A click of the latch—and Jane came into the room. She was pale, but her manner had regained its old quietude and gentleness.
As she came towards him and saw his ravaged face, a feeling of great concern, of pity so maternal in texture that it swept away every other feeling from her heart, almost broke down her new, unnatural composure.
She wished ardently—and Jane was full of hidden fire—to make everything easy for him. But oh! she could not bear him to look as he now looked.
It was not in order that Hew Lingard should look, should feel, as he was now looking and feeling that she had made the great renouncement—the renouncement which Wantele had implored her with such fierce, passionate energy to refrain from making. Was it possible that Wantele had been right, and that she was doing an evil thing by the man she loved?—such was the agonised question which went through Jane Oglander's mind as she advanced quietly towards him.
Only a few moments ago she had destroyed Athena's note of wild joy, of gratitude to herself. As she had watched the paper burn, as she had seen Athena's delicate, graceful monogram vanish in the flame, Jane had felt as if her heart was shrivelling up with it.
She had been in the room but a very few moments, and already her presence was bringing peace to Lingard's seared unhappy soul.
There was nothing on her face to show the conflicting emotions with which she was being shaken, and to him she breathed renunciation, serenity. How amazing to remember that only yesterday her nearness had brought him intolerable unease, as well as keen shame. Now he felt as if a touch from her hand would cure him of all his shameful ills.
Jane Oglander's pity, and he knew that she was very pitiful, had the divine quality of raising, instead of debasing, as does so much of the pity lavished on others in this sad, strange world.
She held out her hand; he felt it fluttering for a moment in his strong grasp, but alas! it was her unease, her miserable misgiving that she now bestowed on him. There came over her eyes and brow a look of suffering, and Lingard dropped her hand quickly. No—he could not tell now, at once, what he had come to tell her.
"Will you come out with me, Jane?" he asked abruptly.