Sibylla stood very still; her eyes were fixed on his face. He met her gaze for a moment, then turned away, sat down by the table, and lit a cigarette—doing it just by habit, and because he was so restless, not because he wanted to smoke.
She stood there in silence for two or three minutes. Once she shuddered just perceptibly. She was striving to yield, to do what he asked, to live up to her gospel of giving everything so that she might make happy him whom she had chosen to receive her gifts—might make him happy, and so fill, enrich, and ennoble his life and hers. She had not thought there would be a struggle; that had got left out in the visions—the visions which were full of the swish of the wind, the dance of the waves, and the sailing to worlds new and beautiful. What struggled? Old teachings, old habits, instincts ingrained. She was acting in obedience to ideas, not to feeling. And feeling alone has power to blot such things out of being.
But for good and evil she was a fanatic—she owned her ideas as masters, and forced herself to bend to them as a slave. What they asked must be given—whatever the sacrifice, the struggle, the repulsion. That they might realise what her nature craved, they must be propitiated by what her nature did not love. On that condition alone would they deal with her. And now these ideas, with all their exacting relentless claims, had found embodiment in Walter Blake.
Blake turned his head and looked at her. She came quickly to him and fell on her knees by him. His hand rested on the table, and she laid hers lightly on it.
"Walter, it's hard!"
"If you love me——" he murmured.
She knew by now that love can be unmerciful. With a little sigh she raised his hand and kissed it. She was half reconciled to her surrender, because she hated it. Had anyone been there to interpose and forbid, her reluctant acceptance would have been turned into an ardent desire to complete her sacrifice.
Young Blake flung away his cigarette and sprang to his feet. He was not thinking of his aspirations now. Wanting to be good was not present to his mind, nor the leading of a new life. He was full of triumph. He forgot the yacht that had not come, and anything there might be uncongenial in the surroundings. He caught Sibylla's hands. She looked at him with a smile half of wonder, half of pity. She had put away her shrinking, though it might come back; but it was a little strange that good could be done only on conditions.
They were standing thus when they heard a voice, the loud gruff voice belonging to the retired merchant-skipper who kept the inn. He was rather a rough customer, as indeed the quality of his patrons rendered necessary; he did not hesitate to throw a man out or (as Fairhaven's report averred) to lay a stick across the back of the saucy buxom daughter who served the bar for him if her sauciness became too pronounced. On the whole he was the sort of character popular in the nautical quarter of Fairhaven.
The loud voice came from a distance—from the bottom of the stairs apparently. The landlord was talking to himself, for all that appeared—no other voice made itself heard. He was saying that he had made a promise, and that he was a man of his word. He said this several times. Blake and Sibylla stood hand in hand, their eyes turned in the direction of the door. Then the landlord observed that "times were hard, and that he was a poor man." Blake and Sibylla heard that too. Then the landlord's heavy step came half-way up the stairs. "A poor man," they heard him say with strong emphasis. Still they could hear no other voice and no other step. But they had dropped one another's hands by now, and stood quite still a couple of paces apart.