"Oh! happy?" she echoed. "Who is happy? But--
'Give me the long white road, and the grey path of the sea,
And the wind's will, and the birds' will, and the heartache
still in me,'
and I will reproach no one."
"Reproaching has never been a pastime of yours, I think--and you may be glad of it, Val, for reproaches, like curses, have a way of coming home to roost. My conscience is no better than an aviary----"
Her involuntary laugh lightened the strain a little, but Westenra was a thorough man, and did not mean to leave it at that. Sombrely he finished.
"I beg your forgiveness, Val, for every reproach I have ever made you in your capacity as wife, mother--or lover. They were undeserved, every one!"
Why should his voice have grown hoarse at the last, and her heart come climbing up into her throat as if to suffocate her? It was some moments before she could half-whisper, half-mutter a response.
"You are too generous; I deserved everything you ever said--but after long thinking I see--that--we cannot all win out as wives and mothers. Of some of us, when you 've said we are good lovers you 've said all. I hoped I was a good mother too--but it is plain that I am not, for Bran, even Bran on whom I had staked my last throw--even Bran leaves me--"
Strange that Haidee should choose this moment to launch forth into the first trembling plaintive notes of the 17th Sonata, that wonderful pæan of terror and beauty under whose rushing spell seven and a half years agone Val had lain her face against her husband's and shared with him the greatest, sweetest secret that can ever lie between man and woman!
"Bran shall never leave you--if you will have me with him--or even if you will not."