She slouched back to the corner, all anger gone from her. Outside I heard Dick's voice, low, decisive. Swiftly I followed the girl. "You must tell me," I pleaded with her, "if she did it because of Standish Burton."
"I thought everybody knew that," she said, "even his wife. What's it to you, if you're not that?"
"Nothing," I replied, but I knew, as I stood where she kept vigil with Bessie Lowe, that I lied. For I saw the truth in a lightning-flash; and I knew, as I had not known when Dick perjured himself in Leila's music-room, that I had come to the place of ultimate understanding, for I realized that not a dead girl, but a living woman, had come between us. Not Bessie Lowe, but Leila Burton, lifted the sword at the gateway of my paradise.
With the poignancy of a poisoned arrow reality came to me. Because Dick had loved Leila Burton he had laid his bond with me on the altar of his chivalry. For her sake he had sacrificed me to the hurt to which Standish would not sacrifice her. And the joke of it—the pity of it was that she hadn't believed them! But because she was Burton's wife, because it was too late for facing of the truth, she had pretended to believe Dick; and she had known, she must have known, that he had lied to her because he loved her.
The humiliation of that knowledge beat down on me, battering me with such blows as I had not felt in my belief that Dick had not been true to me in his affair with this poor girl. Her rivalry, living or dead, I could have endured and overcome—for no Bessie Lowe could ever have won from Dick, as she could never have given to him, that thing which was mine. But against Leila Burton I could not stand, for she was of my world, of my own people, and the crown a man would give to her was the one he must take from me.
There in that shabby place I buried my idols. Not I, but a power beyond me, held the stone on which was written commandment for me. By the light of the candles above Bessie Lowe I knew that I should not marry Dick Allport.
I found him waiting for me at the doorway. I think that he knew then that the light of our guiding lantern had flickered out, but he said nothing. We crossed the garishly bright road and went in silence through quiet streets. Like children afraid of the dark we went through the strange ways of the city, two lonely stragglers from the procession of love, who, with our own dreams ended, saw clearer the world's wild pursuit of the fleeing vision.
We had wandered back into our own land when, in front of the darkened Oratory and almost under the shadow of Leila Burton's home, there came to us through the soft darkness the ominous plea that heralds summer into town. Out of the shadows an old woman, bent and shriveled, leaned toward us. "Get yer lavender tonight," she pleaded. "'Tis the first of the crop, m'lidy."
"That means—" Dick Allport began as I paused to buy.
I fastened the sprigs at my belt, then looked up at the distant stars, since I could not yet bear to look at him. "It means the end of the season," I said, "when the lavender comes to London."