"No, no," said the stricken voice, "you don't know, you don't know, thank God. But I swear I've paid—I swear, I swear I have. When the others used to take their dirty drugs to make them forget, they would dream of strange paradises, unknown heavens—but through the haze and mist that they brought, I would remember—I would remember. The filth and the squalor and vileness would fade and dissolve—and I would see the sun-dial, with the yellow roses on it, warm in the sun, and smell the clove pinks in the kitchen border, and touch the cresses by the brook, cool and green and wet. All the sullen drums and whining flutes would sink to silence, and I would hear the little yellow-headed cousin of the vicar's singing in the twilight, singing, 'There is a lady, sweet and kind' and 'Weep you no more, sad fountains' and 'Hark, hark, the lark.' And the small painted yellow faces and the little wicked hands and perfumed fans would vanish and I would see again the gay beauty of the lady who hung above the mantel in the long drawing-room, the lady who laughed across the centuries in her white muslin frock, with eyes that matched the blue ribbon in her wind-blown curls—the lady who was as young and lovely as England, for all the years! Oh, I would remember, I would remember! It was twilight, and I was hurrying home through the dusk after tennis at the rectory; there was a bell ringing quietly somewhere and a moth flying by brushed against my face with velvet—and I could smell the hawthorn hedge glimmering white, and see the first star swinging low above the trees, and lower still, and brighter still, the lights of home.—And then before my very eyes, they would fade, they would fade, dimmer and dimmer—they would flicker and go out, and I would be back again, with tawdriness and shame and vileness fast about me—and I would pay."
"But now you have paid enough," Daphne told him. "Oh, surely, surely—you have paid enough. Now you have come home—now you can forget."
"No," said Stephen Fane. "Now I must go."
"Go?" At the small startled echo he raised his head.
"What else?" he asked. "Did you think that I would stay?"
"But I do not want you to go." Her lips were white, but she spoke very clearly.
Stephen Fane never moved but his eyes, dark and wondering, rested on her like a caress.
"Oh, my little Loveliness, what dream is this?"
"You must not go away again, you must not."
"I am baser than I thought," he said, very low. "I have made you pity me, I who have forfeited your lovely pity this long time. It cannot even touch me now. I have sat here like a dark Othello telling tales to a small white Desdemona, and you, God help me, have thought me tragic and abused. You shall not think that. In a few minutes I will be gone—I will not have you waste a dream on me. Listen—there is nothing vile that I have not done—nothing, do you hear? Not clean sin, like murder—I have cheated at cards, and played with loaded dice, and stolen the rings off the fingers of an Argentine Jewess who—" His voice twisted and broke before the lovely mercy in the frightened eyes that still met his so bravely.