This threatened to become a serious question; she strove to think clearly, to reason; but only evoked the pale, amused face of Quarren from inner and chaotic consciousness until the visualisation remained fixed, defying obliteration. And she accepted the mental spectre for the witness box.
"Ricky," she said, "do you really love me?"
But the clear-cut, amused face seemed to mock her question with the smile she knew so well—so well, alas!
"Why are you unworthy?" she said again—"you who surely are equipped for a nobler life. What is it in you that I have responded to? If a woman is so colourless as to respond merely to love in the abstract, she is worth nothing better, nothing higher, than what she has evoked. For you are no better than other men, Ricky; indeed you are less admirable than many; and to compare you to Sir Charles is not advantageous to you, poor boy—poor boy."
In vain she strove to visualise Sir Charles; she could not. All she could do was to mentally enumerate his qualities; and she did so, the amused face of Quarren looking on at her from out of empty space.
"Ricky, Ricky," she said, "am I no better than that?—am I fit only for such a response?—to find the contact of your hand so wonderful?—to thrill with the consciousness of your nearness—to let my senses drift, contented merely by your touch—yielding to the charm of it—suffering even your lips' embrace——"
She shuddered slightly, drawing one hand across her eyes, then sitting straight, she faced his smiling phantom, resolute to end it now forever.
"If I am such a woman," she said, "and you are the kind of man I know you to be—then is it time for me to fast and pray, lest I enter into temptation.... Into the one temptation I have never before known, Ricky—and which, in my complacency and pride I never dreamed that I should encounter.
"And it is coming to that!... A girl must be honest with herself or all life is only the same smiling lie. I'm ashamed to be honest, Ricky; but I must be. You are not very much of a man—otherwise I might find some reason for caring: and now there is none; and yet—I care—God knows why—or what it is in you that I care for!—But I do—I am beginning to care—and I don't know why; I—don't—know why——".
She dropped her face in her hands, sitting there bowed low over her knees. And there, hour after hour she fought it out with herself and with the amused spectre ever at her elbow—so close at moments that some unaroused nerve fell a-trembling in its sleep, threatening to awaken those quiet senses that she already feared for their unknown powers.