"Yet after all," he said, "what is there to discuss or to decide? Haven't you told me already to do the right? And the right is ... to keep faith with Susan. Oh, I know, I know!" he cried out bitterly, "it will wound your heart, it will break mine. But, dearest, we have so much. We have books, we have friends, we have a hundred occupations. But this poor Susan--what has she? She has nothing, except love."
"If she has love," I said, "and we have all else in the world beside; then Susan is rich and we are poor."
He turned away. When he looked at me again, he said:
"It is simply a choice which of us must be robbed of happiness, and burdened with life-long sorrow, and filled with bitterness. You and I are two, and Susan is one. They say minorities must suffer."
He smiled a sad smile, and watched me narrowly. And, at the same moment, a coldness numbed my heart. While he had been extolling Susan, I had drunk in his words deliciously, biding my time to laugh out merrily and prick the shining bubble. But suddenly, all things stood out in a different light. I remembered my oath to Susan at Traxelby. I remembered that she had given up Gibson. I recalled, with anger, that at this very moment she was prowling about to catch some secret glimpse of her lover.
"Yes," he repeated. "Minorities suffer. It is the way of the world. I renounce Susan, and what does it amount to? A mere lady's-maid sees me break faith and drop her in favour of wealth and beauty. She loses her faith in God and man. Possibly, she even has the bad taste to go and die. Meanwhile I, having always had all I want, go and get a great deal more. Natural, isn't it?"
He laughed a bitter laugh.
"Don't talk again like that," I said, as bitterly as he.
He was silent while I thought my thoughts. I knew full well in the depths of my soul, that to suffer anything to thrust itself between him and me, would be a crime and a blasphemy. Yet I knew it might come to pass. If I told him all about Susan, all about Gibson, all about the letters, he would still have only my word for it that she did not love him in her own way. He would seek Susan to-morrow morning, as appointed, to hear Susan's own words. And, under the glamour of his presence, what might not Susan say?
But light blazed through my brain. I had found the key. I must go back to the Villa. I must track Susan at all costs. I must tell her the whole story of Ruddington's mistake. Probably she had already come back.