For a moment that thought, namely, that Edith was nothing to him, assuaged her; she might as well be jealous of a dog that he caressed and mumbled nonsense-love to, and her rage turned against herself for having been so insane as to give him scruples instead of welcome. What if she went back now into the room she had so lately left, and said to Edith, "Let him go; you will have to let him go. It is not you he cares for!" What if she challenged him to say which of them he chose? She knew well what his answer would be.
Inconceivable as was her folly in rejecting him, equally inconceivable was her mood on that morning—was it only the morning of to-day?—when she walked about the dewy garden in an ecstasy of happiness at the knowledge of her love. She had thought it was sufficient to love; it had made her happy to do that. But she had understood nothing of its nature then. It was only when she saw Brunnhilde awake to Siegfried's kiss that she had begun to understand. And the full understanding had come when Edward clasped and kissed her, and she for that moment had clung to him, only to push him away, to thrust from her just that which she wanted, which her whole soul needed. It was but a foolish fairy-tale she had told herself among the roses and sweet peas—a tale of sexless, bodiless love, fit for a Sunday School or a Bible-reading—a tale of white blossoms and white robes—a thing for children and old maids.
The Inquisition had another pair of pincers heating for her; they were ready now, and glowing. What if his moment's heat and flash of desire for her was but the fruit of excitement, but the froth which the music had stirred up in him? Certainly it had been easy to quell it. She had but to tell him to let go of her and he obeyed; to get out of the motor, and then he stood on the pavement. She despised his weakness, for surely a man who was in earnest, who was stirred even as she was stirred, not by some mere breeze of attraction, or by the excitement of a stimulated scene, but felt the heart's need, would not have relinquished her as easily as that. Yet it looked to her in unreasoning agony that it was so, for now he was with Edith, indulging in more madrigals, no doubt. Yet, when she thought as collectedly as might be for a second she had the cold water ready for those pincers. She knew really that what she now called his weakness was in reality of the same stuff as her own strength; that which made her strong—that grotesque angular old image called "Honour"—was one with the reason of his yielding to her. She was left alone with that now; next door a precisely similar idol presided over the two whom she raged to think upon.
Yet, if he had not so easily succumbed to her strength, or if, to put it more truthfully, if they had not both been held in by the force that restrained the hot impulse, that governed, that laid cool hands on the reins he had flung away, would she, so she asked herself now, have continued to persist, have ranged her will and purpose against his, till there was no more courage left in her? She did not know; swift and decisive though the struggle had been, it seemed to have taken all the force of which she was capable to make it at all.
For the moment there was remission for her at the hands of her jealousy, and she walked across to the window and stood behind the curtain looking out on to the moon-emblazoned river. The flood-tide was at its height, and the reflection of the lights from the farther bank lay on the lake-like surface in unwavering lines. Stars and moon burning in the blaze of an everlasting day, and something in the calm of the night, in the eternal progress of those shining worlds, gave her a momentary tranquillity, so that she was able to ask herself this question, on the answer to which all depended, with a mind aloof from herself. How long her will could have held out against her love she did not know, but she knew she would not have chosen to yield.
And at that moment she had won, had she but known it, the first real battle of her life. For that moment she stood with her banner waving round her. The next she was back in the thick of the mêlée again, without tactics, without any sense of there being any one in command of the army she fought with, or even of herself being but a unit in an immense warfare. She felt utterly alone, struggling, yet hardly knowing why, knowing only that the odds against her seemed desperate.
[CHAPTER IX]
EDWARD'S ABSENCE
The injury to Edith's ankle which, according to the authorized version, had happened on their return from the opera to the hotel, gave more trouble than she had expected, and ten days after its infliction she was still a limping pedestrian. This morning she was whiling away the half-hour that would elapse before the motor took her out with her mother, in a long chair in the strip of shade just outside the drawing-room window, with an unread paper on her knees, hearing rather than listening to Elizabeth's stormy performance on the piano. The agitation that sounded there was not confined to those musical excursions, for ever since that night at the opera there had been something about Elizabeth that her cousin would have summed up in the word "queer." Had not other circumstances and other people been "queer," too, she would probably have been content to define without analysis. As it was, she had spent a good deal of time during this last week in attempting to penetrate this queerness of Elizabeth, and seeing if it fitted in with other oddities. And she had come to the uncomfortable conclusion that they were not unconnected.