For a moment I stared at her stupified, and then slipped out of the room to fetch a glass of water.
When I came back M. was sunk down in his armchair, and she was crouching on the ground before him almost beside herself, holding him by the feet.
“Let me live with you,” she gasped half distraught. “Arthur hates me, and I’m frightened of him. He’s mad, mad, mad, only Dr. Giles pretends he isn’t, and Mrs. Robinson pretends; everything in that dreadful house is pretence, nothing real anywhere. Let me live with you. Then he’ll divorce me, and you needn’t marry me. I don’t want to be married. I won’t be any trouble to you. No pretty clothes, no amusements, no expense. I don’t want anything except a little time to myself, to paint.”
“You poor soul,” said the painter faintly, and in his harsh voice was an infinite compassion.
“Help me to jump out,” she shrieked, clinging to him.
“My child,” he said. “I cannot help you. I am dying. I could not live long enough even to blacken your name. I have failed others in the past whom I might have succoured. Now I fail you as I failed them. There is no help in me.”
He closed his eyes, but nevertheless two very small tears crept from beneath the wrinkled lids, and stood in the furrows of his cheeks.
She trembled and then rose slowly to her feet, and obediently took the glass of water which I proffered to her. She drank a little, and then placed the glass carefully on the table and drew on her gloves. I saw that she had withdrawn once more after a terrible bid for freedom into her fortress of reserve. She was once more the impassive, colourless creature whom I had seen almost daily for a year without knowing in the least until to-day what she really was.
“I ought to be going back now,” she said to me.