She smiled at his exclamation. "Yes, I dare say that's how it strikes you. But it's very serious to me. Isn't it serious to you, too, to feel that you must be true to me—and marry me—after all that's come to pass?"
"One doesn't think that way—or speak that way—of marrying the woman one—adores."
"Men have been known to marry the women they adored, and still regret the consequences they had to meet."
"She's right," he said to himself. "It is serious."
There could be no question as to her wisdom in asking him to pause. At his age and in his position, and with his merely normal capacity for passion, it would be absurd to call the world well lost for love. Notwithstanding his zeal to do the right thing, there was something due to himself, and it was imperative that he should consider it. Dropping the stump of his cigar into his empty coffee-cup, he got up and strode away. The emotion of the minute, far in excess of the restrained phrases convention taught them to use, offered an excuse for his unceremoniousness.
He walked to the other side of the lawn, then down to the gate, then round to the front of the house. To a chance passer-by he was merely inspecting the premises. What he saw, however, was not the spectacular foliage, nor the mellow Georgian dwelling, but himself going on his familiar victorious way, freed from a clogging scandal that would make the wheels of his triumphal car drive heavily. He saw himself advancing, as he had advanced hitherto, from promotion to promotion, from command to command. He saw himself first alone, and then with a wife—a wife who was not Olivia Guion. Then suddenly the vision changed into something misty and undefined; the road became dark, the triumphal car jolted and fell to pieces; there was reproach in the air and discomfort in his sensations. He recognized the familiar warnings that he was not doing precisely the right thing. He saw Olivia Guion sitting as he had left her four or five minutes before, her head bent over her stitching. He saw her there, deserted, alone. He saw the eyes of England on him, as he drove away in his triumphal car, leaving her to her fate. His compunction was intense, his pity overwhelming. Merely at turning his back on her to stroll around the lawn he felt guilty of a cowardly abandonment. And he felt something else—he felt the clinging of her arms around his neck; he felt the throb of her bosom against his own as she let herself break down just for a second—just for a sob. It seemed to him that he should feel that throb forever.
He hurried back to where he had left her. "It's no use," he said to himself; "I'm in for it, by Jove. I simply can't leave her in the lurch."
There was no formal correctness about Ashley's habitual speech. He kept, as a rule, to the idiom of the mess, giving it distinction by his crisp, agreeable enunciation.
Olivia had let the bit of embroidery rest idly in her lap. She looked up at his approach. He stood before her.
"Do I understand," he asked, with a roughness assumed to conceal his agitation, "that you're offering me my liberty?"