He uncovered his eyes immediately and met her inquiring gaze.
“Oh, hang it all!” he exclaimed. “Why don’t you call me Guy? We’ve got beyond formalities.”
He turned on his elbow.
“Come here,” he said. “I can’t talk to you from a distance. It’s all right. I’ll not forget again. I’ve been seeing that damned ring on your finger till I’m wellnigh blinded by it. It stands between us. I’m not likely to forget that. And there’s something else between us—something... I ought to have remembered sooner. But the sight of you...”
He broke off with jerky abruptness. Honor, observing him wonderingly, drew nearer in obedience to his wish, and seated herself in the chair near the bed. She folded her hands in her lap, and the ring was hidden from him. He noticed that, and wondered if she concealed it intentionally.
“I want to get away,” he said. “You must help me. I want some kind of conveyance... You’ll see to it? ... It doesn’t matter about this morning... After I leave I shall never see you again. I wish I had not seen you—ever. I wish I could forget you, but I know that is out of the question. I’ll never forget... your face... your voice... these will live in my memory. I am going to be married almost immediately, to the best little girl who ever loved a man not worthy of her. I’ve a warm affection for her—a warm affection, and an immense respect... but I have given the best of myself to you. That fact I am afraid is going to spoil life for both of us—for her and for me, I mean.”
“Need she know?” Honor asked quickly, in a voice that was not quite steady.
“She knows already. I had to tell her that before asking her to be my wife.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Oh! I’m sorry.”
She was silent for a moment; then she burst forth with a sudden soft vehemence that surprised him. He fell to listening, wondering, while he watched her working face, as expressive of the emotion that swayed her as the full rich tones giving voice to the flow of resentful thoughts that expressed their owner’s discontent with life, why this complicated business of life and love should be dependent upon infinitesimal human needs; why the disconnected individual existence should act and interact upon each separate existence it came in contact with until certain lives became interwoven with its own and, in adding to its completeness, divorced it from its former state of comfortable detachment? To love much is to suffer much; to love not at all is to remain unacquainted with happiness. And it is never a matter of choice: the lover is fashioned by circumstance; he is not his own creator.