go?” he said, almost with terror, as Antonia’s arms released him. She had opened her eyes; but not to him. Their cold, fixed grief gazed above his head. And the faint, deprecatory smile flickered about her mouth as, rising, she said: “I must. Cicely will soon be back. And I must rest again. I must rest for to-morrow, Bevis dear.”