"Love him,"—having gone thus far Carteret refused to spare himself. He turned the knife in the wound—"Love him to the point of marriage?"
There, the word was said. Almost unconsciously he walked onward without giving time for her reply.—He moistened his lips, weren't they dry as a cinder? He measured the height to which hope had borne him, to-night, by the shock, the positive agony of his existing fall. At the young girl, svelte and graceful, beside him, he could not look; but kept his eyes fixed on the mass of the wooded promontory, dark and solid against the more luminous tones of water and of sky, some half-mile distant. Set high upon the further slope of it, from here invisible, the Grand Hotel fronted—as he knew—the eastward trending coast. Carteret wished the distance less, since he craved the shelter of that friendly yellow-washed caravanserai. He would be mortally thankful to find himself back there, and alone, the door of his bachelor quarters shut—away from the beat of the waves, away from the subtle glory of this Venus-ridden moon now drawing down to her setting. Away, above all, from Damaris—delivered from the enchantments and perturbations, both physical and moral, her delicious neighbourhood provoked.
But from that fond neighbourhood, as he suddenly became aware, he was in some sort delivered already. For she stopped dead, with a strange choking cry; and stood solitary, as it even seemed forsaken, upon the wide grey whiteness of the asphalt of the esplanade. Behind her a line of lamps—pale burning under the moonlight—curved, in perspective, with the curving of the bay right away to the lighthouse. On her left the crowded houses of the sleeping town, slashed here and there with sharp edged shadows, receded, growing indistinct among gardens and groves. The scene, as setting to this single figure, affected him profoundly, taken in conjunction with that singular cry. He retraced the few steps dividing him from her.
"Marriage?" she almost wailed, putting out her hands as though to prevent his approach. "No—no—never in life, Colonel Sahib. You quite dreadfully misunderstand."
"Do I?" Carteret said, greatly taken aback, while, whether he would or no, unholy ideas again flitted through his mind maliciously assailing him.
"It has nothing to do with that sort of loving. It belongs to something much more beautifully part of oneself—something of one's very, very own, right from the very beginning."
"Indeed!" he said, sullenly, even roughly, his habitual mansuetude giving way before this—for so he could not but take it—contemptuous flinging of his immense tenderness, his patient, unswerving devotion, back in his face. "Then very certainly I must plead guilty to not understanding, or if you prefer it—for we needn't add to our other discomforts by quarrelling about the extra syllable—of misunderstanding. In my ignorance, I confess I imagined the love, which finds its crown and seal of sanctity in marriage, can be—and sometimes quite magnificently is—the most beautiful thing a man has to give or a woman to receive."
Damaris stared at him, her face blank with wonder.
Set at regular intervals between the tall blue-grey painted lamp standards, for the greater enjoyment of visitors and natives, stone benches, of a fine antique pattern, adorn St. Augustin's esplanade. Our much-perplexed maiden turned away wearily and sat down upon the nearest of these. She held up her head, bravely essaying to maintain an air of composure and dignity; but her shoulders soon not imperceptibly quivered, while, try hard as she might, setting her teeth and holding her breath, small plaintive noises threatened betrayal of her tearful state.
Carteret, quite irrespective of the prescience common to all true lovers where the beloved object's welfare is concerned, possessed unusually quick and observant hearing. Those small plaintive noises speedily reached him and pierced him as he stood staring gloomily out to sea. Whereupon he bottled up his pain, shut down his natural and admirably infrequent anger, and came over to the stone bench.