‘In any case, I am his debtor, and the necessity to repay him’——
‘But he does not expect you to repay him,’ she interrupted, watching him with rapidly increasing anxiety, and now observing how haggard he looked.
‘I will repay him,’ was the answer, emphasised by passion that was suppressed with difficulty. ‘I know it will take a long time—maybe all my life. Knowing that, I am compelled to regard as inevitable and just the view which Mr Crawshay will take of our position. He will insist on the same arrangement which he insisted on when I intended to go abroad.’
Wonder was in her eyes, strange pain in her breast. She could scarcely remember the time when, except in the presence of strangers, Philip had spoken of Uncle Dick as Mr Crawshay. This simple change affected her more than his words or his manner, for he maintained a degree of the bitter calmness of despair. There must be some evil at hand greater than she could imagine, since it forced him to refer to his friend at Willowmere in that way.
‘What arrangement are you speaking about, Philip?’
‘I agreed to it then with a light heart; I agree to it now with a hopeless one. Then it was a jest—now, it is earnest. But it was wise, and it is wiser now. He required me to consider our engagement at an end, and to leave you free to choose’——
‘Oh, Philip, Philip!’
The cry came in such piteous accents, that despite his frenzy he stopped. For a moment he was conscious of the cruelty he was perpetrating in making such an announcement so abruptly. The golden visions of the future they had so often conjured up together flashed through his mind, and he was dazed with pain like her own.
For Madge, she had covered her face with trembling hands, as if in that way she could shut out the thoughts his words suggested. ‘Free to choose some one else,’ was what he had been going to say, she knew. Free! Could love be ever freed when once given? He might die before her; then she would live on his memory. He might go away from her and never return; what difference could that make? Men change; women change; but the being once realised in the idealism of love never changes to the lover. Else how could love survive, when the mortal form becomes plain and ugly, old and petulant?
Her thoughts did not run precisely in this form, but they were to the same purport. She could never care for any man but Philip; and to suggest the possibility of it would have been hard to bear if made by any one, but hardest of all when made by Philip. Then a little spring of mingled indignation and pride started, and the hands dropped from her face.