"But Bertie—no! Surely?" he asked her, indignant at so preposterous a suspicion.
"Perhaps," she whispered, almost inaudibly. "Perhaps Bertie."
"Eva! Impossible. Why? How?"
She sank back into her former attitude, her head on his breast, trembling still from the impression of the thunder she had heard. And she went on:
"I know nothing; I only think. I have thought it over day after day for two years; and I have begun to find a great deal that seems mysterious in what had never before been puzzling, but, indeed, sympathetic to me—in Bertie. You know we often used to talk together, and sometimes alone. You were a little jealous sometimes, but you had not the smallest reason for it, for there never was any thing to make you so; we were like a brother and sister. We often talked of you.—Well, afterwards I remembered those talks, and it struck me that Bertie—"
"Yes? That Bertie—"
"That he did not speak of you as a true friend should. I am not sure. While he was talking it never occurred to me, for Bertie had a tone, and a way of saying things. I always fancied then that he meant well by us both, and that he really cared for us, but that he was afraid of something happening—some evil, some catastrophe, if we were married, He seemed to think that we ought not to marry. When afterwards I thought over what he had said that was always the impression. He really seemed to think that we—that we ought never to be married."
She closed her eyes, worn out by this effort to solve the enigmas of the past, and she took his hand and stroked it as she held it in her own. He too tried to look into that labyrinth of the past, but he could discern nothing. His memory carried him back to their last days in London; and he did recall something: he recollected Van Maeren's stern tone when he, Westhove, had said he should call at the Rhodes'; he remembered Bertie's urgent haste to get out of London and wander about the world. Could Bertie—? Had Bertie any interest?—But he could not discern it, in the simplicity of his unpractical, heedlessly liberal friendship, which had never taken any account of expenses, always sharing what he had with his companion because he had plenty, and the other had nothing; he could not see it, since he had never thought of such a possibility in his strange indifference to everything that approached money matters—an indifference so complete as to constitute a mental deficiency, as another man is indifferent to all that concerns politics, or art, or what not—matters which he held so cheap, and understood so little and could only shake his head over it, as over an Abracadabra. He looked, but saw not.
"You see, I fancied afterwards that Bertie had been opposed to our marrying," Eva repeated dreamily; and then, bewildered by the mystery which life had woven about her, she went on: "Tell me, Frank, what was there in him? What was he, who was he? Why would you never tell me anything about him? For I discovered that too, later, during those two years when I thought out so many things."
He looked at her in dismay. Bitter self-reproach came upon him for never having told her that Bertie was poor, penniless, and dependent on his friend's bounty. Why was it he had never told her? Was it out of a sense of shame at being himself so careless, so foolishly weak about a concern in which others were so cautious and prudent? So foolishly weak—careless to imbecility. And still he looked at her in dismay.