"No, I suppose not. I really don't know. He is the most understanding man in the world, and I would trust him through everything. I don't think he could tell me an untruth. Not one that mattered, anyhow. I could see him go away from me for a year, for two, and not hear a word from him, and yet be sure that he would come back, and be the same, and know me to be the same. I feel so safe with him, so proud of his liking me, so settled in life—I never felt settled before—like being in a nest. He makes everything I love or like seem more beautiful and precious—Lancelot, oh, I am much prouder of Lancelot than I used to be. He has shown me things in Lancelot which I never saw. He has made the being Lancelot's mother seem a more important, a finer thing. I don't know how to say it, but he has simply enhanced everything—as you say, like a velvet lining to a jewel. All this is true—and something in me calls for him, and urges me to go to him. But now—but yet—all this hateful jealousy—this playing off one man against another—Francis Lingen! As if I ever had a minute's thought of Francis Lingen—oh, it's really disgusting. I didn't think any one in our world could be like that. It spots me—I want to be clean. I'd much rather be miserable than feel dirty."
Here she stopped, on the edge of tears, which a sudden access of anger dried up. She began again, more querulously. "It's his fault, of course. It was outrageous what he did. I'm angry with him because I can't be angry with myself—for not being angry. How could I be angry? Oh, Mabel, if it had been James after all! But of course it wasn't, and couldn't be; and I should be angry with him if I wasn't so awfully sorry for him."
Mabel stared. "Sorry for James!"
"Yes, naturally. He's awfully simple, you know, and really rather proud of me in his way. I see him looking at me sometimes, wondering what he's done. It's pathetic. But that's not the point. The point is that I can't get out."
"Do you want to get out?" Mabel asked.
"Yes, I do in a way. It has to be—and the sooner the better. And whether I do or not, I don't like to feel that I can't. Nobody likes to be tied."
"Then nobody should be married," said Mabel, who had listened to these outbursts of speech, and pauses which had been really to find words rather than breath, with staring and hard-rimmed eyes. She had a gift of logic, and could be pitiless. "What it comes to, you know," she said, "is that you want to have your fun in private. We all do, I suppose; but that can't come off in nine cases out of ten. Especially with a man like James, who is as sharp as a razor, and just as edgy. The moment anybody peers at you you show a tarnish, and get put off. It doesn't look to me as if you thought so highly of—the other as you think you do. After all, if you come to that, the paraphernalia of a wedding is pretty horrid; one feels awfully like a heifer at the Cattle Show. At least, I did. The complacency of the bridegroom is pretty repulsive. You feel like a really fine article. But one lives it down, if one means it."
Lucy told her to go, or as good as told her. Sisters may be plain with each other. She wasn't able to answer her, though she felt that an answer there was.
What she had said was partly true. Lucy was a romantic without knowing it. So had Psyche been, and the fatal lamp should have told her so. The god removed himself. Thus she felt it to be. He seemed just outside the door, and a word, a look, would recall him to his dark beauty of presence. That he was beautiful so she knew too well, that he was unbeautiful in the glare of day she felt rather than knew. The fault, she suspected, lay in her, who could not see him in the light without the blemish of circumstance—not his, but circumstance, in whose evil shade he must seem smirched. What could she do with her faulty vision, but send him away? Was that not less dishonourable than to bid him remain and dwindle as she looked at him? What a kink in her affairs, when she must be cruel to her love, not because she loved him less, but rather that she might love him more!