“This being so—I mean, the burden of Mrs. Meredith’s conduct being still borne by you—I feel that I am bound to abstain on my part from anything which might cause you the least annoyance; and so I have determined to go away. There shall not be the least misapprehension about you, arising from any act of mine.”
So much was truth; but, like many other people, Kyrle did not find it advisable to tell all the truth. He could not say, “Also, I am going, because if I stay I shall fall in love with you, and that will never do, for I am a poor man, and you are a rich woman.” But this was in his mind, even while the temptation was growing greater every instant to forget both of these stubborn facts. Aimée was silent for a moment, and then—for the old courage, as well as the old simplicity, was still strong in her—she looked at him with her brave, direct glance, and said:
“If this is your reason for leaving Venice, I hope that you will not think of going. Your presence does not cause me the least annoyance; and I should be more sorry than I can tell you if mine were such an annoyance to you that we could not even remain in the same city. For, do you think I forget that if you are in a false position, it was my obstinacy that placed, or at least kept you there? How earnestly you appealed to me, and I could not yield! And are you now to be the sufferer by being driven away from this heavenly place? No, Mr. Kyrle, there is no justice in that. I will not allow it!”
He could have smiled at the energy with which she spoke, partly because he read in it the old generous spirit, taking no heed or thought of herself, and partly because, in urging him to remain, she proved that she so little suspected the chief reason why departure seemed to him necessary. What he would have answered it is hard to say, for at that moment the maid, bearing some packages, made her appearance, and Aimée, rousing to the consciousness that there was something very unconventional in this prolonged conversation, rose rather hastily, bade him good-morning, and walked away.
“Going to leave Venice?” said Fanny Meredith. “What an absurd idea! What do you mean by it?”
The time was two hours later than when, standing in the shadow of the cathedral porch, Kyrle had watched Aimée cross the sunshine-flooded Piazza; and the place was the privacy of Mrs. Meredith’s sitting-room in the Grand Hotel. The two people who occupied it were alone together for the first time since they had parted as lovers; but it is safe to say that this thought was not in the mind of either of them. Kyrle, leaning back in a deep chair, was gazing absently out of the window at the beautiful proportions of Santa Maria della Salute just across the Grand Canal, while Mrs. Meredith, with her pretty brows knitted, was gazing at him.
“I mean,” he said slowly, in reply to her last words, “that I think it is the only wise course open to me.”
She threw herself back with an impatient gesture. “You are as incomprehensible as ever!” she exclaimed. “Now, what on earth do you mean by the only wise course open to you?”
“Briefly, then,” said Kyrle, “you were shrewd enough to observe last night that I am in danger of falling in love with Miss Vincent—”