“But please——” Mrs. Scarsworth had backed against the shut door, and her mouth worked dryly.
“In a minute,” she said. “You—you know about these graves of mine I was telling you about downstairs, just now? They really are commissions. At least several of them are.” Her eye wandered round the room. “What extraordinary wall-papers they have in Belgium, don’t you think?... Yes. I swear they are commissions. But there’s one, d’you see, and—and he was more to me than anything else in the world. Do you understand?”
Helen nodded.
“More than any one else. And, of course, he oughtn’t to have been. He ought to have been nothing to me. But he was. He is. That’s why I do the commissions, you see. That’s all.”
“But why do you tell me?” Helen asked desperately.
“Because I’m so tired of lying. Tired of lying—always lying—year in and year out. When I don’t tell lies I’ve got to act ’em and I’ve got to think ’em, always. You don’t know what that means. He was everything to me that he oughtn’t to have been—the one real thing—the only thing that ever happened to me in all my life; and I’ve had to pretend he wasn’t. I’ve had to watch every word I said, and think out what lie I’d tell next, for years and years!”
“How many years?” Helen asked.
“Six years and four months before, and two and three-quarters after. I’ve gone to him eight times, since. To-morrow’ll make the ninth, and—and I can’t—I can’t go to him again with nobody in the world knowing. I want to be honest with some one before I go. Do you understand? It doesn’t matter about me. I was never truthful, even as a girl. But it isn’t worthy of him. So—so I—I had to tell you. I can’t keep it up any longer. Oh, I can’t!”
She lifted her joined hands almost to the level of her mouth, and brought them down sharply, still joined, to full arms’ length below her waist. Helen reached forward, caught them, bowed her head over them, and murmured: “Oh, my dear! My dear!” Mrs. Scarsworth stepped back, her face all mottled.
“My God!” said she. “Is that how you take it?”