“Why?” he repeated. “Why? You stopped writing—I didn’t know—how could I——”
“Didn’t I write long enough?” she said wearily. “It didn’t seem any use going on. I wanted to forget. I didn’t know where you were—you might have been dead.” A sudden ring of irritability, telling of shaken nerves, came into the tone of her voice. Giles had a swift sense of injustice; he remembered the misery it had cost him not to answer those letters.
“I obeyed you, I would have given the world to write.”
“You should have gone on obeying me. Why have you come back? Why?” She spoke as if under the spur of some unbearable thought. She stamped her foot on the soft carpet, and her dark eyes were full of resentment. Giles winced, his head dropped upon his chest. This was the other side of the question; she made him feel guilty of an act of brutality. He asked himself why he had come back to torture her? Because he, a strong man, could not bear pain! The poorness of the reason struck him for the first time. As always, he admitted the other side at its full value without question.
“I love you,” was all he found to say.
“You love me! But you don’t care how you hurt me.” She pressed her lips tightly together. He could not help the swift thought, “She is cruel,” and hated himself for it in the same breath. He put his clenched hands against his forehead, and the words escaped him—
“Is that all? All—after——”
“What more do you want? What more do you expect?”
He gazed long and fixedly at her with the searching, upward look in his eyes peculiar to them. He could see nothing behind the mask of her resentful face. It fixed a barrier between them—impenetrable. Through the half-open window a puff of wind strayed in, and the petals of some flowers upon the table stirred; he heard the sheets of the open music on the piano rustling, and the clock ticking very solemnly. During a moment of numbness he had no other sensation. Then his mind leaped suddenly back to painful consciousness. How beautiful she was; standing, slender and motionless, between him and the light! How pitiless! So! It was all over! He had only exchanged the uncertainty of misery for the certainty of it! He made a movement with his mouth, a movement of dumb pain, and in the spasmodic motion which intolerable suffering exacts, strode past her to the window, and stood there, with his back to her, and his hands over his eyes. He tried to reason. “After all,” he thought, “a man has some pride—I’d better get away.” The subtle fragrance in the room tortured his senses—her fragrance. He stood motionless while long seconds crept by, and found—that he had no pride. He suffered so keenly that his reason refused to come to his aid. He could not think of the why or the wherefore of anything, of what it meant or did not mean; he could only feel; and he seemed to have no tongue with which to plead for himself. It was all over! He choked back a sob rising in his throat....
He had not heard any movement in the room, but he suddenly felt fingers pulling at his hands. Jocelyn was standing beside him, looking at him with pitying and mournful eyes.