The palms, forming an arch above him, cast a greenish shadow over Lawrence's bearded visage, which was shrunken and yellow from the last attack of fever, in the coast town. This head of his, hovering before her in a frame of ragged greenery, seemed about to melt away amid one of her old illusions of the jungle. Gradually she understood that this was not he whom she had married on that night of romance.
All those thoughts of his were what had changed his face into this new appearance, hard and misunderstanding, incredulous and ironical, and crushed with an utter weariness of spirit. And Lilla did not know how to summon back into being the man that he had been; for all her inspiration was dragged down by guilt. She remembered the dusty rooms where even her last tribute of flowers had now turned to dust. She recalled the victorious seductiveness of genius, of egotism, the lure of a world in which a myriad women had seemed to be dancing away from her toward happiness; and then, her moment of complex treason at the horse show. She quailed as she heard again her vow to Lawrence on their wedding night, "Forever!" and that word was blended with the "Forever!" which, a few hours ago, she had uttered in the gloom of David's bedroom.
He felt her sense of guilt, and misinterpreted it. When her protestations became more intimate, a smile, half contemptuous and half commiserating, appeared on his shrunken lips. It struck her silent.
"As I understand it," said Lawrence Teck, "this is your plan, which; seems to me, in the light of common sense, perfectly hopeless. In short, he's not to know. You've refused to let me face him——"
"Ah, yes," she sighed, and quoted, "'Infirm of purpose, give me the daggers.' You'd kill him for me, wouldn't you?"
"You exaggerate. If he were as delicately poised as that, I shouldn't want his death on my hands. These people who kill one another, and even themselves, for love, exist of course; but to me they're ridiculous. The game isn't worth it. There are too many other things in life. As for me, my work, that part of it out there unfinished, dropped so that I could run back here and clear this matter up——"
"No, I'm the one that you're killing," she returned, bowing her head that was glorified in the sunshine pouring round her, as if with a crown of celestial happiness.
He went on in a deliberate, grave tone, feeling logical and dizzy, replete with self-justification, magnanimity, and horror:
"I managed to arrive in this country secretly. There are only three persons in New York who know that I'm here, or, for that matter, alive. It may help a little if I succeed in slipping away as quietly as I came. You can get your divorce on grounds of desertion. I'm sorry enough to have let you in for this. It's my fault from beginning to end. I shouldn't have appeared then, and worst of all I shouldn't have reappeared now." He hesitated; then, glancing toward the door of the fernery, "No doubt you'll discover how to smooth it out with him. After all, if he were the most sensitive creature on earth, he ought to be satisfied when he understands that though I've popped up alive he is the one you've chosen."
"You are mad," she gasped, giving a convulsive bound amid the red cushions.