“No,” he said softly. “That is not true. I would have married you then. I wanted to marry you, and I was younger then and not so wise. I fancied then that I could get anything I wanted in this world for the asking. And yet it was marriage that I had in mind. I have always had ... everything. I will be honest. I have always had women if I wanted them badly enough ... all save you.... And you are the only one I ever wanted to marry. I swear to God that what I am saying is true.”
Watching him, she could not believe that he was lying. She saw the clenched hands. She saw that the mockery had gone out of him. She saw, with a queer tragic catch of memory, the little vein in his throat throbbing as she had seen the same vein throb in the throat of Clarence. It was all so different now. There was no headlong recklessness, no wild, sudden torrent of passion. He had not seized her now and tormented her with caresses that assailed all her resistance. They talked calmly in a fashion that might have been called calculating and cold-blooded save that underneath it there lay a current which ran more deep and more powerful than any emotion they had known on that sultry afternoon in the Babylon Arms. It was all changed now. They were older, and wiser, and in some ways more understanding. And the world about them had changed ... the shabby little flat had given way to the old, beautiful, glowing room. This calm, grave Richard was far more dangerous than the young and ardent one had been. It was more perilous now, for she was assailed through all her senses, and time was rushing on and on, past her....
She did not answer him, and presently in the same low voice he continued. “You are a woman of the world now,” he said, “so you are not likely to believe what you believed then. I do not make excuses for myself. I did not love Sabine. I have never loved her. It was an arranged, a proper marriage like thousands of others, but it turned out badly.... I could not make myself love. No one can do that.” He paused for a moment. “And she could not save herself....”
This last speech he made with such a sad humility that there was no air of conceit in it. Besides Ellen knew its truth; she had seen Sabine with her own eyes, weeping, suffering in a fashion she had once believed impossible, and pretending all the while that such suffering had been caused by a sick kitten. Yet it was this which somehow frightened her; she was afraid lest one day she herself might be humbled in the same fashion.
“My mother,” he was saying, “is as you know, a Greek, and there is a great deal of the Greek in me. Sometimes I fancy I am Oriental ... utterly, completely. An eastern man admires a woman of beauty and of spirit. He wants such a woman for the mother of his children.” He unclasped his hands and took her hand in his. “But don’t fancy that I love you in that way only. Sabine was a fine match in a worldly sense. She was rich. She was fashionable. But I too am that, so what could it mean to me? It was more than that which I wanted. I still want it. I want you to marry me as soon as it is possible.”
She did not free her hand, though the touch made her faint as it had done so many years before. She was conscious suddenly that the old sense of conflict was gone, the old feeling of a hidden antagonism between them. Could it be that it was because he was humble now, asking something of her rather than coming boldly to her to claim it?
“And still,” she heard herself saying, “I am not certain that it would work out. I don’t know.... You must give me time.”
Then he had kissed her hand and murmured, “We have not so much time as we once had.... Perhaps I have even less than I know now.”
To this she had chosen to make no answer. Instead, she had played for him until Fergus blundered in upon them.
It was in the midst of these thoughts that she heard Callendar say, as he stood balancing himself before the fire, “We could go to the south to-morrow, if you like. I could arrange to have my permission extended. De Cyon could do it for me. We could have a week together there.”