“God knows what you have given me,” she cried, bitterly. She stared out of the window at the sodden street and murky air. I went to her side and touched her wrist.
“For heaven’s sake, Judith, tell me what I can do.”
“What’s done is done,” she said, between her teeth. “When did you marry her?”
I explained briefly the condition of affairs. She looked at me hard and long; then stared out of the window again, and scarce heeded what I said.
“It was to set myself right with you on this point,” I added, “that I have visited you at such an hour.”
She remained silent. I took a few turns about the familiar room that was filled with the associations of many years. The piano we chose together. The copy of the Botticelli Tondo—the crowned Madonna of the Uffizi—I gave her in Florence. We had ransacked London together to find the Chippendale bookcase; and on its shelves stood books that had formed a bond between us, and copies of old reviews containing my fugitive contributions. A spurious Japanese dragon in faence, an inartistic monstrosity dear to her heart, at which I had often railed, grinned forgivingly at me from the mantel-piece. I have never realised how closely bound up with my habits was this drawing-room of Judith’s. I stopped once more by her side.
“I can’t leave you altogether, dear,” I said, gently. “A bit of myself is in this room.”
Her bosom shook with unhappy laughter.
“A bit?” Then she turned suddenly on me. “Are you simply dull or sheerly cruel?”
“I am dull,” said I. “Why do you refuse my friendship? Our relation has been scarcely more. It has not touched the deep things in us. We agreed at the start that it should not. The words ‘I love you’ have never passed between us. We have been loyal to our compact. Now that love has come into my life—and Heaven knows I have striven against it—what would you have me do?”