"Then that's all. I'm very tired. I think I want to sleep."
"Won't you lean on my shoulder, sir?"
"Perhaps I will——"
Only to touch her willing hand—only to carry her letter in his breast—only to feel that in the unison of their two hearts the rest of the world might be lost in oblivion——
VI
My reason for not telling him of my decision was that I did not wish him to have the uneasiness of knowing that he was responsible for it. Nor am I apologising for the mood in which I had made my choice. I had done so, however, without very much regard for necessary and practical details. These it was that I began to turn over in my mind as, racked and restless, I lay in my bed that night.
And first of all I began to realise that my choice involved me straight away in that very web of sophistry and dissimulation that I had wished to avoid. I had imagined on the spur of the moment that by walking out of the Airds' house with the most plausible explanation I could find, or for that matter none at all, I should be observing some sort of a decency to the roof that had so hospitably sheltered me. But when I came to look at it again!... Good God, what sort of decency was that? To begin with, when you walk away from somewhere you walk to somewhere, and where was I to walk to? Away from Dinard altogether? That would be to walk away from Derry. Take him away with me? That would be to take him away from Jennie and all hope. Move to an hotel? I should be running into my late friends every hour, at every turn.
In a word, what I was contemplating was not war on the Airds, nor even a hypocritical neutrality. It was a vile assassination. And suddenly I saw, and with a most singular clearness, that my only way out, the only possible and honourable course, was not to leave the Airds and Dinard at all, but to leave the earth altogether. Believe me, who know, that that in the end is what contact with such a man as Derwent Rose amounts to.
But I cannot say that suicide, sentimental, religious or of whatever kind, has ever strongly attracted me. There was a much, much simpler way out. Derry knew nothing of what had passed through my mind while Fréhel's sweeping beam had conjured up that pallid Christ out of the darkness. I had not told him that I was prepared to sacrifice myself for him. All that he had been promised was a respite on terms till to-morrow.