Ella had never felt so near him. The unity in their golden dreams had not bound them so closely as this unity in catastrophe. For even when the dreams were most golden, she had haunting misgivings that they were but visions. Outraged by Sylvester's trampling on her heart, sickened at herself by her years reckless follies, eager, with all a proud girl's passion, to vindicate herself, to follow some noble standard, she had caught at the first that flaunted by and compelled herself imperiously to believe in it. This forced faith had been the strenuous labour of her inner life. She had armed herself in triple brass against Lady Milmo's shafts of flippant satire, against Matthew Lanyon's kindly wisdom, against her own common sense. The Colony would be merely a paradise of cranks. No serious artist would throw away his or her career in such a Cloud-cuckoo-land.
She herself, at the best but a well-taught amateur painter in water-colours, what was she doing in that galley? She set aside reason. To believe in Roderick, she must believe in the Colony. To believe in the Colony, she must believe in Roderick. The two were inextricably interfused. Realisation of the dreams was her only justification for marrying the man. The man's personality and enthusiasm for an ideal had overpowered her. She would not think. She was young, inexperienced, warm-natured, seeing things out of proportion. Flight from the self she had deemed dishonoured was her only chance of salvation; and she mistook the imaginary cries behind her, hounding her onward, for the voice of inexorable necessity. If Roderick could accomplish it, the Colony was a glorious thing. The Colony accomplished, Roderick was the conqueror to whom she must yield. When the dreams were most golden she saw him such, and they were near together.
But then had come the days of Roderick's loss of interest in the scheme. He put her above the Colony, desired her above all things. She shivered back. For himself alone she could not marry him. Why, she could not tell. A girl with a mind pure and sweet does not speculate on that which, traced logically to its source, is simply elemental sexual repulsion. She clung fiercely to her point. Then Roderick returned to the scheme with his old ardour. In her heart she believed him passionately sincere. Misfortune had come with terrible unexpectedness. He had fought and failed. He was a beaten man. The dream had been brutally proved to have been the emptiest of hallucinations. She was miserably cast down. Roderick seemed broken-hearted. They were at one in an absolute cynical reality. Both had been pierced by the same shaft. The doors of the cranks' Eden had clanged behind them, and they were walking together in the grey, dreary expanse of Hyde Park, with an unknown world of the most definite prose before them. They seemed alone, to have nothing in common with the rest of society; to have in common with each other this all-filling humiliation of defeat. So when he spoke, the unreasoning woman leaped to comfort the man. She had never felt so near him. A great and natural revulsion of feeling had lifted her heart to consolation.
They quitted the Park at Hyde Park Corner, and paused by common impulse.
“I suppose you will take a cab now,” he said reluctantly.
“I suppose I must,” she said in the same tone. “I would ask you to come with me, but it's auntie's day at home, and the place will be full of chattering people.”
“I can't bear leaving you,” said he.
“Nor I you.”
“You look tired, poor child. Let me give you some tea. Will you? I belong to a club in Piccadilly,—the Hyde Park, where ladies are admitted to tea. It is the home of all the depressed outcasts of London, and even they shun it. We are sure to be alone in the tea-room. Come.”
He hailed a hansom. Ella, in that strange mood of passivity which is woman's fatalest, entered without remark. He followed, and they drove to the Hyde Park Club.