And down the corridor Neil Crawford closed another door behind himself and Sydney. Their eyes met with a bleak and hopeless questioning.
“Oh, Neil,” she breathed. “What are we going to do?”
“What am I going to, you must say, Sydney. Remember, my dear, you are not in this. And remember that whatever I do or don’t do will be entirely governed by my love for you and my desire to keep you and the children out of it.”
“You can’t keep me out of it, Neil, even if you wanted to. That is the way, with things relating to one or other of two people who are closely united, both are in them for good or bad. So I’m in this with you to the very last—that is, if—if—”
“If I want you?” He took her shoulders in either hand. “Is that what you are trying to say? You know I want you. You know I love you, that I never have loved, never will love, anyone but you. I can’t help myself. We were made in patterns that match, like a jig-saw puzzle. We wouldn’t match anyone else, no one else would match us.”
She did her best to control the wave of feeling that made her draw free of him.
“She doesn’t feel so, Neil, or think you do. She loves you; and said it tonight too definitely to make me feel you have not returned in kind. Neil, where are our promises?”
“My God, Sydney, since when were you such an innocent as to think promises were anything more than baubles, pretty but—but vain. The promises to love forever until death do us part—”
“Keep still, Neil! You know as well as I do that those aren’t the promises I am thinking of. Besides, we never made those particular promises. But we did promise we weren’t going to go living around with other people unless we meant it—meant it down to the ground, do you hear me?” She was trying to keep her voice under control, but it would rise spasmodically. “And here you seem to have done just that.”
“I wasn’t just living around, Sydney. You know me well enough to know I’d be fastidious about such things. Romany and I got into it somehow, quite naturally. Why can’t women realize how little such things mean to a man, and to some women. She’s one of them. We’ve never spoken of love; do you hear that?”