“The world is old in experience,” he said. “We couldn’t go on meeting and stay at this point, my dear. Love between man and woman, however steady and restrained, has its element of passion. There must come moments when one’s feelings get out of hand. The demand of love increases. You have only just accustomed yourself to the idea of loving; when one grows familiar with the idea one has to explore further. That is why I am going out of your life, dear one, until I can enter into it fully. For you and for me there can be no half measures.”
She was silent for a while, a little troubled at the flood of light he had let in upon the situation which she had been viewing through the haze of an impossible idealism. She realised the truth of what he said; and she felt suddenly ashamed, not at his having stripped away the sham coverings ruthlessly, but for having wilfully blinded herself to obvious realities. She felt that she had been convicted of deliberate dishonesty of thought. If he saw this thing clearly, why had not she also seen it without the need of his pointing it out?
“We are lovers, dear; we’ve admitted that,” he resumed. “We can’t stop at that unless we give up seeing one another. I want you. You are free to come to me,—free, that is, save for your own scruples. That is why I feel that in making love to you I have not acted dishonourably. I’ve fought for our love,—it was a square fight, and I’ve lost. You may be right... I can’t say. Anyway the decision rests with you. I’m not going against it. I am going to remain in the background until your need of me is as great as my need of you; then you’ll send for me. In the meantime you need not be afraid to trust me. I shall never seek to persuade you against your will.”
There was a further silence. Pamela dared not venture upon speech because of the tears which would have choked her utterance had she attempted to express her feelings aloud. He was so much more honest than she was, so much finer and stronger. She held him in her thoughts so highly placed that Dare would have been amazed and considerably embarrassed could he have realised the pinnacle to which he was elevated in the opinion of this woman, whom he was conscious of looking up to as infinitely better and simpler and altogether nobler of intention than himself. Compared with her direct and decent conceptions of life, her quiet acceptance of duty, and sense of responsibility, his ideas appeared carnal and extraordinarily limited and self-centred. He did not want to give up anything. He rebelled at the sacrifice demanded of him. It was only because he recognised the impossibility of shaking her resolution that he submitted at all. Had she weakened for a single moment he would have set himself to wear down her resistance with the first sign of faltering on her part. He had watched jealously for some sign of her yielding from the hour when they were alone together, away from the influences that had surrounded her in her home. During the past two days of intimacy and close companionship his hopes had run high. He did not understand how, loving him as she did, and admitting her love so freely, she could yet persist in her determination to marry the man who had wronged her so grievously. It was beyond his powers of comprehension entirely. The day would come, he believed, when she would recognise her mistake, would possibly even acknowledge it. It was for that day he would wait. When it dawned, as dawn it surely must, he would be ready.
The night grew colder as it advanced. Dare unstrapped the rugs and wrapped them about their knees. Pamela was enveloped in his overcoat, with nothing of herself visible but the dim outline of her face showing above the collar, crowned by the pale masses of her hair. She felt wonderfully comfortable and wakeful.
This rushing through the windy starlight, through unfamiliar country shrouded in the dusk and mystery of night, darkly revealed in silhouette against the lighter sky, exhilarated her, filled her with a sense of beauty and ever deepening wonder, as mile after mile was passed in the noisy rush of that symbol of modern activity through the heart of a partially developed country. Black objects, shapes of trees and outlines of scattered homesteads, started up out of the surrounding obscurity, flashed darkly for a second on the landscape, and vanished, and were succeeded by other shapes, formless, vaguely distinct outlines, distorted and magnified in the gloom. The quiet remote beauty of night lay like a softening shadow upon the face of the land.
“I have always loved the night,” Pamela said, speaking softly as though wishful to avoid disturbing the tranquillity by raising her tones; “but I have never loved it so well before, felt so at one with it. It shuts out the world, doesn’t it? ... shuts out everything.”
“It’s you in the night I love,” he said. “That’s where the magic for me comes in. If I hadn’t you beside me I should probably be sleeping. Place and time don’t count, Pamela,—it’s companionship that matters. See the dawn, dear,—just breaking. In a short while it will be light.”
“Yes.”
She stirred restlessly. The thought of what the new day held for her troubled her insistently, filled her with a shrinking sensation of dread. Before another dawn should break she would be faced with gigantic issues; the biggest crisis of her life would have been met. What did the future hold for her, she wondered. Had it lain in her power to lift the veil she would not have dared to look.