He had sunk to such depths that she was compelled to raise him.
"I don't think you need be disturbed, Mr. Breton. Something of the sort would have been certain to happen very soon. She would have found out in any case ... and there were other things, I know. Rachel——"
"Ah!" he broke in, eager again and almost cheerful. "That was the wonderful thing. When I saw her there first with Seddon—I'd never met him before, you know—I felt angry and impatient. I wanted to carry her off—away from everybody. And then, when Seddon began to speak I lost all sense of Rachel's belonging to me. She seemed older, ever so far away from him, and he was so fine, so splendid about it all that I felt—I felt—well, that I'd do anything in the world for both of them—but never anything that could separate them or make him unhappy."
"You can't separate them now," said Lizzie, "nobody can."
"No. It was just finished—our episode together that wasn't really an episode at all if you consider the little that we saw one another.... Besides, I've never got near Rachel, and I felt in some way that the nearer I got to her the farther away she was. Why, the only time that I kissed her she was the farthest away of all!"
They were walking up the grey, peaceful square.
"You don't mind my telling you all this, do you, Miss Rand? You've seen it all from the beginning. But I'm odd in a way....
"Uncle John coming to me, Seddon being friendly to me, the family taking me back ... that seems to have made all the difference to me. Although I'd never confess it, even to myself, I know that if Rachel and I had gone off together I'd never have been happy. You see, we're both alike that way. We're restless, one half of us, but oh! we're Beaminster the other, and even Rachel, who's been fighting the family all her days, has one part of her that's happy to be married to Seddon and to be quiet and proper and English. That's why neither I nor Seddon ever could hold her—because to be with me she'd have had to give up the other. If she had a child, that might——"
"She's going to have a child!" said Lizzie.
He stopped and stared at her.