“Good-night and thank you. Can you get home all right?”
“I’m not going home. I’m going to do some propaganda with this girl’s father.”
O’Rane turned with a wave of his hand, slipped his fingers through the dog’s collar and strode towards St. James’ Street. Eric watched him melting from sight and then walked upstairs. He tried to make a picturesque comparison between his own disappearance into the solitude of California and O’Rane’s eternal solitude of blindness; he wondered why any one troubled to advise and guide him, why he so tamely submitted. What was the sum of all this counsel?... He was inexpressibly tired. And it was ironical that he should be spending another night so close to Ivy when he had renounced her.
The light was burning in her room, and after some hesitation he put his head in at the door. She seemed to be sleeping, but awoke as he looked at her and cried out to know where he had been.
“I was dining with O’Rane,” he said. “I went away, Ivy, because I couldn’t bear to see you crying. And I was a bit unnerved myself. It’s done me good, talking to him. He’s so extraordinarily plucky himself and he’s never in any kind of doubt. He’s cleared my mind of doubt. If I could marry you without doing you a wrong, there’s nothing I wouldn’t do to bring it about. You know that, don’t you? I love you more than any one in the world, you’ll always be my own child, and nothing can take away my right to love you and try to protect you. But we can’t marry; so we mustn’t upset each other by thinking about it. I’m going away to try and get cured, and you must get well yourself and make your own life just as though we’d never thought of marrying. You remember that I made a will some weeks ago? I’m arranging for certain money to be paid you—”
“Eric!”
“Yes. That’ll make you independent. I want to see you happily married. You told me that, if I were dead or if we’d never met, you’d probably marry John Gaymer. I want you to pretend that we’ve never met. I hate to think of giving any one else the right to take care of you, but I can’t do it from the other side of the Atlantic... You’ve been a wonderful thing in my life, a little fairy that walked in out of the street... I shall expect to hear everything that you do and how you’re getting on. I’m going to get quite well, but a man with weak lungs has no business to marry. And that’s the long and the short of it. I’m going down to-morrow to tell my people... If ever you need help, Ivy, you can call on me; I’ll come back from California, if I can do anything for you. Now I mustn’t keep you awake, or I shall get into trouble with Gaisford. Promise me you won’t worry. Promise me you won’t make yourself miserable... Darling Ivy, you mustn’t cry again; I’m losing more than you are. Don’t try to talk. Just kiss me good-night. May God bless you, Ivy, and make you very happy.”
As he untwined her arms and turned out the light, he could hear the sobs breaking out afresh. They followed him across the hall into his bedroom. Nearly three years earlier, when he had said good-bye to Barbara, he had returned home to find the telephone ringing in every room and he had muffled the bells and thrown himself half-undressed on his bed, blind and mad with pain. For two years he had wondered what would have happened, if he had yielded to temptation and spoken to her....
The sobbing of a heart-broken child pursued him, though he shut his door and buried his head in the pillows. O’Rane was convinced that he had only to make his appeal, to trade on his own health and beg her to come with him....
If she dreaded the appeal, why did she go on crying?