“You must not talk like that,” he said. “I owe you much, Constance, very much, though you have made me very unhappy. I do not understand you. I do not know why you should care to see me. But I will come to you as often as you please if only you will not talk to me about what is past. Let us try and speak of ordinary things, of everyday matters. I am ashamed to seem to be making conditions, and I do not know what it all means, because, as I have said, I cannot understand you, and I never shall. Will you have me on those terms?”
He held out his hand as he spoke the last words, and there was a kindly smile on his face.
“Come when you will and as you will—only come!” said Constance, her face lighting up with gladness. She, at least, was satisfied, and saw a prospect of happiness in the future. “Come here sometimes, in the afternoon, it will be like——”
She was going to say that it would be like the old time when they used to meet in the Park.
“It will be like a sort of picnic, you know,” were the words that fell from her lips. But the blush on her face told plainly enough that she had meant to say something else.
“Yes,” said George with a grim smile, “it will be like a sort of picnic. Good-bye.”
“Good-bye—when will you come?” Constance could not help letting her hand linger in his as long as he would hold it.
“Next Sunday,” George answered quickly. He reflected that it would not be easy to escape Mamie on any other day.
A moment later he was in his boat, pulling away into the midstream. Constance stood on the shore watching him and wishing with all her heart that she were sitting in the stern of the neat craft, wishing more than all that he might desire her presence there. But he did not. He knew very well that he could have stayed another hour or two in her company if he had chosen to do so, but he had been glad to escape, and he knew it. The meeting had been painful to him in many ways, and it had made him dissatisfied and disappointed with himself. It had shown him what he had not known, that he loved the old Constance as dearly as ever, though he could not always recognise her in the strange girl who did not love him but who assured him that her separation from him was killing her. He had hoped and almost believed that he should never again feel an emotion in her presence, and yet he had felt many during that afternoon. Nor did he anticipate with any pleasure a renewal of the situation on the following Sunday, though he was quite sure that he had no means of avoiding it. If he had thought that Constance was merely making a heartless attempt to renew the old relations, he would have given her a sharp and decisive refusal. But she was undoubtedly in earnest and she was evidently suffering. She had gone to the length of reminding him that he owed the beginning of his literary career to her influence. It was true, and he would not be ungrateful. Courtesy and honour alike forbade ingratitude, and he only hoped that he might become accustomed to the pain of such meetings.