She walked off rapidly. Adela watched her, feeling uneasy about her. There was a strange constraint about her manner—a hint of something suppressed—and it was easy to see that she was nervous and unhappy. But Adela, making lighter of her old fears in her new-won comfort, saw only in Marjory a grief that is very sad to bear, a sorrow that comes where love—or what is nearly love—meets with indifference.
"She's still thinking about that creature!" said Adela to herself in scorn and in pity. She had quite made up her mind about Willie Ruston now. "I'm awfully sorry for her." Adela, in fact, felt very sympathetic. For the same thing might well happen with love that rested on a worthier object than "that creature, Willie Ruston!"
Meanwhile the creature—could he himself at the moment have quarrelled with the word?—was carried over the waves, till the cliff and the house on it dipped and died away. The excitement of the message and the start was over; the duty that had been strong enough to take him away could not yet be done. A space lay bare—exposed to the thoughts that fastened on it. Who could have escaped their assault? Not even Willie Ruston was proof; and his fellow-voyagers wondered at the man with the frowning brows and fretful restless eyes. It had not been easy to do, or pleasant to see done, this last sacrifice to the god of his life. Yet it had been done, with hardly a hesitation. He paced the deck, saying to himself, "She'll understand." Would any woman? If any, then, without doubt, she was the woman. "Oh, she'll understand," he muttered petulantly, angry with himself because he would not be convinced. Once, in despair, he tried to tell himself that this end to it was what people would call ordered for the best—that it was an escape for him—still more for her. But his strong, self-penetrating sense pushed the plea aside—in him it was hypocrisy, the merest conventionality. He had not even the half-stifled thanksgiving for respite from a doom still longed for, which had struggled for utterance in Maggie's sobs. Yet he had something that might pass for it—a feeling that made even him start in the knowledge of its degradation. By fate, or accident, or mischance—call it what he might—there was nothing irrevocable yet. He could draw back still. Not thanksgiving for sin averted, but a shamefaced sense of an enforced safety made its way into his mind—till it was thrust aside by anger at the check that had baffled him, and by the longing that was still upon him.
Well, anyhow—for good or evil—willing or unwilling—he was away. And she was alone in the little house on the cliff. His face softened; he ceased to think of himself for a moment; he thought of her, as she would look when he did not come—when he was false to a tryst never made in words, but surely the strongest that had ever bound a man. He clenched his fists as he stood looking from the stern of the boat, muttering again his old plea, "She'll understand!"
Was there not the railway?
CHAPTER XIX.
PAST PRAYING FOR.
Mrs. Dennison needed not Marjory to tell her. She had received Willie Ruston's note just as she was about to leave her bedroom. It was scribbled in pencil on half a sheet of notepaper.