BOOK III
CHAPTER I
"IT'LL BE ALL RIGHT"
There fell upon the little house in Locker Street, Chelsea, a silence greater than had fallen before. Charlie Purdue dashed upstairs no more with his laugh and his shout; Charlie Purdue was perplexed and a little afraid. The thing that that happened—the careless, brutal thing of a moment—had cut him off from the girl more completely than anything else could have done; in a sense, he could not meet her eyes; in a sense, it brought him back to what he was and to what he must do. At the mere thought of her—the mere sight of her—he recognised the desperate necessity for doing something with his life—making something of himself for her sake. If she would only have spoken to him—if she would have appealed to him in any set form of words to which he could have replied—he would have been better satisfied and less ashamed; but the tragedy of it was that she said nothing. Forced to remain there in the very house with him, she avoided him, spoke always, when the necessity arose, in mere monosyllables, and with hesitation. And that barrier he failed to break down for a long time.
He strove to bring to bear upon the situation something of his old cheery light-heartedness, however forced it might be; made something of a foil of Patience, the better to rouse the girl. But she bent always over her work, and only answered when actually challenged to do so by Patience.
Moira went no more to his room; she seemed to live a new life, apart from him. When once or twice he carried some new project to her, in the hope to rouse her sympathy, she answered dully enough; the old enthusiasm had gone. It was not given to him to understand her, or to know all that she felt, or what new outlook on life she took at that time; he was merely resentful that she should avoid him; merely bitter with himself that he should have driven her in that sense from him. There were no reproaches; he saw no tears; merely she withdrew into herself, and held him and the world at arms' length, and fought out this new fight for herself. How the battle went he could not know, and he dared not ask.
Now and then he persuaded himself that it would all be forgotten with any new change of circumstances; other women had been willing enough to forget—why not she? No one would ever know anything; the time was coming when he would marry her, and when they would begin to live out their lives together. He did her that grave injustice to believe that if the world prospered with him, and he could take her legitimately to his heart, she would be glad and relieved; he had no understanding of all her trembling fears at that time—no knowledge of the many hours when she wept in her bruised and troubled heart, and saw herself cut off from the rest of the world for ever, by reason of what she called her sin. She never spoke of it, because there was no one to whom she might speak; but she looked out on the world from that time with different eyes—with the eyes, sadly enough, of one who weeps for the might-have-been.
Stories she had read and heard came back to her—old scraps of poems, forgotten, or but dimly understood until this time—poems that touched this, the greatest of all tragedies. She knew now how to class herself—was afraid of what any who had loved her might have said, had they known the truth about her. She grew afraid to pray; in one bitter moment of self-abandonment and shame was glad to think that Old Paul was dead. Old Paul—who had wondered once what love would do to her in the great world!