“I mean that it is no occasion for festivity or present-giving. I intended no slight to you; I only saw that you misunderstood.”
This time he has himself better in hand, for no comment follows; but she, verifying by one snatched look the miserable mystification of his face, hurries out her next words.
“It is the carrying out of a bargain made almost further back than memory can reach.”
“Do you mean——”—whether it be through the weakness of his body or the rebellion of his spirit, the words are spoken almost below his breath—“that you have tied yourself for life by a childish promise to another child?”
She draws up head and neck in a way that he feels to convey a dignified reproof.
“There is no question of tying. I am doing it absolutely of my own free will. All my life I have known that for me there was to be no another man than Rupert; and all his life he has known that for him there was to be no other woman than me!”
If any incredulity born of experience or observation invades the soul of Rupert’s brother man at this large assertion, no sign of it appears. He only waits blankly.
“I am up to my neck in debt to them—to both of them!” goes on the poor girl, losing something of her collectedness, and torn between the knowledge that wisdom bids her leave the picture of her past and future without further touches; and the impossibility of not making it clear to her pale hearer, that love—lover-love—has no part in the scheme of her existence. “I am up to my neck in debt to them, and this is the first instalment I have ever been able to pay!”
“I see.”
She sighs, and throws out her arms as if tossing away something irksome.