“You've kept your old, high ideals. She's still to you Stellamaris—the bit of God. You have n't wanted to drag her down to—to flesh and blood—as I have.”
Herold grew white to the lips and took up his hat and stick. “Never mind about me,” he said, steadying his voice. “I don't count. She's all that matters. What are you going to do? See her or write?”
“I 'll write,” said John.
Herold went out, carrying with him the memory of words he had spoken to John many years before—words of which afterwards he had been ashamed, for no man likes to think that he has spoken foolishly, but words which now had come true: “I have walked on, roses all my life; but my hell is before me... my roses shall turn into red-hot ploughshares, and my soul shall be on fire.” And he remembered how he had spoken of the unforgivable sin—high treason against friendship. But in one respect his words had not come true. He had said that in his evil hour he would have a great, strong friend to stand by his side. He was walking over the ploughshares alone. And that evening, in their wait on the stairs during the first act, in retort to some jesting reply, Leonora Gurney said:
“I believe you 're the chilliest-natured and most heartless thing that ever walked the earth, and how you can play that love-scene in the third act will always be a mystery to me.”
“Perhaps that's the very reason I can play it,” said Herold.
His heart wrung in a vice, John wrote the letter to Stellamaris. He was “killing the thing he loved.” Good men, and even some bad ones, who have done it, do not like to dwell upon the memory. He posted the letter on his way home from the office. It dropped into the letter-box with the dull thud of the first clod of earth thrown upon a coffin. At dinner Miss Lindon talked in her usual discursive way on the warm weather and sun-spots and the curious phenomenon observable on the countenance of a pious curate friend of her youth, who had spots, not sun-spots, but birth-marks, on brow, chin, and cheeks, making a perfect sign of the cross. But the dear fellow unfortunately was afflicted with a red tip to his nose, wherefore a profane uncle—“your great-uncle Randolph, dear”—used to call him the five of diamonds.
“But he was a great gambler—your uncle, I mean. I remember his once losing thirty shillings at whist at a sitting.”
To all of which irrelevant chatter John made replies equally irrelevant. And Unity dumbly watched him. She had been at great pains to prepare a savoury dish that he loved. He, ordinarily of Gargantuan appetite, as befitted the great-framed man that he was, scarcely touched it. Unity was distressed.
“Is n't it all right, Guardian?” she asked.