He had carried her to the couch and was kneeling beside her. Oh, if I could lay down the burden of this heavy, heavy love. If I could love him gladly, not just bitterly. Is this the only way to save him from knowing? Such a little thing, that I wanted to keep for myself. She turned from him convulsively and buried her face in the pillow. He mustn’t see my tears. The cruellest thing is he’ll think I don’t love him. No man was ever so loved. But I gave myself, long ago, to the dream of him. I can’t mix it with the reality.
She turned, in a mercy of pure tenderness.
“George, dear George, I meant what I said.”
I’ll do whatever you tell me, I’ll do whatever you tell me. But he divined her misery. The brave words trembled. She lay before him, white, inaccessible, afraid. Exquisite, made for delight with every grace that the brave lust of man has dreamed; and weariness, anxiety, some strange disease of the spirit, frustrated it. Their love too was a guest of honour, a god to be turned away. She lay there, her sweet body the very sign and symbol of their need, and he knew nothing but pity, as for a wounded child. In that strange moment his poor courage was worthy of hers. God pity me for a fool, he thought. But I love her best of all because I shall never have her.
“I’m going to tell you the truth,” he began——
A jarring crash shook the house, followed by a child’s scream. He rose heavily to his feet, tightened and nauseated with terror. He knew exactly what must have happened. The railing on the sleeping porch, which he had forgotten to mend. One of the children had got out of bed, stumbled against it, the rotten posts had given way. If she had fallen from that height ... he pictured a broken white figure on the gravel. This was his punishment for selfishness and folly. Oh, it is always the innocent who suffer.
With heaviness in his feet he hurried through the dining room and veranda. All was still: looking up he could see the balcony unaltered. Then, through the open windows above he heard the unmistakable clang of metal on a wooden floor. Ben’s bed.
Unable to shake off his conviction of disaster he ran upstairs. Phyllis was crouching in the passage, comforting Janet. “I had a bad dream,” the child sobbed, “then there was that awful noise.”
“There, there, darling, you’re all right now. We all have dreams sometimes. You can come into bed with Mother.”
There was the bleat of one of the talking dolls. “Maaa-Maa!” it cried, and Sylvia appeared, sleepily stolid. “Is it to-morrow?” she asked.