CHAPTER XXIX
A DOUBLE DILEMMA
—Blame or praise
What was the use then? Time would tell,
And the end declare what man for you,
What woman for me was the choice of God.
—ROBERT BROWNING.
In the bright sunshine the povosska sped on towards Savlinsky.
They sat together, the man and the girl, staring out upon a formless future.
They no longer read. But neither did they talk. What could be said between them?
Minute after minute, mile after mile. The road stretched before and behind, mocking them with a false suggestion of being endless. If but it were! If but it were! If this could go on forever—this closeness of undisturbed companionship!
Rona felt a kind of resentment against that cruelty of fate which seems to blind a young girl to her own feelings until it is too late. She recalled her sober fondness for Denzil, her eager clutching at any arrangement which would secure to her the continuance of her happy life. And the shock of repulsion which had seized her when some new feeling leaped to life in her at the touch of the man's lips in leave-taking, and she knew that she not only did not share his feeling, but that it excited in her the most complete distaste.
While, for this other, whom she had denied, whom she had forgotten, whom she had feared ... the intoxication of joy which she experienced in the mere fact of being there, side by side with him, would break in upon all her rueful thoughts, and shake her with a great emotion that had no resemblance to anything she had previously known. Scorning herself, she remembered that she had actually flinched from the idea of going out to Siberia, to banishment, to live with him. She gazed around, at the boundless, free, rolling country, that seemed but just wide enough to contain her love, her joy in his company. Banishment! Life here with him would be the garden of Eden!
Yet she had bound herself hand and foot. She had appealed to Denzil to save her from Felix. It was done, and to this she must stand, if he wished it. There must be no drawing back. Her very soul sickened at the thought of the pain she must inflict, did she confess to him that she did not love him, and never could love him, but that she could and did love another.