So much that he had said, or had not said—those clipped sentences, bitten off short with a savage intensity that had often enough troubled and bewildered her, now found their right interpretation. He cared... but the bondage of the past still held.
And with that thought came reaction. The brief, quivering ecstacy, which had sent little fugitive thrills and currents racing through every nerve of her, died suddenly like a damped-out fire, as she realised all which that bondage implied.
It was possible he might never break the silence which he himself had decreed. From the very beginning he had recognised and insisted upon—the fact that they two were only “ships that pass,” and though now, for a little space, Fate had directed the course of each into the same channel, a year, at most, would float them out again on to the big ocean of life where vessels signalled—and passed—each other. She must, in the ordinary course of events, return eventually to Beirnfels, while Blaise remained in England. And that would be the end of it.
She knew the man’s dogged pertinacity; he would hold to an idea or belief immovably if he conceived it right, no matter what the temptation to break away. And in the flood of light vouchsafed by Lady Anne’s disclosure, she felt convinced that he had somehow come to regard the tragic happenings of the past as standing betwixt him and any future happiness. Why, Jean could not altogether fathom, but she guessed that the dominant factor in the matter was probably an exaggerated consciousness of responsibility for his wife’s death, and perhaps, too, a certain lingering tenderness, a subconscious feeling of loyalty to the dead woman, which urged him on to the sacrifice of his own personal happiness as some kind of atonement.
Unless—and a swift spasm of pain shot through her, searing its way like a tongue of flame—unless Lady Anne had been altogether mistaken in her fixed belief that Blaise had not really cared for his wife but had only been carried away on the swift tide of passion—that tide which runs so fiercely and untrammelled in hot youth.
Jean had her black hour then, when she faced the fact that although her love was given, and although she tremulously believed it was returned, she would probably never know the supreme joy of utter certainty, never hear the beloved’s voice utter those words which hold all heaven for the woman who hears them.
But, through the darkness that closed about her, there gleamed a single thread of light—the light of her own bestowal of love. Even if she never knew, of a surety, that Blaise cared, even if—and here she shrank, but forced herself to face the possibility sincerely—even if she were utterly mistaken and he did not care for her in any other way save as a friend—his “little comrade”—still there would remain always the golden gleam of love that has been given. For no one who loves can be quite unhappy.