She drew her hand away gently, though there was no rebuke in the withdrawal, murmuring, “We must be going in,” and straightway the image of Rosina arose sinister and vindictive, her voice raucous and strained to a ghastly jocosity, crying, “Kisses, they’re off!” And then, as he moved silently towards the house, thrilling with the memory of her hand and her look, prisoned sobs still fluttering at his throat, he had a sudden paradoxical intuition that if he spoke of his wife, as he had been on the point of doing, something would go out of the magic of those touches and glances, all spiritual though they were. The figure of Rosina—sinister and vindictive—would stand between their souls, troubling their most transcendental moments. Was not a man’s wife the natural recipient of his confidences, the nurse of his Art? And then, if Eleanor knew that he was ashamed of his wife, that he had always passed as a bachelor, would she not deem him contemptible? The fine ethical sense that had refused to despise him for material degradations, would it not certainly scorn him for moral weaknesses? A great temptation took him not to imperil by indiscreet speech the footing he had won. But his soul had been moved to its depths. To be false—and with her!
“I have not told you all, Mrs. Wyndwood.”
“You can tell me nothing nobler.”
That was like an icy wind. He walked on storm-tossed. They came to a jutting crag, skirted it, and the house rose radiant in the hollow of the cliff. He had an aching vision of their living there together, she and he, with all the dear domesticities of wedded union. His fancy feigned them re-entering now their joint domain. The pretence left his heart sick and empty. They walked across the lawn. “You would not call me noble,” he said, coming to an abrupt stand-still, “if you knew that I—”
He flinched under the sceptical, confident smile she threw over her shoulder.
“That I am married.”
The half-mocking smile faded from the beautiful face, and with it the color. She turned her head again towards the house, but she was not moving forward.
He was glad he had not to meet her eyes. The sea broke solemnly with a fused roar of irregular waves, and he wondered why the sound was so continuous. A cricket’s chirp in the cliff-bushes seemed to him extraordinarily loud. He looked up at the stars. Were the tears, indeed, wiped from all eyes in those shining islands, he thought, or were they only dead, lonely worlds? Or were they alive and full of unhappy people like the star he stood on?
She spoke at last, with a catch in her breath and a strained smile in her voice.
“Why should that make me think less of you?”