She looked away from Rosamund, and again her eyes rested on the engraving of “Wedded.” The large bare arms of the man, his bending, amorous head, almost hypnotized her. She disliked the picture of which this was a reproduction. Far too many people had liked it; their affection seemed to her to have been destructive, to have destroyed any value it had formerly had. Yet now, as she looked almost in despite of herself, suddenly she saw through the engraving, through the symbol, to something beyond; to the prompting conception in the painter’s mind which had led to the picture, to the great mystery of the pathetic attempt of human beings who love, or who think they love, to unite themselves to each other, to mingle body with body and soul with soul. She saw a woman in the dress of a “sister,” the woman who was with her; she saw a man in an Eastern city; and abruptly courage came to her on the wings of a genuine emotion.
“I don’t know how to tell you what I feel about him, Mrs. Leith,” she said. “But I want to try to. Will you let me?”
“Yes. Please tell me,” said Rosamund, in a level, expressionless voice.
“Remember this; I never saw him till I saw him in Turkey, nor did my husband. We were not able to draw any comparison between the unhappy man and the happy man. We were unprejudiced.”
“I quite understand that; thank you.”
“It was in the summer. We were living at Therapia on the Bosporus. He came to stay in a hotel not far off. My husband met him in a valley which the Turks call Kesstane Dereh. He—your husband—was sitting there alone by a stream. They talked. My husband asked him to call at our summer villa. He came the next day. Of course I—I knew something of his story”—she hurried on—“and I was prepared to meet a man who was unhappy. (Forgive me for saying all this.)”
“But, please, I have come to hear,” said Rosamund, coldly and steadily.
“Your husband—I was alone with him during his first visit—made an extraordinary impression upon me. I scarcely know how to describe it.” She paused for a moment. “There was something intensely bitter in his personality. Bitterness is an active principle. And yet somehow he conveyed to me an impression of emptiness too. I remember he said to me, ‘I don’t quite know what I am going to do. I’m a free agent. I have no ties.’ I shall never forget his look when he said those words. I never knew anything about loneliness—anything really—till that moment. And after that moment I knew everything. I asked him to come on the yacht to Brusa, or rather to Mudania; from there one goes to Brusa. He came. You may think, perhaps, that he was eager for society, for pleasure, distraction. It wasn’t that. He was making a tremendous, a terrible effort to lay hold on life again, to interest himself in things. He was pushed to it.”
“Pushed to it!” said Rosamund, still in the hard level voice. “Who pushed him?”
“I can only tell you it was as I say,” said Lady Ingleton, quickly and with embarrassment. “We were very few on the yacht. Of course I saw a good deal of your husband. He was absolutely reserved with me. He always has been. You mustn’t think he has ever given me the least bit of confidence. He never has. I am quite sure he never would. We are only acquaintances. But I want to be a friend to him now. He hasn’t a friend, not one, out there. My husband, I think, feels rather as I do about him, in so far as a man can feel in our sort of way. He would gladly be more intimate with your husband. But your husband doesn’t make friends. He’s beyond anything of that kind. He tried, on the yacht and at Brusa. He did his utmost. But he was held back by his misery. I must tell you (it’s very uninteresting)”—her voice softened here, and her face slightly changed, became gentler, more intensely feminine—“that my husband and I are very happy together. We always have been; we always shall be; we can’t help it. Being with us your husband had to—to contemplate our happiness. It—I suppose it reminded him——”