"Thank you. You certainly have courage, Violet."
"The courage of a surgeon who sees the knife is kindest in the end. I have told you that you would be miserable with the woman you do not love. I now tell you that you would not be happy with the woman you do love."
"And why?"
"Because you have not the making of an archangel in you; that is why. Do you think you have, Paul?" She stood for a moment at the door to look up at him, as if she were making quite an ordinary remark. "But there is the earth in the middle between the heavens above and the waters beneath. Don't forget that, my friend."
When she had left him he lit another cigar out of sheer inability to think of doing anything more decided, anything which in any way affected his future, even to the extent of taking a night's repose; that feeling of uncertainty being largely a result of sheer surprise that he should have allowed Violet Vane's manœuvring to pass unreproved. And this, in its turn, convinced him, as nothing else would have done, that she understood him as no one else could do.
And she? When he, coming up to his room, turned out the lamp on the stair, he left the house in darkness, save for the candle he carried. Yet Mrs. Vane was not even undressed. She was face down on her bed trying to forget everything; above all, that old Peggy Duncan possessed a secret which might--which might----
For her own reference to the past had brought that other past back upon her, and, as she buried her hot face in the pillow, she told herself that she had not, after all, spoken the truth. She had said that his happiness was her motive, when it was her own. And wherefore not?
[CHAPTER XVIII.]
Marjory sate at the window pretending to be busy over laces and ribbons, but in reality watching Dr. Kennedy's deft hands lit up by the shaft of light from his microscope lamp, as, with the aid of a tiny pair of tweezers, and a watchmaker's glass fixed in one eye, he laid out the almost invisible film of some sea plant on a slide. For they, that is to say, Marjory, Will, and the doctor, had spent the day after the theatricals in dredging for oysters, as a relief to what the latter called fishing for men; and something interesting had come up in the dredger, which had to be set up despite the waning light. He looked more natural when so employed, and yet, despite the grizzling hair and the thin brown face, she seemed to trace in him as she had never done before a hint of that figure on last night's stage, which had opened her eyes to love in its passion, its unreason. And with this fancy came the remembrance of Paul Macleod's swift resource, his kindness, his courage. And both memories confused her, making her feel as if the old landmarks had been removed, and she could not be certain even of those she knew intimately; as if a man's ideals might yield no clue to his actions. For Tom must surely have felt that storm and stress before he could portray it so vividly? And then, even if this were not so, his vast experience of things which she had been accustomed to despise remained inexplicable.
"I had no idea that you were so frivolous, Tom," she said suddenly, laying down even her pretence of work.