“I don’t know. Always, perhaps,” she replied, turning away. “It’s a question you must never ask me.”
How or when it had come she knew not. What woman does? Often she may point back to some spring morning of the heart, when love burst into blossom, and say: “Then I knew.” But she is aware that the petals had long lain delicately folded in the sheaths, and is dimly reminiscent of growth and expansion. To the how and when of that she can return no answer. But Irene looked back and found strange tendernesses working darkly through all the years. Could it have been possible——? Her womanhood shrank frightened from the suggestion—then tiptoed, with held breath, up to it again. The union of the two men in her affection had dated from the first day they had spoken to her on the P. & O. steamer, and it had existed continuously until one broke away, leaving the other untouched. Hugh’s loyal love for her had been one of the inner glories of her life. She had felt it to be the complement of Gerard’s. So much was clear. But was her own affection for Hugh complementary to her love for Gerard? Could her feelings towards Gerard have maintained their homogeneousness without the other influence? Was it, in brief, an inextricable dual love? She found no answers. All was a mystery—like the colour of an opal, with an elusive white of shame. Yet no thought of longing unsatisfied had ever tinged the purity of her wifely worship. There her soul was free from doubt. Yet again, on the other hand, Hugh had ever been inexpressibly dear to her. The cult of their idealised brotherhood had further fused these complex emotions together, thereby rendering the mystery more inscrutable.
“I can never tell you,” she repeated. “Never. Oh, Hugh dear, I have been so lost and lonely.”
His arm closed protectingly round her.
“Forgive me, dear,” she said. “I once thought you a weak man—perhaps that is why I did not love you at first. But now I know that you are strong—and I need your strength.”
That was the deep key-note of her happiness. Once she had compared the two men; rock and shifting sand. Idolatry had inverted her vision. It had been shifting sand and rock. She was safe on the rock now. Often, lately, had she looked back, in sickened wonder, upon that idolatry. The whole of her true life with Gerard had revealed itself: the dull taciturnity she had revered as strength, the ungracious compliances she had raised to tendernesses or noble actions, the hundred faults she had transfigured to virtues. In vain she looked for one sparkling deed, one act of unselfishness, one spontaneous loving caress that she had treasured, even one proof of more than common mental attainment. In the very work-a-day business of life he had deceived her; his practice at the bar was worth little or nothing. She was stupefied at her own delusion.
But now she was safe. Now she looked back upon Hugh’s life, and saw it filled with innumerable deeds of devotion and loyalty. His brilliance in the world was a matter not of blind faith but of direct testimony. His heroism had not been potential but actually displayed. Twice she had known him to face death. Once to save his friend’s life. Once to save a woman’s honour. Of the latter she was convinced. Convinced also of his impeccability as regards the woman. On the part this creature had played in his life she was too proud to speculate. He did not love her. That was certain. It sufficed the hungering woman. The strong soul refused to seek further. Yes, she was safe; the foundations of her life laid on the living rock. The overwhelming happiness of it!
She stood before him radiant. A black silk blouse, with frilled upstanding collar lightly caressing her throat, heightened the glow in her face. He had studied its infinite variety of expression, and knew it in all its phases, enthusiasm, anger, sorrow, gentleness. To-day it was a revelation. To only one man in her life can a woman reveal the full glory of her soul and sex. The last shreds of his compunction were swept away by a mighty wave of pride.
“I would have gone through hell-fire to win you,” he said.
She smiled, happily unconscious of his allusion, and replied in tender raillery.