"Jane," he said huskily, "forgive me. Try to forget to-night."
So they walked in silence, hand in hand, through the solitary lane and the now lighted streets of Redyford, uncaring of the few passers-by.
But when they came to the park gates Lingard withdrew his hand from hers, and at the door of the Garden Room he left her. "I won't come in yet," he said abruptly, and turning on his heel he disappeared into the night.
And with Jane's going something good and noble in Lingard went too, and as he walked into the darkness he lashed himself into a sea of deep injury and pain. His heart filled with anger rather than with shame when he evoked the look almost of aversion, of protesting anguish, which had come into her face while his lips had sought and found unresponsive her sweet, tremulous mouth.
He had been longing, craving, for that which he had now only the right to demand from her, and she had cruelly repulsed him.
How amazing that a fortnight—or was it three weeks?—could have so altered a woman!
Even now the memory of those days they had spent together immediately on his return home was dear and sacred to him.
Could he have been mistaken,—such was the question he asked himself to-night,—in his belief that Jane Oglander had been exquisitely sensitive, responsive as are few human beings to every high demand of love?
Was it that his unspoken, unconfessed treachery had killed, obliterated in her the power of response? Nay, it was far more likely that he had made a mistake,—that the woman he loved was cold, as many tender women are cold, temperamentally incapable of that fusion of soul and body which is the essence of love between a man and a woman.