Yes, surely he had committed towards her the unforgivable sin. He was damned—at any rate, in this world. To rid her irremediably of his pestilent existence was the only hope of salvation. Olifant was a fool, speaking according to the folly of an honourable gentleman. He clenched his teeth and gripped his hands. If only he could have been such a fool! To appear the kind of man that Olifant easily, naturally, was had been his gnawing ambition from his first insight into gentle life, long ago, in the Prince’s household. But, all the same, Olifant was a fool—a sort of Galahad out for Grails, and remote from the baseness in which he had wallowed.
“Go to Olivia. She loves you.”
Chivalrous imbecile! He had not seen Olivia’s great staring dark eyes with rims around them, and the awful little drawn face.
He was right—it was the only way out.
Yet, during all this interview with Olivia, he had been quite sane. He had indulged in no histrionics. He had not declaimed, and flung his arms about, as he had done in Olifant’s study. He had felt himself talking like a dead man immersed up to the neck in the flames of Hell, but possessed of a cold clear intellect. In a way, he was proud of this. To have made an emotional appeal would have obscured the issue towards which his new-found honesty was striving.
His last words to Olivia were:
“And the future?”
She said hopelessly: “Is there a future?”
Then she drew a deep breath and passed her fingers across her face.
“Don’t talk to me any more, for heaven’s sake. I must be alone. I must have air. I must walk.”