“You are quite wrong if you think that. On the contrary——” He stopped, and seemed embarrassed for the first time. “It was what I wanted—I said that I loved you—and I did. I do—only——”
“Then—then—if you can say that——” She seized his hand, raised it to her lips, and kissed it. “Then let him—let my husband divorce me! I must say it! I can’t let myself drown without a word! Mortimer will have every excuse to divorce me, don’t you see? I have been living practically alone with you for a whole month! It looks bad enough—even old Mr. Popham saw it. I could not defend it—and I won’t! Mortimer will have to divorce me, and we will marry each other and be happy.... Why do you shake your head like that? No! But why not? You think my proposal dreadful! So it is, but I would do anything—anything in the world to come to you.”
“And so would I for you—you must not doubt that!” he replied, and his slow deliberate tones in no wise expressed the emotion that, for her comfort, she could see in his eyes. He gave her back her hands, as it were.
“Anything,”—he repeated gravely, “but a dishonourable thing! No, not even for you!... Look here! it is now half past eleven—you can only just do it! The trap will be there already! You shall leave me here.... Please—don’t make difficulties, my dear. It has to be. We have decided it, haven’t we? Good-bye ... good-bye!”
She did not cry. She stood still and leant her head against the trunk of a huge beech tree, and felt her hair catch in its rough bark, and half closed her eyes in anticipation of a parting that would be worse to bear than a blow. Would he kiss her? He must, and yet she would not ask him.
He did; he took her in his arms, and gratified her great love with a kiss more perfunctory than passionate, perhaps, and which yet awakened the woman’s heart in her body once and for all. Then he turned sharply on his heel and raised his hat—she smiled even in her misery at the irony of it, but she understood him now—and left her.
She dared not watch him go, lest she fall into the crime of calling him back to her. He might hate her for that. She looked up into the branches of the tree overhead, till a sudden rush of tears mercifully blinded her!
Ten minutes later, she made her way down the Broad Walk to the Gate, turning a foolish unintelligent stare on the porter who opened it for her as he had done for Rivers ten minutes before—she felt a wild desire to ask him how her lover had looked as he passed through. Still in a merciful dream she mounted the steps of the dog-cart that was waiting in the road for her, and was whirled away in the direction of Barnard Castle.
She was wrong in her supposition—Rivers had not left the Park, but had turned down a little side path to the right. He stayed in the Park till he heard the sound of the wheels of the dog-cart going past the high boundary wall. Then he walked with his quick elastic step to the gate, and back to the “Heather Bell.”
“I wonder if I shall ever paint another decent picture?” was the purely technical remark that he made to himself. He was very pale, and he lifted his hat off, once or twice, and breathed deeply as the cold morning air met his forehead.