“No,” she said, sadly; “I am sorry if I have caused you any pain, but I cannot explain anything more. You would not understand. I am very tired,” she continued, “I do not want to go farther. Would you mind walking back to meet my brother-in-law and tell him I have gone straight home to Palden? I can find my way from here.”
He bowed without speaking and turned away, too absorbed by his own intense mortification to give much heed to her last words, or to feel any compassion for the suffering too plainly betrayed by her white face and faltering voice.
The sound of his retreating footsteps on the crisp, dry path died rapidly away, and Philippa was alone.
Chapter Twenty Three.
Ended.
For a few moments the withdrawal of the intense restraint she had put upon herself caused all other feelings to be merged in that of relief. Philippa glanced round her, and seeing a moss-covered tree stump a few paces off, she made her way to it and sat down.
Then slowly, but all too surely, crept up, one by one, the reflections she could not but face.
It seemed to her that years had passed since Evelyn and her husband had turned back, leaving her and her late companion by themselves.
Yes, indeed, to use his own words; “the scales had fallen from her eyes,” and yet how almost intangible it all seemed! How little some people would understand the terrible and complete revulsion of feeling which had overwhelmed her!
“Nothing,” she thought, “nothing can be quite so horrible as to find that one has been worshipping an idol of clay; a thing which did not exist except in my own imagination. I have no right to feel resentful. Taking him for what he is, he did not behave badly. He evidently meant to be generous and chivalrous. But the pain of it to me is none the less. It is far, far worse, at least so it seems to me just now, than to have found out that he did not care for me as I did for him, and yet to have kept my ideal. ‘Disillusionment’ is horrible.”
The tears slowly welled up into her eyes. She brushed them away indignantly.