"Not that, Jim," she commanded, "not—that! That's the only thing I will not bear! If you're going to make me out noble, or disinterested, or self-sacrificing, or anything of that sort I—I can't bear it. I'm not. I hate Evie. I hate myself. I almost hate you when I see how stupid and clumsy you can be. Oh, you know what you want! You want just one thing—to be happy with her; but do you think I scheme and contrive for you because I want you to be happy with her? Oh no! I do it because I can't help myself, and because it's that or nothing between you and me, and that's all there is splendid about it! I won't be called 'Poor woman.' And you needn't shake your head either. If I could get you, I would; but there it is, I can't, and that's all the loyalty I have for her! And you ask me," she broke out anew, almost furiously, "you ask me whether I 'don't see' things! It's you who don't see, and never will! You get a fixed idea into your head, and everything else——" She snapped her fingers. "What do you suppose your wife would say if she knew you were here with me now? I shouldn't care a straw about her knowing, but have you told her? Will you tell her? You know you won't! You daren't—you daren't trust her! Oh, I know what you're going to say—that you can't discuss her with me—but in that case you shouldn't take my position quite so much for granted. I'm the last person to put on a pedestal. You ask me whether I see things: don't I! Don't I see what they might have been—yes, even in spite of the mess I made of them! With half a chance I could have——"
"Louie!"
"Sssh—it's got to come out now! I was happy till that night—you know the night I mean—and that night I was fool enough to think it was possible to stop up there—away up in the air. I gave you and got from you that night what no other woman on earth could have done, and I thought we could stop at that. I thought I could go on living at that. I thought that would be enough for me; and when I found it wasn't, I began to—bolster it up. You've seen Billy—you know what I mean. And I still have something of you that nobody else has, and—I want to give it away! I want you to give her that too! I advise you to tell her and leave me with nothing! I must be mad! Jim"—her voice dropped with startling effect—"you once said that to tell her would be to kill her: if I could only think that!... But there, you'll tell her, and take away the last thing I have of you.... But she won't get that thing. It's beyond her. That's yours and mine whether you wish it or not. If you don't believe me, try it. Tell her. Tell her her husband made away with her sweetheart; tell her why; tell her what you've told me, and if she takes it as I did, I haven't another word to say. I hate her; I'm not running away from that; so perhaps I'm not just. Perhaps there is a chance: if so, it's your only one. I've had no luck. I'm out of it, and there's no more to say. Give me a match."
She took up and relighted her half-smoked cigarette.
I have merely set down what she said, and the way she said it; for the rest, I leave you to draw your own conclusions. Perhaps it is unusual to allow these freedoms to be taken with your wife, but I think you will admit that the occasion was unusual. She had told me, in effect, that murderers ought to be careful whom they marry, and that I had married the wrong woman: but she had left out of the account one thing that made all the difference. You know as well as I what she had left out—the supreme sanctification of the flesh: "With my body I thee worship."... It was Evie, not Louie Causton, with whom I had heard that nightingale sing on Wimbledon Common. They had been Evie's lips, not Louie's, that had not sought to escape my own on that September evening in Kensington Gardens. It was Evie whom I had married.... It was natural that Louie should see how things might conceivably have been different; you can say that however they turn out; and perhaps that was where the fatality came in. Circumstance, propinquity, accident, a step rightly or wrongly taken, and the rest is predicated with a terrible inevitability. Louie had had no luck; and now, not because I had placed a crushing weight upon her, but because I had given her the pity while another got the love, she had broken out upon me.
At any rate, I saw her own position sadly clearly now.
And, there being no more to say, she rose.
In the hall, however, she did find one more word to say. They were playing Sir Roger in the party-room as I held aside the bead portière for Louie to pass, and the couples, seen through the gauzy hanging, seemed spectrally charming. Louie stood on the other side of the curtain, mortal, unspectral enough under a cheap square hall lamp with tesseræ of coloured glass. With head downhung, she moved spiritlessly towards the outer door, where she stood meditatively with her hand on the letter-box. At last she looked up.
"About what you were saying about Miriam Levey," she said, without preface. "I don't think it would do—not now."
I knew she meant her own acceptance of Miriam's place. I asked her why not.