Shikari, the greyhound, who shared with him the daily journeying, and who slept by his bed at night, was the only living thing that gave him some comfort during those days when his old easy life slipped away from him. Jocelyn’s great love of animals invested the dog with an added attraction. Something of herself, Legard thought, seemed to stay with the caresses and the sweet words she had lavished upon him.
There was, besides, a sense of comradeship in the touch of the brute’s muzzle against his knee, which no human being could give, while his mind was kicking, impotently and incessantly, against the pricks of humanly-ordained circumstance. He managed to keep a certain hand upon his actions; he remained calmly and wearily gentle to his wife, but often when he looked at her, he would awake suddenly to the consciousness that he was trying to measure the ebbing vitality in her face and gestures, and he would turn away hating himself. Every morning he started from the villa, and walked the five dusty miles westwards under the blazing sun with a swinging, hardly restrained stride; every night he came slowly and listlessly back, under cover of the dewy darkness, his face drawn and his lips working. He used to walk both ways, so that in weariness he might get some freedom from thought at night. He did not always see Jocelyn. Sometimes his courage would fail him at the last moment, and he would not even make the attempt, but would hang about the town utterly wretched, and go back at night cursing his cowardice. It was a part of his misery too that he could not understand her. Some days she would hardly speak to him, would shrink if by accident he touched her, and avoided being alone with him; at other times she would seem as friendly and serene as in the old days; but even then she left the impression upon him, that she had been forcing herself not to think and feel, simply to live in the passing moment. She never touched him if she could help it, and her eyes seldom met his; by virtue of her woman’s quickness, they fell soft and luminous under the veil of their dark lashes before he could read the meaning in them. And he knew that it was all his own fault—for, do what he would, he could not hide his feelings. At times he was cold to her, almost sullen, at others quite silent; sometimes he could not keep back the tenderness in his voice, then again he would be suddenly conventional and abrupt, and always—always—he looked at her with hunger in his eyes. When he saw her in the presence of other people he suffered tortures of jealousy, he wanted her ever to himself. That expression of shrinking, almost of horror, in her face, haunted him; sometimes he would go away, cursing himself, calling himself a brute, and a beast, for bringing her a moment’s pain—he would even resolve to give her up and never see her again; but to no end—he could not keep away. Once, when she thought herself unobserved, he saw her looking at him with an expression in her eyes that he had never seen before—an expression in which wonder, fear, pity, and something very deep, were strangely blended; his heart leaped within him, but the next moment the look was gone, and her face was mysterious and inscrutable as a mask. He lived upon that look for days.
In his mind he perpetually reviewed all the unconsidered trifles of their meetings, the words spoken, and the words that seemed to hang unspoken on her lips, the thoughts that showed in her face and the thoughts unimaged, unconfessed—and neither her woman’s instinctive dissimulation, nor the greatly unconscious, greatly untested barrier of a girl’s reserve, could hide them altogether from his despairing eyes. He searched as a thirsty man seeks water in a desert, where to find it is life—to fail death. The knowledge that he was staking his all in that search, and yet that, even if he found it, it must needs be brackish, perhaps undrinkable, gave him a keenness of vision denied to most lover’s eyes. As the days ran into weeks he grew tired and worn-looking, and hollows began to come into his sun-burnt face. He lived, knowing nothing with certainty, nothing of what she felt, nothing of what he desired, nothing of the end. He lived a prey to hunger and to doubt....
One morning, as he was coming up to the hotel, he encountered Mrs. Travis, setting forth upon her daily visit to Monte Carlo. She told him that Jocelyn had taken a book, and gone for a walk by herself. He accompanied the good lady to the station, and watched her train go out, then he took the nearest way through the outskirts of the town to a sloping ridge which he knew to be Jocelyn’s favourite walk. The sun blazed fiercely, and in the town the heat brooded breathlessly over the houses, over the streets, and the dried watercourses. He passed a company of soldiers, in blue jackets and white trousers, straggling dustily along the road; three or four little girls on donkeys clattered by him laughingly, bumping up and down and chattering incessantly, while the drivers followed, flourishing sticks.
In the narrow lane of the steep ascent wild roses hung in clusters from the hedges; and now and then he passed unkempt cottages whence came the smell of burning wood and the barking of dogs. He came out at last upon a ridge, running between two terraced, vine-grown valleys. The uncertainty of his quest gave him courage, and he walked rapidly without dwelling upon the thought whether or not she would be glad to see him; but he had almost given up hope, and was about to retrace his steps, when he suddenly caught sight of her sitting on a bank of thyme, a little way down the left hand slope. Her elbows rested on her knees, and her chin was sunk in her hands; a book lay open by her side. His heart gave a great leap, and beat painfully; he stood still, doubting what he should do, but the sudden ceasing of footsteps had attracted her attention, and she looked up. He lifted his hat.
“May I come? Or shall I go back?” he said.
She looked at him startled, half rising from the ground.
“Shall I go away?” he repeated.
“It would be better,” she said; and then, as if to recall the strange words, she held out her hand and said—
“Oh, no! Come, of course, if you like.”