Love and hatred

by Marie Belloc Lowndes

He put the probing question in a singularly detached, almost a light, tone of inquiry.

But she answered very solemnly, again as if impelled to tell him the truth—a truth she had never thought to tell to any human being:

"There was a time before Alice was born when I was so unhappy, largely, as I can see now, through my own fault, when I felt I could not bear it any longer, and——" Her voice dropped, and he bent down so that he might catch the almost whispered words, "I was strongly tempted to—to kill myself," she said. "I used to go and walk up and down that little path across the head of the lake, and plan out how I would do it. Even now I do not think that any one, except perhaps your mother, would ever have suspected. It would have been so easy to make it appear an absolute accident."

He remained silent, and she went on, more composedly:

"I had got into a selfish, morbid state, Oliver, and yet the temptation was not wholly selfish, for I knew that Godfrey was miserable too, and my sense told me that if anything happened to me he would very soon marry again—some woman who would appreciate his good qualities, who would be happy with him, who would not be, as I knew I was, a bitter disappointment."

Once more her voice had become nearly inaudible, and once more Oliver bent his dark, convulsed face down to hear what she said.

Tears were rolling down Laura's face. But suddenly she made an immense effort over herself, and went on, calmly:

"It was your mother who helped me over that bad, foolish time. I don't know what I should have done but for Aunt Letty. I think she's the only person in the world to whom Godfrey ever listens—who can ever make any impression on him. It's strange in a way, for I know she doesn't really like either of us."

As he uttered a violent expression of dissent, she went on: "It's quite true, Oliver, and what is more, of the two she likes Godfrey the best. Why shouldn't she? She thinks I've behaved very unkindly to Godfrey. The only excuse she can make for me—she told me so once, long ago—is that I'm inhuman. I suppose in a way I am inhuman?" She looked at him plaintively, a strange, piteous expression in her beautiful, shadowed eyes.

And Oliver Tropenell caught his breath. God—how he loved her! Her inhumanity—to use that cruelly misleading term which she had just used herself—only made his passion burn with a purer, whiter flame. The one thing in the world that mattered to him now was this woman's deliverance from the awful death-in-life to which her sensitive conscience, and her moving love for her child, alone condemned her. Yes, Laura's deliverance was the only thing worth compassing—and that even if the deliverer were wrecked, soul as well as body, body as well as soul, in the process.