She retired that night still with the sense of miracle; yet infinitely grateful to her father for his charming concession to her whim. And her first subtle move had been crowned with success! At least there was work where work was needed so sorely; work, too, that brought her so near to him, annihilating a distance she had reconciled herself to think of as impassable, and opening up potentialities of service which her fertile wits would not be slow to seize upon. Would it not be a joy to help him to a firm footing again, to raise this gifted life of which she had watched the long slow sinking! It was miraculous that this privilege should fall to her! But everything must appear to flow naturally to him of itself; he should never suspect that the unseen hand at work was hers, any more than he should ever know that this was what she, who loved him, had for years worked out in fancy.
And she!—she should have no thought but the unselfish desire of serving him! What matter if she carried in her heart the cold conviction that he could never love her—since all she had dared aspire to had fallen to her lot! For who was she to cherish vain hopes? She had not the commonest touch of beauty; she was hopelessly out of his sphere. She felt herself appallingly ignorant and inexperienced. In her easy shelter the years had slipped by in monotonous quiet. In the world outside there beat a life that was strenuous, entrancing, dramatic—the struggle of the realm of affairs, the pomp and colour of courts and society, the important events of politics, the field of view that opened in the novels, or lay spread behind the footlights of the theatres. Wyndham belonged to all this brilliant universe, had walked with firm tread amid it all, breathing its airs with an assurance born of right and nature. No poverty could destroy his inalienable privileges, could render him less by a hair's breadth; indeed, save for the manifest inconveniences of the former, poverty or riches seemed irrelevant on that plane of high humanity; where differences of fortune were obscured by the highness of the humanity, however fertile in distinctions these differences might be in a lower world.
But as the acquaintance ripened, as she tasted of the gracious intimacy of the long sittings, his perfect kindness, his chivalry, his constant solicitude began to undermine the attitude with which she had embarked on the adventure. They had become such good friends, and she could not blind herself to the fact that he was pressing his personality on her beyond what mere courtesy and friendliness demanded. But she still fought to stand firm, and her humility was her strength. It was even more than her strength—it read for her his doubts and hesitations.
Not that she crudely supposed that, in his conduct to her, he was swayed by ulterior considerations. She saw that he had genuinely an affection for her, more kind and brotherly than a lover's affection; she knew that he was trying to like her better, to raise her in his estimation far higher than the truth. And she conceded that his hesitation was natural, that she was no mate for him, that his world would openly despise her. No, he must not marry her for the safety her fortune would bring him. She would marry only for love, and, as that she could never win, she would consequently never marry.
She dreaded now lest the situation should take a more definite turn, lest he should begin to woo her in earnest. She wished to be left in contentment with her deep secret happiness which could never be effaced from her life. She had had her way. It was she who had brought him the succour he needed; she—of whose existence he had never dreamed, whom he had often met face to face yet never glanced at. It was she who had rescued for the world's benefit this splendid genius that the world had rejected. This was joy enough. To anything else the end must be disillusion.
For awhile she lived in terror lest he might speak. But as the work progressed, and he became more and more enthusiastic over her portrait, she could not but fall a victim to the subtle implication, and begin to believe that he must really think more of her than she had ever dared to imagine. It was then that her stern control of herself began to slip away. Wilfully she shut her eyes to all that she understood only too well, and surrendered herself to the spell and wonder of the vista that opened before her. It was the best thing that life had brought her, she told herself, and in an impulse of pagan desire she was impelled to wring from it the last drop of passionate happiness it could afford her. Her love for him reached out into new depths; the dull, despairing, impossible love of before became a fever, a frenzy, a great yearning passion that must pour itself out or kill her.
Then came the supreme moment in which she let the belief that he loved her seize entire possession of her. Must he not have for his mate a woman who would love him and make him a perfect wife? He was a being apart from his own world, devoted to serener and higher ambitions. Had she not seen the glow with which he expounded his ideas and purposes, forgetting she was a humble, uninstructed listener, and surrounding her soul with the sweet unction of the implied perfect equality? Perhaps it had dawned upon him at last that devotion greater than hers the world could not hold. In his consecration to his high calling he did not need a wife to figure brilliantly amid social pleasures and functions, but a helpmeet whom perhaps he could not so easily find in those exalted spheres; one who needed no pleasures for herself, no triumphs; who had no purposes of her own, no desires, save the supreme end of self-sacrifice on the altar of his happiness and achievement. Only a woman absolutely capable of such self-effacement could understand the perfect bliss of it. If every man could find such faithfulness at his own hearth, how the world would thrive and grow blessed! And she thanked Heaven for the little fortune she could bring him, for this precious money to establish his life on a safe and sure footing.
And when he had spoken at last, she, casting away the last doubt, had thrown herself headlong into the dream. With her arms round him, and her lips to his, she felt that she had always been destined for this high bliss, that rendered by contrast the quiet stream of her life a mockery of life.
The joyous period of intoxication was all too short. With the sobering of the world to its work again in the new year, she, too, sobered a little, and the old questioning revived in her. Was it really the truth that he loved her? Where was the note of passion she herself had poured out so recklessly? His personal magnetism, his urbane, affectionate friendliness, the caressing vibrations of his voice, his delicate and considerate dealing with the gaps of ignorance she daily revealed—all this held her in an invincible spell. But the deep, irresistible conviction for which her heart yearned was unmistakably absent in his whole relation to her.
Perhaps some terrible struggle was going on within him. Was he recoiling in terror sometimes from the thought of the mate he had chosen? Surely at times he was arguing himself into acceptance and contentment. What meant the strange, furtive glances he sometimes directed at her?—not the soft glances of love, but glances bewildering, baffling! She watched him with a supernaturally sensitive insight, appraising his every expression, following the imagined see-saw of his doubts and reassurances.