He waited, all ear. But she ceased to speak. She bent a little farther over the back of the chair, as though she were making a mental enumeration of the leaves of a tiny myrtle bush that grew near his heel.
'I thought that bit of truth would have stiffened the lies,' she thought to herself; 'but somehow—they don't work.'
'Well: then, you see'—she threw back her head again and looked at him—'I had to consider. As you say, I knew you better than most people. It was all remarkably rapid—you will hardly deny that? For a fortnight you took no notice of Lucy Foster. Then the attraction began—and suddenly—Well, we needn't go into that any more; but with your character it was plain that you would push matters on—that you would give her no time—that you would speak, coûte qua coûte—that you would fling caution and delay to the winds—and that all in a moment Lucy Foster would find herself confronted by a great decision that she was not at all prepared to make. It was not fair that she should even be asked to make it. I had become her friend, specially. You will see there was a responsibility. Delay for both of you—wasn't that to be desired? And no use whatever to go and leave you the address!—you'll admit that?' she said hurriedly, with the accent of a child trying to entrap the judgment of an angry elder who was bringing it to book.
He stood there lost in wrath, bewilderment, mystification. Was there ever a more lame, more ridiculous tale?
Then he turned quickly upon her, searching her face for some clue. A sudden perception—a perception of horror—swept upon him. Eleanor's first flush was gone; in its place was the pallor of effort and excitement. What a ghost, what a spectre she had become! Manisty looked at her aghast,—at her unsteady yet defiant eyes, at the uncontrollable trembling of the mouth she did her best to keep at its hard task of smiling.
In a flash, he understood. A wave of red invaded the man's face and neck. He saw himself back in the winter days, working, talking, thinking; always with Eleanor; Eleanor his tool, his stimulus; her delicate mind and heart the block on which he sharpened his own powers and perceptions. He recalled his constant impatience of the barriers that hamper cold and cautious people. He must have intimacy, feeling, and the moods that border on and play with passion. Only so could his own gift of phrase, his own artistic divinations develop to a fine subtlety and clearness, like flowers in a kind air.
An experience,—for him. And for her? He remembered how, in a leisurely and lordly way, he had once thought it possible he might some day reward his cousin; at the end of things, when all other adventures were done.
Then came that tragi-comedy of the book; his disillusion with it; his impatient sense that the winter's work upon it was somehow bound up in Eleanor's mind with a claim on him that had begun to fret and tease; and those rebuffs, tacit or spoken, which his egotism had not shrunk from inflicting on her sweetness.
How could he have helped inflicting them? Lucy had come!—to stir in him the deepest waters of the soul. Besides, he had never taken Eleanor seriously. On the one hand he had thought of her as intellect, and therefore hardly woman; on the other he had conceived her as too gentle, too sweet, too sensitive to push anything to extremes. No doubt the flight of the two friends and Eleanor's letter had been a rude awakening. He had then understood that he had offended Eleanor, offended her both as a friend, and as a clever woman. She had noticed the dawn of his love for Lucy Foster, and had determined that he should still recognise her power and influence upon his life.
This was part of his explanation. As to the rest, it was inevitable that both his vanity and passion should speak soft things. A girl does not take such a wild step, or acquiesce in it—till she has felt a man's power. Self-assertion on Eleanor's part—a sweet alarm on Lucy's—these had been his keys to the matter, so far. They had brought him anger, but also hope; the most delicious, the most confident hope.