He signaled to a waiting cab, and as it drew up to the sidewalk, and he put her in, he said quietly, but with resolution:
“I cannot let you go alone in this cab, ill and faint as you are. I beg your pardon, princess; but I must go with you”; and he gave the number to the cabman, and got in beside her.
That word Princess stung her pride, and gave her a sudden feeling of strength. She knew that he meant to convey by its use the idea that it was only as a matter of formal courtesy that he felt bound to care for and protect her now. She drew herself upright, with a slight bend of the head in acknowledgment of his civility.
For a few moments they drove along in silence, utterly alone together. Harold wondered if the thoughts of other days and hours were in her mind. At the same instant she was wondering the same thing about him. She had forgotten that he had just spoken of her with formality, and called her princess. Apparently he had forgotten it, too; for he now said in a low tone and with suddenness:
“Your picture is remarkable. You have told your story well.”
She felt that denial would be useless. Since he had found her standing there before it, she was certain that he knew the truth as well as she did.
“I never meant that it should be known that I painted it,” she said. “You must know that.”
“Why should it not be known?” he said. “If a woman has looked on what those eyes have seen, surely she is called upon to give her warning. If that is what marriage meant to you, God pity you! God be thanked that you are out of it!”
At his words there rushed across her mind the memory of a thousand acts and thoughts and words of tenderness, of love, of strong protection, of help in need and comfort in distress, which this man beside her had given her. How could she tell him, though, that the ground of the despair which she had painted had been the renunciation of these—the thought that she had had a vision of what the love of man and woman could be in a wedded life, and had been shut out from it? Where were now the reasons that had seemed so powerful and sufficient for the course which she had taken? Why was it that, try as she might, she could get no sense of support and satisfaction from recalling these? Was it because she felt them to be the foolish qualms of an ignorant girl, who was prepared to fight against any and all conditions of life which did not answer to her whim? O God, the hideous possibilities of error and of wrong that were about one! How confident of right one might be in doing an act of weakness and of shame!
She could not answer his last words. She felt herself suddenly so possessed of the sense of his nearness that she could neither collect nor control her thoughts. Her eyes were lowered, and she could not see his face; but the very sight of his strong brown hand lying ungloved upon his knee, the very bend of that knee and fold of the gray trousers, seemed as familiar to her as her own body.