Overhead, the sunshine, filtering in through the green trellis of leafy twigs, flaunted gay little dancing patches of gold on the path below, as the leaves moved flickeringly in the breeze, and where the twisted growth of a branch had left a leafless aperture, it flung a single shaft of quivering light athwart the pergola. It gleamed like a shining sword between the man and woman, as though dividing them one from the other and thrusting each into the shadows that lay on either hand.
“Garth——”
At the sound of her voice he dropped his hand to his side and came slowly back and stood beside her. His face was almost grey, and the tortured expression of his eyes seemed to hurt her like the stab of a knife.
“You must try to forgive me,” he said, speaking very low and rapidly. “I had no earthly right to tell you that I cared, because—because I can't ask you to marry me. I told you once that I had forfeited my claim to the good things in life. That was true. And, having that knowledge, I ought to have kept away from you—for I knew how it was going to be with me from the first moment I saw you. I fought against it in the beginning—tried not to love you. Afterwards, I gave in, but I never dreamed that—you—would come to care, too. That seemed something quite beyond the bounds of human possibility.”
“Did it? I can't see why it should?”
“Can't you?” He smiled a little. “If you were a man who has lived under a cloud for over twenty years, who has nothing in the world to recommend him, and only a tarnished reputation as his life-work, you, too, would have thought it inconceivable. Anyway, I did, and, thinking that, I dared to give myself the pleasure of seeing you—of being sometimes in your company. Perhaps”—grimly—“it was as much a torture as a joy on occasion. . . . But still, I was near you. . . . I could see you—touch your hand—serve you, perhaps, in any little way that offered. That was all something—something very wonderful to come into a life that, to all intents and purposes, was over. And I thought I could keep myself in hand—never let you know that I cared—”
“You certainly tried hard enough to convince me that you didn't,” she interrupted ruefully.
“Yes, I tried. And I failed. And now, all that remains is for me to go away. I shall never forgive myself for having brought pain into your life—I, who would so gladly have brought only happiness. . . . God in Heaven!”—he whispered to himself as though the thought were almost blinding in the promise of ecstasy it held—“To have been the one to bring you happiness! . . .” He fell silent, his mouth wrung and twisted with pain.
Presently her voice came to him again, softly supplicating. “I shall never forgive you—if you go away and leave me,” she added. “I can't do without you now—now that I know you care.”
“But I must go! I can't marry you—you haven't understood—”