“You know you don’t mean that. You don’t really believe in snatching happiness—at all costs.”
“I’d let precious little stand in the way. If I were Nick I think I should do it.”
“But being you?”
Jean did not know what unaccountable impulse induced her to give a personal and individual twist to what had been developing almost into an academic discussion. Perhaps it was the familiar, unsatisfied longing to hear Blaise himself define the thing which kept them apart—even though, since Lady Anne’s disclosure, she could guess only too well what it was. Or perhaps it was the faint, tormenting hope that one day his determination would weaken and his love sweep away all barriers.
He looked at her contemplatively.
“Sometimes the past makes claims upon a man which forbid him to snatch at happiness. I don’t believe in any man’s shirking his just punishment for the evil he has done. What he has brought on himself, that he must bear. But Nick and Claire have had no part in bringing about their own tragedy. They are just the sport of chance—of an ill fate. They are morally free to take their happiness in a way in which I shall never be free to take mine, as long as I live.” He regarded her steadily. “There are certain things for which I have proved myself unfitted—with which it is evident I am not to be trusted. And one of those is the safeguarding of any woman’s happiness.”
Jean felt her throat contract. It would always be the same, then! The long tentacles of the past would reach out eternally into the future. The woman who had been his wife—the woman who had destroyed herself, and, in so doing, hanged a millstone of remorse about his neck—would stand forever at the gateway of the garden of happiness, her dead lips silently denying him—and, with him, the woman who loved him—the right to enter.
With an effort Jean answered that part of his speech which had reference only to Claire and Nick.
“There are other ways, though, in which they have no moral right. I grant that Claire was persuaded, almost driven into marrying Sir Adrian by her parents, but, after all, we each have our individual free will. She could have refused to obey them. Or, if she felt there were reasons why she must marry him—the material advantage to her parents, and so on, why, she ought to have reckoned the cost I don’t mean to be hard, Blaise————-” She broke off wistfully.
“You—hard!” He laughed a little, as though amused.