Cicely had sat in perfect silence, listening to his impetuous words. When he stopped, she said softly, “I am very, very sorry for you.”
“You should not be sorry for me,” he said with a sort of reluctant gentleness. “I have myself to thank for it. I think now,” he went on slowly, “I think that my grand theories about women must have arisen from an instinct in me that if ever I did come under an overwhelming influence of the kind, it would go hard with me—very hard indeed.”
“But,” said Cicely, speaking with an effort, yet earnestly, “I don’t understand you. Do you mean that you are tearing yourself away from the influence you tell me of?—a good and noble influence as far as I can judge—simply because you have resolved that no woman ever shall influence you strongly and entirely? How can you take upon yourself so to thwart your best self? How do you know that this woman, whoever she is, might not be all the truer a friend for being your wife? If you are sacrificing yourself all for the sake of consistency, I should respect you more if you were inconsistent.”
“I am not doing so,” replied Mr. Guildford sadly. “I cannot say whether I think I should have acted as you suppose. I tell you all my theories are put to confusion; I shall have hard work to gather them together again. I have no choice; the longer I remain in this neighbourhood, the worse it will be for me. It is a mere selfish instinct of self-preservation that urges me to flight—a shadowy hope of retaining some of the shreds of what used to be my interests in life. Some day, I suppose—I have read of such things, though I never understood them before—some day, I suppose, I shall find I have outlived this after all, and then I may set to work again in the old way. I can’t say, I don’t think I care. I only want you to give me back my promise, Miss Methvyn, and to forgive me, and let me go.”
There was a despairing tone in the last few words which, coming as they did from a man usually so self-contained, so resolutely cheerful, so strong and manly, seemed, to Cicely, full of a strange pathos. But she did not again say that she wa “very, very sorry” for Mr. Guildford, nor did she at once answer his request. She looked up timidly, and a faint colour rose in her cheeks. “Do you mean—do you mean,” she said, “that you have no choice because you know certainly that—she—does not care for you? Are you sure that you are not letting false pride influence you, that you are not taking for granted what may not be certain after all? Forgive me for saying it—I am so reluctant for you to be unnecessarily unhappy—and in such cases, lives are often ruined by some misapprehension.”
She spoke very gently. Mr. Guildford looked at her for a moment. Then he rose from the chair where he had sat down, and walked a few steps away.
“There is no misapprehension,” he said at last. “In no circumstances could I have imagined it possible that—that I could have been cared for in the only way that would have satisfied me. But, as it happens—fortunately for me, I suppose—circumstances, outward circumstances I mean, are dead against me. Socially even, there could never have been a question of—of such a thing, and besides that—”
He stopped abruptly. He had been standing near the window, at some little distance from Cicely, not looking at her as he spoke. Suddenly he turned, and came back again, close to the table by which she was sitting. “Miss Methvyn,” he said, and his voice sounded so strange that Cicely looked up quickly in affright, “Miss Methvyn,” he repeated, “there is no use in beating about the bush. Even if you despise me, and refuse ever to speak to me again, I think it will be a relief to tell you the truth, if you have not already guessed it. Don’t you know what has opened my eyes? Don’t you know what Miss Casalis told me yesterday—about you—what I never suspected before, blind fool that I was!—don’t you know what I mean?”
“No,” said Cicely. But her voice was low and tremulous. She hesitated a moment, “at least,” she added, “I don’t understand altogether.”
She would rather not have said as much, but it seemed to her as if the words were drawn from her against her will.