I can't write properly about it. I long for a talk with you. I shall break away soon and come for it. So be prepared with all your sympathy.
Do you miss me just a little bit? I often fancy my perverseness must give a little wholesome irritation to your life, and you are very good not to mind it. I always seem to be coming to you for help and sympathy. When can I ever do anything for you? You must tell me, dear friend, when the time comes.
I should like to tell you to give Winnie a kiss for me, but that is idiotic, isn't it? Yet you know what I mean. See that the dear child is not wearing herself out. There! I am asking you to do something else for me. Do write a long letter, full of yourself, with just a paragraph about the needs, artistic and otherwise, of
Your friend,
C. D.
Kent took some time to read this. The letters swam a little before his eyes. Then he laid his head upon his arms and thought, in dumb agony. Clytie's letter, sisterly and trustful, soothed and goaded him at once. “The part that passion plays in the tragedy of things!” God! Had a fleeting thought never struck her what a part it might play in their lives' tragedy? How could he answer that letter, addressed to a friend, received by a lover in the hot flush of newly awakened realisation? How could he meet her bright, frank look with this burning demon within him? It was base, horrible. His mind wandered to a German print he had seen somewhere, a goat-footed satyr kneeling and leering at Psyche. He shuddered.
It is given but to few men to know this terror of love: only to those who, like Kent, have hitherto expended vast animal and moral energies in non-sexual enthusiasms, and have rebelled with almost passionate repulsion against the assertion of the sexual principle. To some men love dawns like a sweet, fair star—the storm comes later on. To such as Kent it comes in terrific forked lightnings and crash of thunder, overwhelming the soul with terror. To Kent's excited fancy it seemed that the Beast, such as Wither had spoken of, had entered into him. He had betrayed the compact of friendship, her sisterly trust in him. Fool that he had been! Why had he not recognised it before? Now all was over between them. The future seemed nothing but black, rolling darkness.
The solitary gas-jet that he had lit on entering flared high and strident over the mantelpiece above the blackening fire, and Kent lay with his hands on his arms, his morbid brain at death-grapple with love, he himself heedful of nothing external—not even of a gay whistle and a quick, springing tread on the uncarpeted stairs. The door burst suddenly open.
“Come out, you fusty old hermit——”
Then Wither stopped. Kent raised a drawn, rather ghastly face and stared at him stupidly.