“No one,” she replied; “no one did it but myself. You can’t understand. Ralph;” and the anguish of appeal and remorse in her voice made it sound like a wailing cry. “You can never know all I have endured. I was so wretched, so very wretched; so utterly, utterly desolate and alone. And then I heard that of you, and I lost my trust, and it nearly killed me. Your own words had warned me not to build too securely on what might be beyond your power to achieve.” Ralph ground his teeth, but she went on: “I thought I was going to die, and I was glad. But I did not die, and he was kind and gentle to me, and I was alone. And I thought—oh! I thought, Ralph, till this very morning, that I had torn you out of my heart. The scar, I knew, would be always there, but the love itself, I thought it was dead and buried; and only just now I sat here thinking to myself in my blindness and folly, that I could even see the grass be ginning to grow on the grave.”
“And your husband?” Ralph asked, in the same dead, hard, feelingless tone. “Your husband—I forget the name you told me—do you then care for him? Do you love him?”
“Love him!” she exclaimed. “Oh, Ralph, have mercy! I did not mean to deceive him! I told him I could not give him what he gave me; for he, I know, loves me. He is good and true, and very kind to me. And he urged it very much, and said he was not afraid; he would be content with what I said, what I thought I could give him. For remember, Ralph, that other I thought was dead—dead and buried for ever. I care for him too much to have yielded had I known it was not so. But ‘love him!’ When I think of the days when first I learnt what that word means, when you taught it me, Ralph—you, and no other! And now you ask me, calmly, if I love him! You of all!” She stopped suddenly, as if horrified at herself; and then, her excitement changed to bitter shame and self-reproach, she cried in an anguish, “Oh! what am I saying? Why has it all come back when I thought it was gone? You are making me wicked to Geoffrey. Ralph! Ralph! why do you mock me with these cruel questions? Have mercy! Have a little mercy!”
“Mercy!” said Ralph, turning from the door-post on which he had been leaning, and rising to his full height as he spoke. Standing right in front of her, and with a strange change in his voice. “ ‘Mercy!’ you ask? Yes child, I will have mercy. Mercy on you and on myself, who have done nothing, either of us, deserving of this hideous torment. You are ‘married’ you tell me—married to another man—but I tell you, you are not. That was a blasphemous mockery of a marriage! I am your husband, I, and no other! You are mine, Marion, and no one else’s! My wife! my own! Come away with me, child, now, this very moment, and have done at once and for ever with this horrible night-mare that is killing me. For I cannot lose you again! Oh, my God! I cannot!” And as he spoke, he tried to draw her towards him, not gently, but roughly, violently almost, in sore passion of anguish which was enraging him.
Hitherto, since he had begun to speak, Marion had allowed him to hold her clasped hand in his. But now, as she felt the hold of his fingers tighten, and as the full meaning of his wild, mad words broke upon her, with a sudden movement she rose from the bench on which she was sitting, and tore herself from his grasp, growing at the same moment as if by magic, perfectly, icily calm.
But only for an instant did her instinct of indignation against him last. One glance at the dark, passionate, storm-tossed face beside her—so changed, so terribly, sadly changed in its expression from its usual calm, gentle kindliness—and her mood softened. She laid her hand trustingly on his arm.
“Ralph,” she said, “poor Ralph, hush! If you are for a moment weak, I must be strong for both. This is terrible that has come upon us—so terrible that just now I do not see that I can bear it and live. For you know all my heart, and you can judge if it is not to the full as terrible for me as for you.” (This she said in her innocent instinct of appealing to his pity for her.) “You at least are alone—are bound by no vows to another, and that other, alas, so good and kind. I had rather, ten thousand times rather, he were hard and unloving and cruel! But though just now I can see nothing else, this one thing I see plainly—you must go Ralph, you must leave me now at once, and we must never, never see each other again. There is just one little glimpse of light left in the thought that hitherto we have neither of us done anything to forfeit the other’s respect—unless indeed that deceit of mine?—but no,” she added, glancing at his face, “I know you have not thought worse of me for that. Do not let us destroy this poor little rag of comfort left us, Ralph. Let me still think of you as good and brave—yes, as the best and bravest. And do not tempt me, Ralph, to say at this terrible moment what in calmer times might cause me shame and remorse to remember.” And she raised her face to his with a very agony of appeal in the grey eyes he loved so fervently.
“Child,” he said, still with the hard look on his face, “child, are you an angel or a stone? Have you a heart or have you none? If after all you are just like other women; utterly incapable of entering into the depths a man’s one love; at least you should pity what you cannot understand, instead of maddening me with that conventional humbug about mutual respect and so on. Who but a woman would talk so at such a time? But I will do as you wish,” he went on, lashing himself into fury against her, “I will not stay here longer to tempt you by my evil presence to outrage your delicate sense of propriety, or to say one word which hereafter you might consider it had not been perfectly ‘correct’ or ‘ladylike’ to utter. Good God! what a fool I have been! I had imagined you somewhat different from other women, but I see my mistake. It shall be as you wish. Good bye. You shall not again be distressed by the sight of me. Truly you do well to despise me.”
And with a bitter sneer in his voice, he turned away. It was at last too much. The girl threw herself down recklessly on the rough garden-seat. She shed no tears, she was not the sort of woman to weep in such dire extremity of anguish. She shook and quivered as she lay there, but that was all.
But soon the thought came over her “was it not better so?” Better that Ralph should thus cruelly misjudge her, for in the end it might help him to forget her. Forget her—yes. This was what she must now pray for, if her love for him were worthy of the name.