“Lost it all yesterday, and more,” said the young man dispassionately. It was his métier to know everything about everybody, for which reason Mrs. Travis respected him.
“But perhaps he wasn’t playing his ‘system’ then,” she said.
“Why not?”
“Oh, I don’t think he would be,” a remark which was a fair specimen of her methods of discussion. She never believed what she did not want to, and rarely anything that she did not see with her own eyes.
“Figures are against you, y’ve only got one thing in your favour, don’t y’ know,” said the young man languidly; “you c’n leave off playin’ when y’ like, and the bank has to go on.” His voice ran into a whisper, and he tilted his hat till it sloped down the back of his neck.
Giles stood a little way from them, watching Jocelyn eagerly. He caught her looking at him two or three times with eyes that seemed to be asking a question—eyes that were full of trouble and uncertainty. He could not understand the change in her; recalling the friendly serenity of the parting look she had given him the day before, he wondered with a secret dismay. He went up to her and said—
“Will you come and look at the pony? You said you wanted to see it.”
“Yes,” she answered indifferently, and walked away with him to the stables, leaving the young man caressing the slope of his moustache, and calculating into vacancy. On the way to the stables she hardly talked at all, only answering in monosyllables when he spoke to her; every now and then she would look at him stealthily, with that same expression of perplexity and fear. As she stood talking to the pony, with her arms round its neck, her cheek laid against its mane, and her eyes soft under their long lashes, Giles felt an uncontrollable rush of longing to be near her, to touch her, and share in the tenderness of her voice and her face. He came close, and laid his hand partly over hers upon the pony’s head. She drew it away quickly with a look of positive fright, and the colour rushed furiously into her face. He looked at her silently, and he could not keep the pain and hunger out of his eyes. She went on mechanically stroking the pony’s neck. At last he said, rather because his feelings fought for expression than that the words were those he wished to speak, “What’s the matter, Jocelyn? Why do you treat—?” She stamped her foot upon the straw of the stall, and without saying a word, went out of the stable. He stood there, biting his moustache, dumb with pain and dismay, and the pony thrust its wet nose against the pocket of his coat. He recovered himself a minute later, but she had gone to her room, and though he waited a long time, he did not see her again, and at last went away, half distracted with doubt and fear....
After that, his will made no further remonstrance. All that he thought of, day and night, was to be near her. Conventional morality ceased to be anything to him but a dim, murky shadow, falling at times across the path of his longing. He was face to face with two very grim realities, gaunt and shadowless, which hurt him, bit into his soul, absorbed his consciousness—his great unslaked thirst, and his dread of bringing her harm. He was unable to see issues clearly outlined under the pressure of the throbbing passion which possessed him. All that was highest in him was roused, all the self-sacrifice of which he was capable, all the desire to be of use, of protecting use, to some other human being; and by a grim irony it was aroused by that very implanted impulse in his sensuous fibre to be at one with that other, to be all in all to her, to rend the veil which divided her from him, body and soul. He thought of her reverently, as something sacred and unstained, yet he would have given ten years of his life to put his lips to hers. His will, undermined by years of easy drifting with the tide, made feeble attempts to grapple with the end; painfully achieved resolutions, painfully abandoned them, finally confessed dimly that he could neither give her up nor do anything to bring her harm.
So possessed, he made daily pilgrimage from the sunlit Italian villa into Mentone, and every day a rising tide of passion left him a step higher upon a thirsty beach of thankless indecision.