Her hands groped after the revolver and found it. Forcing back her tears, she answered, “Nor would I with any man.”
Rising to his feet, he helped her to rise. “Take me to her.”
VIII
As they stepped into the garden, the first restlessness of morning was in the air. The moon had vanished. Stars were going out. Along the low level of sea-line dawn cast a sickly shadow. It was as though night were an indigo curtain behind which silver forms were moving.
She led the way across the lawn, through a door in the wall, and out on the short, crisp turf. She had thrown a cloak about her and pulled the hood over her head. It made her look cowled and elfin. It was the hour when everything is fantastic.
He had an oppressive sense of unreality, as though this were all a dream from which he would shortly rouse. He stood aloof from recent happenings and surveyed his share in them in an elderly, derisive fashion. What were all these promises that he had been exchanging like a gallant? He tried to recall his exact words. To what extent had he committed himself? He had crossed the Atlantic that he might multiply his fortune—for no other reason. He was neither an idealist nor a sentimentalist; he had realized the chance that a bankrupt Europe offered and had come to take advantage of it. What would these derelicts of the catastrophe think of him if they guessed his real purpose? They were willfully, even contemptibly, unpractical; yet their perverted unselfishness troubled his conscience. To spend half one's years in exile, like the Little Grandmother, might not correct injustice, but at least it was a brave protest. To plan to die, like Varensky, because he had failed to rescue humanity, was a counsel of despair, but it had its gleam of nobility. To assassinate, like Santa, men whose statesmanship you did not comprehend was the madness of a zealot, but she at least staked her life against theirs. Into none of these undertakings did profit enter. It was disquieting to find himself among people so determined to convert the world to altruism. The world had been like this always; it would be like this to the end. If they were once to sense who he was, they would regard him as their enemy. He was walking into danger with his eyes wide open. His wisest plan would be to sink into the shadows and take the first train back to sanity. To do that he would have to leave her.
And why not? What did he owe her? What was she to him? She belonged to another man. Waiting for him to die, or to make sure of his death, might prove a tedious business—a humiliating one, most certainly. And yet to leave her now——
She had been going on ahead—or was it his steps that had been lagging? She had halted. As he came up, he felt the firm surface of the road beneath his tread.
In the gloom she laid her hand on his arm. “If you've promised too much——”
That determined him. “I keep my promises,” he answered shortly.