9 SEA VIEW TERRACE, PENDRAGON, CORNWALL,
_October_ 15, 1906.
My decision is unalterable.
D. F.
But Dahlia sat in the dreary little drawing-room watching the grey sea with a white face and hard, staring eyes.
She had sat there all day. She thought that soon she would go mad. She had not slept since her last meeting with Robin; she had scarcely eaten—she was too tired to think.
The days had been interminable. At first she had waited, expecting that he would come back. A hundred impulses had been at work. At first she had thought that she would go and tell him that she had not meant what she said; she would persuade him to come back, She would offer him the letters and tell him that she had meant nothing—they had been idle words. But then she remembered some of the things that he had said, some of the stones that he had flung. She was not good enough for him or his family; she had no right to expect that an alliance was ever possible. His family despised her. And then her thoughts turned from Robin to his family. She had seen Clare often enough and had always disliked her. But now she hated her so that she could have gladly killed her. It was at her door that she laid all the change in Robin and her own misery. She felt that she would do anything in the world to cause her pain. She brooded over it in the shabby little room with her face turned to the sea. How could she hurt her? There were the others, too—the rest of the family—all except Robin's father, who was, she felt instinctively, different. She thought that he would not have acted in that way. And then her thoughts turned back to Robin, and for a moment she fancied that she hated him, and then she knew that she still loved him—and she stared at the grey sea with misery in her heart and a dull, sombre confusion in her brain. No, she did not hate Robin, she did not really want to hurt him. How could she, when they had had those wonderful months together? Those months that seemed such centuries and centuries away. But, nevertheless, she kept the letters. Her mother had talked about them, had advised her to keep them. She did not mean to do anything very definite with them—she could not look ahead very far—but she would keep them for a little.
When she had seen Robin's handwriting again it had been almost more than she could bear. For some time she had been unable to tear open the envelope and speculated, confusedly, on the contents. Perhaps he had repented. She judged him by her own days and nights of utter misery and knew that, had it been herself, they would have driven her back crying to his feet. Perhaps it was to ask for another interview. That she would refuse. She felt that she could not endure another such meeting as their last; if he were to come to her without warning, to surprise her suddenly—her heart beat furiously at the thought; but the deliberate meeting merely for the purpose of his own advantage—no!
She opened the letter, read the cold lines, and knew that it was utterly the end. She had fancied, at their last meeting, that her love, like a bird shot through the heart, had fallen at his feet, dead; then, after those days of his absence, his figure had grown in her sight, glorified, resplendent, and love had revived again—now, with this letter she knew that it was over. She did not cry, she scarcely moved. She watched the sea, with the letter on her lap, and felt that a new Dahlia Feverel, a woman who would traffic no longer with sentiment, who knew the world for what it was—a hard, merciless prison with fiends for its gaolers—had sprung to birth.
She replied to him and showed her mother her answer. She scarcely listened to Mrs. Feverel's comments and went about her daily affairs, quietly, without confusion. She saw herself and Robin like figures in a play—she applauded the comedy and the tragedy left her unmoved. Robin Trojan had much to answer for.
He read her second letter with dismay. He had spent the day in solitary confinement in his room, turning the situation round and round in his mind, lost in a perfect labyrinth of suggested remedies, none of which afforded him any outlet. The thought of exposure was horrible; anything must be done to avoid that—disgrace to himself was bad enough; to be held up for laughter before his Cambridge friends, Randal, his London acquaintances—but disgrace to the family! That was the awful thing!