"Go—on," she sighed. "I am going back. Can you help me?"
She turned to him with a pathetic gesture of entreaty. The light faded in Mark's face. He began to stammer.
"If I c-c-could——"
"You believed once. And now your faith is gone! Why? How? You must tell me."
In her excitement she laid her hand upon his wrist, clutching it fiercely. He felt that her fingers were burning, that the fire in them was fluid, that in another moment the flame would flare in him, consuming them both. He rose, releasing his wrist with violence.
"I c-c-can't tell you that." He moved half a dozen paces from her, before he turned. When he spoke again his voice was quite steady. "Faith oozes from some people imperceptibly: there is a steady drain of which they may be unaware, but my faith left me in an instant. It may come back as suddenly. It may be redeemed. I have thought sometimes that faith is God's franchise which is given freely to all, and taken away from the unworthy. And once taken away, it is never given again, never. It must be ransomed—paid for."
As he spoke he was aware that at any cost to his own feelings the talk must be turned into safer channels. His first impulse had been one of unreasoning fear and horror. When she touched him, he lost for a terrible moment his self-control. Love is a despot whose lightest word may make the bravest coward. Seeing her distress, hearing her quavering voice, feeling her trembling fingers, he had divined his own weakness.
"Paid for?" She echoed the words. "How?"
"By sacrifice," he answered slowly. "By blood sacrifice."
When he had gone, she went to her room and locked the door. Alone, her face flamed with anger against herself. Had she betrayed her secret? She could not answer the question. Had he spoken coldly, precisely—on purpose? Nine women out of ten distrust a man's works, and have absurd and infantile faith in his words. But Betty had had a surfeit of words from her husband. Of late, much of her leisure had been wasted in trying to determine their value. Archibald's works were self-explanatory. He was indefatigable as parish priest and philanthropist. Such work could be measured; it lay within a circle, say the inner circle of the Underground Railway. But his sonorous phrases, his dogmas and doctrines, were immeasurable: including this world, past and present, and the world to come. It was natural, therefore, that finding herself compassless in a sea of sentences, she would steer by the light of such fixed stars as frequent communions, charity organisation, the visiting of the sick, and the crusade against alcohol. In a word, she had come to the conclusion that it did not matter very much what a man said, but that what he did was vital to his own welfare and the welfare of others, the true expression of his character and temperament. Whenever a woman touches the fringe of such a commonplace, you may be sure that she will watch a man's actions, the more closely, perhaps, because she has become too heedless of his words. Betty had seen Mark shrink with a violent effort from her touch; he had kept out of Cadogan Place during the summer; he had lost faith in revealed religion. What if these effects were to be traced to one cause—herself?