She nodded slowly; her head was bowed a little, so that he could scarcely see her face. Presently, when she raised it and looked at him, it shook him to the depths to see that her eyes were full of tears. “Have you nothing to say to me?” she asked, in a low voice. “Oh! forgive me. I ought not to have said that; but it seems so hard to sit here and talk commonplaces, as though we had just been introduced—so hard, when I remember all that—all that has gone before. Wouldn’t it have been kinder if you had walked past me just now, without knowing me? I should have deserved that; this hurts me a thousand times more.”
“Why should I behave to you like that?” he asked, with a smile. “If we must go back to that old story, for Heaven’s sake let us look on the best side of it! If any one is to blame about the matter, I am the sinner. I like best—you won’t mind my saying this, I am sure!—I like best to think of all the splendid times we had, when we were little mites, with the captain, you know; and I like to think, if that will please you, that, when we got a little older—well, we played at love, as we played at so many things before, although the captain didn’t help us there, did he?”
She looked up at him quickly, with the ghost of a smile flitting across her face, and made a movement as though she would have stretched out her hand to him. But she stopped, and he went on again more easily:
“So now, you see, the game is ended, as so many other games we played ended in their good time. Let that suffice. It’s good to see you again, and to know that you are happy, and that all things are going well with you, little friend. Come, tell me about yourself.”
Their eyes met, and held each other’s for one long moment; then he turned his away. Perhaps in that look she understood, in a dim fashion, for the first time, all that this man had lost, all that she had snatched from him; perchance she saw something greater here than had before touched her life. But, moving to his mood, she began to talk quickly, almost gaily:
“Oh, yes, Brian is doing splendidly, and making heaps of money. You know we’ve left the first place in which we lived long ago, and have got a beautiful little house in Chelsea—you’ll come and see us, won’t you?—and a great many clever people come there to see him, and then we go out a great deal. Oh, you’ve no idea how different it all seems from the quiet old days before—before I was married. But I suspect you’ve heard how well Brian is getting on?”
He had heard it, indeed. Sitting beside her there, he wondered what she would have thought if she had known that the little house in Chelsea, the full, ever-varying life she led, the very dress that brushed against him, were all purchased with his money. He wondered what she would have thought had she known that this husband of hers swept gaily along the pathway of life which Comethup cleared for him, coming without the faintest hesitation, again and again, to his cousin when former supplies were exhausted, never stopping for an instant to consider the justice or the injustice of the matter, but taking everything as his right, almost without thanks; whining about his hard lot, or railing at Fate, according as the mood was with him, yet living always at the fullest pressure, with not even a passing thought for the morrow. For one brief moment, perhaps, a perfectly natural thought flashed into his mind to tell her, to let her see clearly the shame of the thing, to understand what this man she loved really was. But the thought was gone almost before it had entered his mind, and he felt himself flushing angrily that it should ever have been there at all. Instead, he looked round at her, and answered her question.
“Oh, yes, I’ve heard all about it, and I’m very glad for your sake. I suppose Brian is working very hard?”
“Not very hard just now. He tells me that in his profession he has to look out always for fresh ideas, that unless he meets a great many people and sees a great many different phases of life he can’t expect to give expression to the best that’s in him. That’s what he says; I dare say you know what he means.”