“It’s very kind of you to be so thoughtful. Shall we sit there now?”
“Oh, I think you’d better not. There’s a good deal of dew, and I don’t want you to catch cold.”
For dinner Edward had ordered the dishes which he knew Bertha preferred, and he laughed joyously, as she expressed her pleasure. Afterwards when she lay on the sofa, he arranged the cushions so as to make her quite easy.
“Ah, my dear,” she thought, “if you’d been half as kind three years ago you might have kept my love.”
She wondered whether absence had increased his affection, or whether it was she who had altered. Was he not unchanging as the rocks, and she knew herself unstable as water, mutable as the summer winds. Had he always been kind and considerate; and had she, demanding a passion which it was not in him to feel, been blind to his deep tenderness? Expecting nothing from him now, she was astonished to find he had so much to offer. But she felt sorry if he loved her, for she could give nothing in return but complete indifference; she was even surprised to find herself so utterly callous.
At bedtime she bade him good-night, and kissed his cheek.
“I’ve had the red room arranged for me,” she said.
There was no change in Blackstable. Bertha’s friends still lived, for the death-rate of that fortunate place was their pride, and they could do nothing to increase it. Arthur Branderton had married a pretty, fair-haired girl, nicely bred, and properly insignificant; but the only result of that was to give his mother a new topic of conversation. Bertha, resuming her old habits, had difficulty in realising that she had been long away. She set herself to forget Gerald, and was pleased to find the recollection of him not too importunate. A sentimentalist turned cynic has observed that a woman is only passionately devoted to her first lover, for afterwards it is love itself of which she is enamoured; and certainly the wounds of later attachments heal easily. Bertha was devoutly grateful to Miss Ley for her opportune return on Gerald’s last night, and shuddered to think of what might otherwise have happened.
“It would have been too awful,” she cried.
She could not understand what sudden madness had seized her, and the thought of the danger she had run, made Bertha’s cheeks tingle. Her heart turned sick at the mere remembrance. She was thoroughly ashamed of that insane excursion to Euston, intent upon the most dreadful courses. She felt like a person who from the top of a tower has been so horribly tempted to throw himself down, that only the restraining hand of a bystander has saved him; and then afterwards from below shivers and sweats at the idea of his peril. But worse than the shame was the dread of ridicule; for the whole affair had been excessively undignified: she had run after a hobbledehoy years younger than herself, and had even fallen seriously in love with him. It was too grotesque. Bertha imagined the joy it must cause Miss Ley. She could not forgive Gerald that, on his account, she had made herself absurd. She saw that he was a fickle boy, prepared to philander with every woman he met; and at last told herself scornfully that she had never really cared for him.