initial commit of ebook 283HEADmain

1 files changed, 11153 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/283.txt b/283.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7309293
--- /dev/null
+++ b/283.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11153 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Reef, by Edith Wharton
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Reef
+
+Author: Edith Wharton
+
+Posting Date: July 12, 2008 [EBook #283]
+Release Date: June, 1995
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE REEF ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Gail Jahn, and John Hamm
+
+
+
+
+
+THE REEF
+
+by Edith Wharton
+
+
+
+
+
+BOOK I
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+"Unexpected obstacle. Please don't come till thirtieth. Anna."
+
+All the way from Charing Cross to Dover the train had hammered the words
+of the telegram into George Darrow's ears, ringing every change of irony
+on its commonplace syllables: rattling them out like a discharge of
+musketry, letting them, one by one, drip slowly and coldly into his
+brain, or shaking, tossing, transposing them like the dice in some game
+of the gods of malice; and now, as he emerged from his compartment at
+the pier, and stood facing the wind-swept platform and the angry sea
+beyond, they leapt out at him as if from the crest of the waves, stung
+and blinded him with a fresh fury of derision.
+
+"Unexpected obstacle. Please don't come till thirtieth. Anna."
+
+She had put him off at the very last moment, and for the second time:
+put him off with all her sweet reasonableness, and for one of her usual
+"good" reasons--he was certain that this reason, like the other, (the
+visit of her husband's uncle's widow) would be "good"! But it was that
+very certainty which chilled him. The fact of her dealing so reasonably
+with their case shed an ironic light on the idea that there had been any
+exceptional warmth in the greeting she had given him after their twelve
+years apart.
+
+They had found each other again, in London, some three months
+previously, at a dinner at the American Embassy, and when she had caught
+sight of him her smile had been like a red rose pinned on her widow's
+mourning. He still felt the throb of surprise with which, among
+the stereotyped faces of the season's diners, he had come upon her
+unexpected face, with the dark hair banded above grave eyes; eyes in
+which he had recognized every little curve and shadow as he would have
+recognized, after half a life-time, the details of a room he had played
+in as a child. And as, in the plumed starred crowd, she had stood out
+for him, slender, secluded and different, so he had felt, the instant
+their glances met, that he as sharply detached himself for her. All that
+and more her smile had said; had said not merely "I remember," but "I
+remember just what you remember"; almost, indeed, as though her memory
+had aided his, her glance flung back on their recaptured moment its
+morning brightness. Certainly, when their distracted Ambassadress--with
+the cry: "Oh, you know Mrs. Leath? That's perfect, for General Farnham
+has failed me"--had waved them together for the march to the dining-room,
+Darrow had felt a slight pressure of the arm on his, a pressure faintly
+but unmistakably emphasizing the exclamation: "Isn't it wonderful?--In
+London--in the season--in a mob?"
+
+Little enough, on the part of most women; but it was a sign of Mrs.
+Leath's quality that every movement, every syllable, told with her. Even
+in the old days, as an intent grave-eyed girl, she had seldom misplaced
+her light strokes; and Darrow, on meeting her again, had immediately
+felt how much finer and surer an instrument of expression she had
+become.
+
+Their evening together had been a long confirmation of this feeling. She
+had talked to him, shyly yet frankly, of what had happened to her during
+the years when they had so strangely failed to meet. She had told him
+of her marriage to Fraser Leath, and of her subsequent life in France,
+where her husband's mother, left a widow in his youth, had been
+re-married to the Marquis de Chantelle, and where, partly in consequence
+of this second union, the son had permanently settled himself. She had
+spoken also, with an intense eagerness of affection, of her little girl
+Effie, who was now nine years old, and, in a strain hardly less tender,
+of Owen Leath, the charming clever young stepson whom her husband's
+death had left to her care...
+
+
+A porter, stumbling against Darrow's bags, roused him to the fact that
+he still obstructed the platform, inert and encumbering as his luggage.
+
+"Crossing, sir?"
+
+Was he crossing? He really didn't know; but for lack of any more
+compelling impulse he followed the porter to the luggage van, singled
+out his property, and turned to march behind it down the gang-way. As
+the fierce wind shouldered him, building up a crystal wall against his
+efforts, he felt anew the derision of his case.
+
+"Nasty weather to cross, sir," the porter threw back at him as they beat
+their way down the narrow walk to the pier. Nasty weather, indeed; but
+luckily, as it had turned out, there was no earthly reason why Darrow
+should cross.
+
+While he pushed on in the wake of his luggage his thoughts slipped back
+into the old groove. He had once or twice run across the man whom Anna
+Summers had preferred to him, and since he had met her again he had been
+exercising his imagination on the picture of what her married life must
+have been. Her husband had struck him as a characteristic specimen of
+the kind of American as to whom one is not quite clear whether he
+lives in Europe in order to cultivate an art, or cultivates an art as a
+pretext for living in Europe. Mr. Leath's art was water-colour painting,
+but he practised it furtively, almost clandestinely, with the disdain of
+a man of the world for anything bordering on the professional, while
+he devoted himself more openly, and with religious seriousness, to the
+collection of enamelled snuff-boxes. He was blond and well-dressed, with
+the physical distinction that comes from having a straight figure, a
+thin nose, and the habit of looking slightly disgusted--as who should
+not, in a world where authentic snuff-boxes were growing daily harder to
+find, and the market was flooded with flagrant forgeries?
+
+Darrow had often wondered what possibilities of communion there could
+have been between Mr. Leath and his wife. Now he concluded that there
+had probably been none. Mrs. Leath's words gave no hint of her husband's
+having failed to justify her choice; but her very reticence betrayed
+her. She spoke of him with a kind of impersonal seriousness, as if he
+had been a character in a novel or a figure in history; and what she
+said sounded as though it had been learned by heart and slightly dulled
+by repetition. This fact immensely increased Darrow's impression that
+his meeting with her had annihilated the intervening years. She, who was
+always so elusive and inaccessible, had grown suddenly communicative and
+kind: had opened the doors of her past, and tacitly left him to draw his
+own conclusions. As a result, he had taken leave of her with the
+sense that he was a being singled out and privileged, to whom she had
+entrusted something precious to keep. It was her happiness in their
+meeting that she had given him, had frankly left him to do with as he
+willed; and the frankness of the gesture doubled the beauty of the gift.
+
+Their next meeting had prolonged and deepened the impression. They had
+found each other again, a few days later, in an old country house full
+of books and pictures, in the soft landscape of southern England.
+The presence of a large party, with all its aimless and agitated
+displacements, had served only to isolate the pair and give them (at
+least to the young man's fancy) a deeper feeling of communion, and their
+days there had been like some musical prelude, where the instruments,
+breathing low, seem to hold back the waves of sound that press against
+them.
+
+Mrs. Leath, on this occasion, was no less kind than before; but she
+contrived to make him understand that what was so inevitably coming was
+not to come too soon. It was not that she showed any hesitation as to
+the issue, but rather that she seemed to wish not to miss any stage in
+the gradual reflowering of their intimacy.
+
+Darrow, for his part, was content to wait if she wished it. He
+remembered that once, in America, when she was a girl, and he had
+gone to stay with her family in the country, she had been out when he
+arrived, and her mother had told him to look for her in the garden. She
+was not in the garden, but beyond it he had seen her approaching down a
+long shady path. Without hastening her step she had smiled and signed to
+him to wait; and charmed by the lights and shadows that played upon her
+as she moved, and by the pleasure of watching her slow advance toward
+him, he had obeyed her and stood still. And so she seemed now to be
+walking to him down the years, the light and shade of old memories and
+new hopes playing variously on her, and each step giving him the vision
+of a different grace. She did not waver or turn aside; he knew she would
+come straight to where he stood; but something in her eyes said "Wait",
+and again he obeyed and waited.
+
+On the fourth day an unexpected event threw out his calculations.
+Summoned to town by the arrival in England of her husband's mother, she
+left without giving Darrow the chance he had counted on, and he cursed
+himself for a dilatory blunderer. Still, his disappointment was tempered
+by the certainty of being with her again before she left for France;
+and they did in fact see each other in London. There, however, the
+atmosphere had changed with the conditions. He could not say that she
+avoided him, or even that she was a shade less glad to see him; but
+she was beset by family duties and, as he thought, a little too readily
+resigned to them.
+
+The Marquise de Chantelle, as Darrow soon perceived, had the same
+mild formidableness as the late Mr. Leath: a sort of insistent
+self-effacement before which every one about her gave way. It was
+perhaps the shadow of this lady's presence--pervasive even during her
+actual brief eclipses--that subdued and silenced Mrs. Leath. The latter
+was, moreover, preoccupied about her stepson, who, soon after receiving
+his degree at Harvard, had been rescued from a stormy love-affair, and
+finally, after some months of troubled drifting, had yielded to his
+step-mother's counsel and gone up to Oxford for a year of supplementary
+study. Thither Mrs. Leath went once or twice to visit him, and her
+remaining days were packed with family obligations: getting, as she
+phrased it, "frocks and governesses" for her little girl, who had
+been left in France, and having to devote the remaining hours to long
+shopping expeditions with her mother-in-law. Nevertheless, during her
+brief escapes from duty, Darrow had had time to feel her safe in the
+custody of his devotion, set apart for some inevitable hour; and the
+last evening, at the theatre, between the overshadowing Marquise and the
+unsuspicious Owen, they had had an almost decisive exchange of words.
+
+Now, in the rattle of the wind about his ears, Darrow continued to
+hear the mocking echo of her message: "Unexpected obstacle." In such an
+existence as Mrs. Leath's, at once so ordered and so exposed, he knew
+how small a complication might assume the magnitude of an "obstacle;"
+yet, even allowing as impartially as his state of mind permitted for
+the fact that, with her mother-in-law always, and her stepson
+intermittently, under her roof, her lot involved a hundred small
+accommodations generally foreign to the freedom of widowhood--even so,
+he could not but think that the very ingenuity bred of such conditions
+might have helped her to find a way out of them. No, her "reason",
+whatever it was, could, in this case, be nothing but a pretext; unless
+he leaned to the less flattering alternative that any reason seemed good
+enough for postponing him! Certainly, if her welcome had meant what he
+imagined, she could not, for the second time within a few weeks,
+have submitted so tamely to the disarrangement of their plans; a
+disarrangement which--his official duties considered--might, for all she
+knew, result in his not being able to go to her for months.
+
+"Please don't come till thirtieth." The thirtieth--and it was now the
+fifteenth! She flung back the fortnight on his hands as if he had been
+an idler indifferent to dates, instead of an active young diplomatist
+who, to respond to her call, had had to hew his way through a very
+jungle of engagements! "Please don't come till thirtieth." That was all.
+Not the shadow of an excuse or a regret; not even the perfunctory "have
+written" with which it is usual to soften such blows. She didn't want
+him, and had taken the shortest way to tell him so. Even in his first
+moment of exasperation it struck him as characteristic that she should
+not have padded her postponement with a fib. Certainly her moral angles
+were not draped!
+
+"If I asked her to marry me, she'd have refused in the same language.
+But thank heaven I haven't!" he reflected.
+
+These considerations, which had been with him every yard of the way from
+London, reached a climax of irony as he was drawn into the crowd on the
+pier. It did not soften his feelings to remember that, but for her lack
+of forethought, he might, at this harsh end of the stormy May day, have
+been sitting before his club fire in London instead of shivering in the
+damp human herd on the pier. Admitting the sex's traditional right to
+change, she might at least have advised him of hers by telegraphing
+directly to his rooms. But in spite of their exchange of letters she
+had apparently failed to note his address, and a breathless emissary had
+rushed from the Embassy to pitch her telegram into his compartment as
+the train was moving from the station.
+
+Yes, he had given her chance enough to learn where he lived; and this
+minor proof of her indifference became, as he jammed his way through the
+crowd, the main point of his grievance against her and of his derision
+of himself. Half way down the pier the prod of an umbrella increased his
+exasperation by rousing him to the fact that it was raining. Instantly
+the narrow ledge became a battle-ground of thrusting, slanting, parrying
+domes. The wind rose with the rain, and the harried wretches exposed to
+this double assault wreaked on their neighbours the vengeance they could
+not take on the elements.
+
+Darrow, whose healthy enjoyment of life made him in general a good
+traveller, tolerant of agglutinated humanity, felt himself obscurely
+outraged by these promiscuous contacts. It was as though all the people
+about him had taken his measure and known his plight; as though they
+were contemptuously bumping and shoving him like the inconsiderable
+thing he had become. "She doesn't want you, doesn't want you, doesn't
+want you," their umbrellas and their elbows seemed to say.
+
+He had rashly vowed, when the telegram was flung into his window: "At
+any rate I won't turn back"--as though it might cause the sender a
+malicious joy to have him retrace his steps rather than keep on to
+Paris! Now he perceived the absurdity of the vow, and thanked his stars
+that he need not plunge, to no purpose, into the fury of waves outside
+the harbour.
+
+With this thought in his mind he turned back to look for his porter;
+but the contiguity of dripping umbrellas made signalling impossible and,
+perceiving that he had lost sight of the man, he scrambled up again to
+the platform. As he reached it, a descending umbrella caught him in the
+collar-bone; and the next moment, bent sideways by the wind, it turned
+inside out and soared up, kite-wise, at the end of a helpless female
+arm.
+
+Darrow caught the umbrella, lowered its inverted ribs, and looked up at
+the face it exposed to him.
+
+"Wait a minute," he said; "you can't stay here."
+
+As he spoke, a surge of the crowd drove the owner of the umbrella
+abruptly down on him. Darrow steadied her with extended arms, and
+regaining her footing she cried out: "Oh, dear, oh, dear! It's in
+ribbons!"
+
+Her lifted face, fresh and flushed in the driving rain, woke in him
+a memory of having seen it at a distant time and in a vaguely
+unsympathetic setting; but it was no moment to follow up such clues, and
+the face was obviously one to make its way on its own merits.
+
+Its possessor had dropped her bag and bundles to clutch at the tattered
+umbrella. "I bought it only yesterday at the Stores; and--yes--it's
+utterly done for!" she lamented.
+
+Darrow smiled at the intensity of her distress. It was food for the
+moralist that, side by side with such catastrophes as his, human nature
+was still agitating itself over its microscopic woes!
+
+"Here's mine if you want it!" he shouted back at her through the
+shouting of the gale.
+
+The offer caused the young lady to look at him more intently. "Why,
+it's Mr. Darrow!" she exclaimed; and then, all radiant recognition: "Oh,
+thank you! We'll share it, if you will."
+
+She knew him, then; and he knew her; but how and where had they met? He
+put aside the problem for subsequent solution, and drawing her into a
+more sheltered corner, bade her wait till he could find his porter.
+
+When, a few minutes later, he came back with his recovered property,
+and the news that the boat would not leave till the tide had turned, she
+showed no concern.
+
+"Not for two hours? How lucky--then I can find my trunk!"
+
+Ordinarily Darrow would have felt little disposed to involve himself
+in the adventure of a young female who had lost her trunk; but at the
+moment he was glad of any pretext for activity. Even should he decide to
+take the next up train from Dover he still had a yawning hour to fill;
+and the obvious remedy was to devote it to the loveliness in distress
+under his umbrella.
+
+"You've lost a trunk? Let me see if I can find it."
+
+It pleased him that she did not return the conventional "Oh, WOULD you?"
+Instead, she corrected him with a laugh--"Not a trunk, but my trunk; I've
+no other--" and then added briskly: "You'd better first see to getting
+your own things on the boat."
+
+This made him answer, as if to give substance to his plans by discussing
+them: "I don't actually know that I'm going over."
+
+"Not going over?"
+
+"Well...perhaps not by this boat." Again he felt a stealing indecision.
+"I may probably have to go back to London. I'm--I'm waiting...expecting
+a letter...(She'll think me a defaulter," he reflected.) "But meanwhile
+there's plenty of time to find your trunk."
+
+He picked up his companion's bundles, and offered her an arm which
+enabled her to press her slight person more closely under his umbrella;
+and as, thus linked, they beat their way back to the platform, pulled
+together and apart like marionettes on the wires of the wind, he
+continued to wonder where he could have seen her. He had immediately
+classed her as a compatriot; her small nose, her clear tints, a kind
+of sketchy delicacy in her face, as though she had been brightly but
+lightly washed in with water-colour, all confirmed the evidence of her
+high sweet voice and of her quick incessant gestures. She was clearly an
+American, but with the loose native quality strained through a closer
+woof of manners: the composite product of an enquiring and adaptable
+race. All this, however, did not help him to fit a name to her, for just
+such instances were perpetually pouring through the London Embassy, and
+the etched and angular American was becoming rarer than the fluid type.
+
+More puzzling than the fact of his being unable to identify her was
+the persistent sense connecting her with something uncomfortable and
+distasteful. So pleasant a vision as that gleaming up at him between
+wet brown hair and wet brown boa should have evoked only associations as
+pleasing; but each effort to fit her image into his past resulted in the
+same memories of boredom and a vague discomfort...
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+"Don't you remember me now--at Mrs. Murrett's?" She threw the question at
+Darrow across a table of the quiet coffee-room to which, after a vainly
+prolonged quest for her trunk, he had suggested taking her for a cup of
+tea.
+
+In this musty retreat she had removed her dripping hat, hung it on the
+fender to dry, and stretched herself on tiptoe in front of the round
+eagle-crowned mirror, above the mantel vases of dyed immortelles, while
+she ran her fingers comb-wise through her hair. The gesture had acted on
+Darrow's numb feelings as the glow of the fire acted on his circulation;
+and when he had asked: "Aren't your feet wet, too?" and, after
+frank inspection of a stout-shod sole, she had answered cheerfully:
+"No--luckily I had on my new boots," he began to feel that human
+intercourse would still be tolerable if it were always as free from
+formality.
+
+The removal of his companion's hat, besides provoking this reflection,
+gave him his first full sight of her face; and this was so
+favourable that the name she now pronounced fell on him with a quite
+disproportionate shock of dismay.
+
+"Oh, Mrs. Murrett's--was it THERE?"
+
+He remembered her now, of course: remembered her as one of the shadowy
+sidling presences in the background of that awful house in Chelsea, one
+of the dumb appendages of the shrieking unescapable Mrs. Murrett, into
+whose talons he had fallen in the course of his head-long pursuit of
+Lady Ulrica Crispin. Oh, the taste of stale follies! How insipid it was,
+yet how it clung!
+
+"I used to pass you on the stairs," she reminded him.
+
+Yes: he had seen her slip by--he recalled it now--as he dashed up to
+the drawing-room in quest of Lady Ulrica. The thought made him steal a
+longer look. How could such a face have been merged in the Murrett
+mob? Its fugitive slanting lines, that lent themselves to all manner of
+tender tilts and foreshortenings, had the freakish grace of some young
+head of the Italian comedy. The hair stood up from her forehead in a
+boyish elf-lock, and its colour matched her auburn eyes flecked with
+black, and the little brown spot on her cheek, between the ear that was
+meant to have a rose behind it and the chin that should have rested on
+a ruff. When she smiled, the left corner of her mouth went up a little
+higher than the right; and her smile began in her eyes and ran down to
+her lips in two lines of light. He had dashed past that to reach Lady
+Ulrica Crispin!
+
+"But of course you wouldn't remember me," she was saying. "My name is
+Viner--Sophy Viner."
+
+Not remember her? But of course he DID! He was genuinely sure of it now.
+"You're Mrs. Murrett's niece," he declared.
+
+She shook her head. "No; not even that. Only her reader."
+
+"Her reader? Do you mean to say she ever reads?"
+
+Miss Viner enjoyed his wonder. "Dear, no! But I wrote notes, and made up
+the visiting-book, and walked the dogs, and saw bores for her."
+
+Darrow groaned. "That must have been rather bad!"
+
+"Yes; but nothing like as bad as being her niece."
+
+"That I can well believe. I'm glad to hear," he added, "that you put it
+all in the past tense."
+
+She seemed to droop a little at the allusion; then she lifted her chin
+with a jerk of defiance. "Yes. All is at an end between us. We've just
+parted in tears--but not in silence!"
+
+"Just parted? Do you mean to say you've been there all this time?"
+
+"Ever since you used to come there to see Lady Ulrica? Does it seem to
+you so awfully long ago?"
+
+The unexpectedness of the thrust--as well as its doubtful taste--chilled
+his growing enjoyment of her chatter. He had really been getting to
+like her--had recovered, under the candid approval of her eye, his
+usual sense of being a personable young man, with all the privileges
+pertaining to the state, instead of the anonymous rag of humanity he
+had felt himself in the crowd on the pier. It annoyed him, at that
+particular moment, to be reminded that naturalness is not always
+consonant with taste.
+
+She seemed to guess his thought. "You don't like my saying that you came
+for Lady Ulrica?" she asked, leaning over the table to pour herself a
+second cup of tea.
+
+He liked her quickness, at any rate. "It's better," he laughed, "than
+your thinking I came for Mrs. Murrett!"
+
+"Oh, we never thought anybody came for Mrs. Murrett! It was always for
+something else: the music, or the cook--when there was a good one--or
+the other people; generally ONE of the other people."
+
+"I see."
+
+She was amusing, and that, in his present mood, was more to his purpose
+than the exact shade of her taste. It was odd, too, to discover suddenly
+that the blurred tapestry of Mrs. Murrett's background had all the while
+been alive and full of eyes. Now, with a pair of them looking into his,
+he was conscious of a queer reversal of perspective.
+
+"Who were the 'we'? Were you a cloud of witnesses?"
+
+"There were a good many of us." She smiled. "Let me see--who was there
+in your time? Mrs. Bolt--and Mademoiselle--and Professor Didymus and
+the Polish Countess. Don't you remember the Polish Countess? She
+crystal-gazed, and played accompaniments, and Mrs. Murrett chucked her
+because Mrs. Didymus accused her of hypnotizing the Professor. But of
+course you don't remember. We were all invisible to you; but we could
+see. And we all used to wonder about you----"
+
+Again Darrow felt a redness in the temples. "What about me?"
+
+"Well--whether it was you or she who..."
+
+He winced, but hid his disapproval. It made the time pass to listen to
+her.
+
+"And what, if one may ask, was your conclusion?"
+
+"Well, Mrs. Bolt and Mademoiselle and the Countess naturally thought it
+was SHE; but Professor Didymus and Jimmy Brance--especially Jimmy----"
+
+"Just a moment: who on earth is Jimmy Brance?"
+
+She exclaimed in wonder: "You WERE absorbed--not to remember Jimmy
+Brance! He must have been right about you, after all." She let her
+amused scrutiny dwell on him. "But how could you? She was false from
+head to foot!"
+
+"False----?" In spite of time and satiety, the male instinct of
+ownership rose up and repudiated the charge.
+
+Miss Viner caught his look and laughed. "Oh, I only meant externally!
+You see, she often used to come to my room after tennis, or to touch
+up in the evenings, when they were going on; and I assure you she took
+apart like a puzzle. In fact I used to say to Jimmy--just to make him
+wild--:'I'll bet you anything you like there's nothing wrong, because
+I know she'd never dare un--'" She broke the word in two, and her quick
+blush made her face like a shallow-petalled rose shading to the deeper
+pink of the centre.
+
+The situation was saved, for Darrow, by an abrupt rush of memories, and
+he gave way to a mirth which she as frankly echoed. "Of course," she
+gasped through her laughter, "I only said it to tease Jimmy----"
+
+Her amusement obscurely annoyed him. "Oh, you're all alike!" he
+exclaimed, moved by an unaccountable sense of disappointment.
+
+She caught him up in a flash--she didn't miss things! "You say that
+because you think I'm spiteful and envious? Yes--I was envious of Lady
+Ulrica...Oh, not on account of you or Jimmy Brance! Simply because
+she had almost all the things I've always wanted: clothes and fun and
+motors, and admiration and yachting and Paris--why, Paris alone would be
+enough!--And how do you suppose a girl can see that sort of thing about
+her day after day, and never wonder why some women, who don't seem to
+have any more right to it, have it all tumbled into their laps, while
+others are writing dinner invitations, and straightening out accounts,
+and copying visiting lists, and finishing golf-stockings, and matching
+ribbons, and seeing that the dogs get their sulphur? One looks in one's
+glass, after all!"
+
+She launched the closing words at him on a cry that lifted them above
+the petulance of vanity; but his sense of her words was lost in the
+surprise of her face. Under the flying clouds of her excitement it was
+no longer a shallow flower-cup but a darkening gleaming mirror that
+might give back strange depths of feeling. The girl had stuff in her--he
+saw it; and she seemed to catch the perception in his eyes.
+
+"That's the kind of education I got at Mrs. Murrett's--and I never had
+any other," she said with a shrug.
+
+"Good Lord--were you there so long?"
+
+"Five years. I stuck it out longer than any of the others." She spoke as
+though it were something to be proud of.
+
+"Well, thank God you're out of it now!"
+
+Again a just perceptible shadow crossed her face. "Yes--I'm out of it
+now fast enough."
+
+"And what--if I may ask--are you doing next?"
+
+She brooded a moment behind drooped lids; then, with a touch of hauteur:
+"I'm going to Paris: to study for the stage."
+
+"The stage?" Darrow stared at her, dismayed. All his confused
+contradictory impressions assumed a new aspect at this announcement; and
+to hide his surprise he added lightly: "Ah--then you will have Paris,
+after all!"
+
+"Hardly Lady Ulrica's Paris. It s not likely to be roses, roses all the
+way."
+
+"It's not, indeed." Real compassion prompted him to continue: "Have you
+any--any influence you can count on?"
+
+She gave a somewhat flippant little laugh. "None but my own. I've never
+had any other to count on."
+
+He passed over the obvious reply. "But have you any idea how the
+profession is over-crowded? I know I'm trite----"
+
+"I've a very clear idea. But I couldn't go on as I was."
+
+"Of course not. But since, as you say, you'd stuck it out longer than
+any of the others, couldn't you at least have held on till you were sure
+of some kind of an opening?"
+
+She made no reply for a moment; then she turned a listless glance to the
+rain-beaten window. "Oughtn't we be starting?" she asked, with a lofty
+assumption of indifference that might have been Lady Ulrica's.
+
+Darrow, surprised by the change, but accepting her rebuff as a phase of
+what he guessed to be a confused and tormented mood, rose from his seat
+and lifted her jacket from the chair-back on which she had hung it to
+dry. As he held it toward her she looked up at him quickly.
+
+"The truth is, we quarrelled," she broke out, "and I left last night
+without my dinner--and without my salary."
+
+"Ah--" he groaned, with a sharp perception of all the sordid dangers
+that might attend such a break with Mrs. Murrett.
+
+"And without a character!" she added, as she slipped her arms into the
+jacket. "And without a trunk, as it appears--but didn't you say that,
+before going, there'd be time for another look at the station?"
+
+There was time for another look at the station; but the look again
+resulted in disappointment, since her trunk was nowhere to be found in
+the huge heap disgorged by the newly-arrived London express. The fact
+caused Miss Viner a moment's perturbation; but she promptly adjusted
+herself to the necessity of proceeding on her journey, and her decision
+confirmed Darrow's vague resolve to go to Paris instead of retracing his
+way to London.
+
+Miss Viner seemed cheered at the prospect of his company, and sustained
+by his offer to telegraph to Charing Cross for the missing trunk; and
+he left her to wait in the fly while he hastened back to the telegraph
+office. The enquiry despatched, he was turning away from the desk when
+another thought struck him and he went back and indited a message to his
+servant in London: "If any letters with French post-mark received since
+departure forward immediately to Terminus Hotel Gare du Nord Paris."
+
+Then he rejoined Miss Viner, and they drove off through the rain to the
+pier.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+Almost as soon as the train left Calais her head had dropped back into
+the corner, and she had fallen asleep.
+
+Sitting opposite, in the compartment from which he had contrived to have
+other travellers excluded, Darrow looked at her curiously. He had never
+seen a face that changed so quickly. A moment since it had danced like
+a field of daisies in a summer breeze; now, under the pallid oscillating
+light of the lamp overhead, it wore the hard stamp of experience, as of
+a soft thing chilled into shape before its curves had rounded: and it
+moved him to see that care already stole upon her when she slept.
+
+The story she had imparted to him in the wheezing shaking cabin, and at
+the Calais buffet--where he had insisted on offering her the dinner
+she had missed at Mrs. Murrett's--had given a distincter outline to
+her figure. From the moment of entering the New York boarding-school to
+which a preoccupied guardian had hastily consigned her after the death
+of her parents, she had found herself alone in a busy and indifferent
+world. Her youthful history might, in fact, have been summed up in
+the statement that everybody had been too busy to look after her. Her
+guardian, a drudge in a big banking house, was absorbed by "the office";
+the guardian's wife, by her health and her religion; and an elder
+sister, Laura, married, unmarried, remarried, and pursuing, through all
+these alternating phases, some vaguely "artistic" ideal on which the
+guardian and his wife looked askance, had (as Darrow conjectured) taken
+their disapproval as a pretext for not troubling herself about
+poor Sophy, to whom--perhaps for this reason--she had remained the
+incarnation of remote romantic possibilities.
+
+In the course of time a sudden "stroke" of the guardian's had thrown his
+personal affairs into a state of confusion from which--after his widely
+lamented death--it became evident that it would not be possible to
+extricate his ward's inheritance. No one deplored this more sincerely
+than his widow, who saw in it one more proof of her husband's life
+having been sacrificed to the innumerable duties imposed on him, and who
+could hardly--but for the counsels of religion--have brought herself to
+pardon the young girl for her indirect share in hastening his end. Sophy
+did not resent this point of view. She was really much sorrier for her
+guardian's death than for the loss of her insignificant fortune. The
+latter had represented only the means of holding her in bondage, and
+its disappearance was the occasion of her immediate plunge into the
+wide bright sea of life surrounding the island-of her captivity. She had
+first landed--thanks to the intervention of the ladies who had directed
+her education--in a Fifth Avenue school-room where, for a few months,
+she acted as a buffer between three autocratic infants and their
+bodyguard of nurses and teachers. The too-pressing attentions of their
+father's valet had caused her to fly this sheltered spot, against the
+express advice of her educational superiors, who implied that, in their
+own case, refinement and self-respect had always sufficed to keep the
+most ungovernable passions at bay. The experience of the guardian's
+widow having been precisely similar, and the deplorable precedent of
+Laura's career being present to all their minds, none of these ladies
+felt any obligation to intervene farther in Sophy's affairs; and she was
+accordingly left to her own resources.
+
+A schoolmate from the Rocky Mountains, who was taking her father and
+mother to Europe, had suggested Sophy's accompanying them, and "going
+round" with her while her progenitors, in the care of the courier,
+nursed their ailments at a fashionable bath. Darrow gathered that the
+"going round" with Mamie Hoke was a varied and diverting process; but
+this relatively brilliant phase of Sophy's career was cut short by
+the elopement of the inconsiderate Mamie with a "matinee idol" who had
+followed her from New York, and by the precipitate return of her parents
+to negotiate for the repurchase of their child.
+
+It was then--after an interval of repose with compassionate but
+impecunious American friends in Paris--that Miss Viner had been drawn
+into the turbid current of Mrs. Murrett's career. The impecunious
+compatriots had found Mrs. Murrett for her, and it was partly on
+their account (because they were such dears, and so unconscious, poor
+confiding things, of what they were letting her in for) that Sophy had
+stuck it out so long in the dreadful house in Chelsea. The Farlows, she
+explained to Darrow, were the best friends she had ever had (and the
+only ones who had ever "been decent" about Laura, whom they had seen
+once, and intensely admired); but even after twenty years of Paris they
+were the most incorrigibly inexperienced angels, and quite persuaded
+that Mrs. Murrett was a woman of great intellectual eminence, and the
+house at Chelsea "the last of the salons"--Darrow knew what she meant?
+And she hadn't liked to undeceive them, knowing that to do so would be
+virtually to throw herself back on their hands, and feeling, moreover,
+after her previous experiences, the urgent need of gaining, at any cost,
+a name for stability; besides which--she threw it off with a slight
+laugh--no other chance, in all these years, had happened to come to her.
+
+She had brushed in this outline of her career with light rapid strokes,
+and in a tone of fatalism oddly untinged by bitterness. Darrow perceived
+that she classified people according to their greater or less "luck" in
+life, but she appeared to harbour no resentment against the undefined
+power which dispensed the gift in such unequal measure. Things came
+one's way or they didn't; and meanwhile one could only look on, and make
+the most of small compensations, such as watching "the show" at Mrs.
+Murrett's, and talking over the Lady Ulricas and other footlight
+figures. And at any moment, of course, a turn of the kaleidoscope might
+suddenly toss a bright spangle into the grey pattern of one's days.
+
+This light-hearted philosophy was not without charm to a young man
+accustomed to more traditional views. George Darrow had had a fairly
+varied experience of feminine types, but the women he had frequented had
+either been pronouncedly "ladies" or they had not. Grateful to both for
+ministering to the more complex masculine nature, and disposed to
+assume that they had been evolved, if not designed, to that end, he
+had instinctively kept the two groups apart in his mind, avoiding that
+intermediate society which attempts to conciliate both theories of life.
+"Bohemianism" seemed to him a cheaper convention than the other two, and
+he liked, above all, people who went as far as they could in their own
+line--liked his "ladies" and their rivals to be equally unashamed of
+showing for exactly what they were. He had not indeed--the fact of Lady
+Ulrica was there to remind him--been without his experience of a third
+type; but that experience had left him with a contemptuous distaste for
+the woman who uses the privileges of one class to shelter the customs of
+another.
+
+As to young girls, he had never thought much about them since his early
+love for the girl who had become Mrs. Leath. That episode seemed, as
+he looked back on it, to bear no more relation to reality than a pale
+decorative design to the confused richness of a summer landscape. He
+no longer understood the violent impulses and dreamy pauses of his own
+young heart, or the inscrutable abandonments and reluctances of hers. He
+had known a moment of anguish at losing her--the mad plunge of youthful
+instincts against the barrier of fate; but the first wave of stronger
+sensation had swept away all but the outline of their story, and the
+memory of Anna Summers had made the image of the young girl sacred, but
+the class uninteresting.
+
+Such generalisations belonged, however, to an earlier stage of his
+experience. The more he saw of life the more incalculable he found
+it; and he had learned to yield to his impressions without feeling
+the youthful need of relating them to others. It was the girl in the
+opposite seat who had roused in him the dormant habit of comparison.
+She was distinguished from the daughters of wealth by her avowed
+acquaintance with the real business of living, a familiarity as
+different as possible from their theoretical proficiency; yet it seemed
+to Darrow that her experience had made her free without hardness and
+self-assured without assertiveness.
+
+
+The rush into Amiens, and the flash of the station lights into their
+compartment, broke Miss Viner's sleep, and without changing her position
+she lifted her lids and looked at Darrow. There was neither surprise nor
+bewilderment in the look. She seemed instantly conscious, not so much
+of where she was, as of the fact that she was with him; and that fact
+seemed enough to reassure her. She did not even turn her head to look
+out; her eyes continued to rest on him with a vague smile which appeared
+to light her face from within, while her lips kept their sleepy droop.
+
+Shouts and the hurried tread of travellers came to them through the
+confusing cross-lights of the platform. A head appeared at the window,
+and Darrow threw himself forward to defend their solitude; but the
+intruder was only a train hand going his round of inspection. He passed
+on, and the lights and cries of the station dropped away, merged in a
+wider haze and a hollower resonance, as the train gathered itself up
+with a long shake and rolled out again into the darkness.
+
+Miss Viner's head sank back against the cushion, pushing out a dusky
+wave of hair above her forehead. The swaying of the train loosened a
+lock over her ear, and she shook it back with a movement like a boy's,
+while her gaze still rested on her companion.
+
+"You're not too tired?"
+
+She shook her head with a smile.
+
+"We shall be in before midnight. We're very nearly on time." He verified
+the statement by holding up his watch to the lamp.
+
+She nodded dreamily. "It's all right. I telegraphed Mrs. Farlow that
+they mustn't think of coming to the station; but they'll have told the
+concierge to look out for me."
+
+"You'll let me drive you there?"
+
+She nodded again, and her eyes closed. It was very pleasant to Darrow
+that she made no effort to talk or to dissemble her sleepiness. He sat
+watching her till the upper lashes met and mingled with the lower,
+and their blent shadow lay on her cheek; then he stood up and drew the
+curtain over the lamp, drowning the compartment in a bluish twilight.
+
+As he sank back into his seat he thought how differently Anna
+Summers--or even Anna Leath--would have behaved. She would not have
+talked too much; she would not have been either restless or embarrassed;
+but her adaptability, her appropriateness, would not have been
+nature but "tact." The oddness of the situation would have made sleep
+impossible, or, if weariness had overcome her for a moment, she would
+have waked with a start, wondering where she was, and how she had come
+there, and if her hair were tidy; and nothing short of hairpins and a
+glass would have restored her self-possession...
+
+The reflection set him wondering whether the "sheltered" girl's
+bringing-up might not unfit her for all subsequent contact with life.
+How much nearer to it had Mrs. Leath been brought by marriage and
+motherhood, and the passage of fourteen years? What were all her
+reticences and evasions but the result of the deadening process of
+forming a "lady"? The freshness he had marvelled at was like the
+unnatural whiteness of flowers forced in the dark.
+
+As he looked back at their few days together he saw that their
+intercourse had been marked, on her part, by the same hesitations and
+reserves which had chilled their earlier intimacy. Once more they had
+had their hour together and she had wasted it. As in her girlhood, her
+eyes had made promises which her lips were afraid to keep. She was still
+afraid of life, of its ruthlessness, its danger and mystery. She was
+still the petted little girl who cannot be left alone in the dark...His
+memory flew back to their youthful story, and long-forgotten details
+took shape before him. How frail and faint the picture was! They seemed,
+he and she, like the ghostly lovers of the Grecian Urn, forever pursuing
+without ever clasping each other. To this day he did not quite know
+what had parted them: the break had been as fortuitous as the fluttering
+apart of two seed-vessels on a wave of summer air...
+
+The very slightness, vagueness, of the memory gave it an added
+poignancy. He felt the mystic pang of the parent for a child which
+has just breathed and died. Why had it happened thus, when the least
+shifting of influences might have made it all so different? If she had
+been given to him then he would have put warmth in her veins and light
+in her eyes: would have made her a woman through and through. Musing
+thus, he had the sense of waste that is the bitterest harvest of
+experience. A love like his might have given her the divine gift of
+self-renewal; and now he saw her fated to wane into old age repeating
+the same gestures, echoing the words she had always heard, and
+perhaps never guessing that, just outside her glazed and curtained
+consciousness, life rolled away, a vast blackness starred with lights,
+like the night landscape beyond the windows of the train.
+
+The engine lowered its speed for the passage through a sleeping station.
+In the light of the platform lamp Darrow looked across at his companion.
+Her head had dropped toward one shoulder, and her lips were just far
+enough apart for the reflection of the upper one to deepen the colour
+of the other. The jolting of the train had again shaken loose the lock
+above her ear. It danced on her cheek like the flit of a brown wing over
+flowers, and Darrow felt an intense desire to lean forward and put it
+back behind her ear.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+As their motor-cab, on the way from the Gare du Nord, turned into the
+central glitter of the Boulevard, Darrow had bent over to point out an
+incandescent threshold.
+
+"There!"
+
+Above the doorway, an arch of flame flashed out the name of a great
+actress, whose closing performances in a play of unusual originality
+had been the theme of long articles in the Paris papers which Darrow had
+tossed into their compartment at Calais.
+
+"That's what you must see before you're twenty-four hours older!"
+
+The girl followed his gesture eagerly. She was all awake and alive now,
+as if the heady rumours of the streets, with their long effervescences
+of light, had passed into her veins like wine.
+
+"Cerdine? Is that where she acts?" She put her head out of the window,
+straining back for a glimpse of the sacred threshold. As they flew past
+it she sank into her seat with a satisfied sigh.
+
+"It's delicious enough just to KNOW she's there! I've never seen her,
+you know. When I was here with Mamie Hoke we never went anywhere but to
+the music halls, because she couldn't understand any French; and when
+I came back afterward to the Farlows' I was dead broke, and couldn't
+afford the play, and neither could they; so the only chance we had was
+when friends of theirs invited us--and once it was to see a tragedy by
+a Roumanian lady, and the other time it was for 'L'Ami Fritz' at the
+Francais."
+
+Darrow laughed. "You must do better than that now. 'Le Vertige' is a
+fine thing, and Cerdine gets some wonderful effects out of it. You
+must come with me tomorrow evening to see it--with your friends, of
+course.--That is," he added, "if there's any sort of chance of getting
+seats."
+
+The flash of a street lamp lit up her radiant face. "Oh, will you really
+take us? What fun to think that it's tomorrow already!"
+
+It was wonderfully pleasant to be able to give such pleasure. Darrow was
+not rich, but it was almost impossible for him to picture the state of
+persons with tastes and perceptions like his own, to whom an evening at
+the theatre was an unattainable indulgence. There floated through his
+mind an answer of Mrs. Leath's to his enquiry whether she had seen the
+play in question. "No. I meant to, of course, but one is so overwhelmed
+with things in Paris. And then I'm rather sick of Cerdine--one is always
+being dragged to see her."
+
+That, among the people he frequented, was the usual attitude toward such
+opportunities. There were too many, they were a nuisance, one had to
+defend one's self! He even remembered wondering, at the moment,
+whether to a really fine taste the exceptional thing could ever become
+indifferent through habit; whether the appetite for beauty was so soon
+dulled that it could be kept alive only by privation. Here, at any rate,
+was a fine chance to experiment with such a hunger: he almost wished he
+might stay on in Paris long enough to take the measure of Miss Viner's
+receptivity.
+
+She was still dwelling on his promise, "It's too beautiful of you! Oh,
+don't you THINK you'll be able to get seats?" And then, after a pause of
+brimming appreciation: "I wonder if you'll think me horrid?--but it may
+be my only chance; and if you can't get places for us all, wouldn't you
+perhaps just take ME? After all, the Farlows may have seen it!"
+
+He had not, of course, thought her horrid, but only the more engaging,
+for being so natural, and so unashamed of showing the frank greed of her
+famished youth. "Oh, you shall go somehow!" he had gaily promised her;
+and she had dropped back with a sigh of pleasure as their cab passed
+into the dimly-lit streets of the Farlows' quarter beyond the Seine...
+
+
+This little passage came back to him the next morning, as he opened his
+hotel window on the early roar of the Northern Terminus.
+
+The girl was there, in the room next to him. That had been the first
+point in his waking consciousness. The second was a sense of relief at
+the obligation imposed on him by this unexpected turn of everts. To
+wake to the necessity of action, to postpone perforce the fruitless
+contemplation of his private grievance, was cause enough for gratitude,
+even if the small adventure in which he found himself involved had not,
+on its own merits, roused an instinctive curiosity to see it through.
+
+When he and his companion, the night before, had reached the Farlows'
+door in the rue de la Chaise, it was only to find, after repeated
+assaults on its panels, that the Farlows were no longer there. They
+had moved away the week before, not only from their apartment but from
+Paris; and Miss Viner's breach with Mrs. Murrett had been too sudden to
+permit her letter and telegram to overtake them. Both communications,
+no doubt, still reposed in a pigeon-hole of the loge; but its custodian,
+when drawn from his lair, sulkily declined to let Miss Viner verify the
+fact, and only flung out, in return for Darrow's bribe, the statement
+that the Americans had gone to Joigny.
+
+To pursue them there at that hour was manifestly impossible, and Miss
+Viner, disturbed but not disconcerted by this new obstacle, had quite
+simply acceded to Darrow's suggestion that she should return for what
+remained of the night to the hotel where he had sent his luggage.
+
+The drive back through the dark hush before dawn, with the nocturnal
+blaze of the Boulevard fading around them like the false lights of
+a magician's palace, had so played on her impressionability that she
+seemed to give no farther thought to her own predicament. Darrow noticed
+that she did not feel the beauty and mystery of the spectacle as much
+as its pressure of human significance, all its hidden implications
+of emotion and adventure. As they passed the shadowy colonnade of the
+Francais, remote and temple-like in the paling lights, he felt a clutch
+on his arm, and heard the cry: "There are things THERE that I want so
+desperately to see!" and all the way back to the hotel she continued to
+question him, with shrewd precision and an artless thirst for detail,
+about the theatrical life of Paris. He was struck afresh, as he
+listened, by the way in which her naturalness eased the situation of
+constraint, leaving to it only a pleasant savour of good fellowship. It
+was the kind of episode that one might, in advance, have characterized
+as "awkward", yet that was proving, in the event, as much outside such
+definitions as a sunrise stroll with a dryad in a dew-drenched forest;
+and Darrow reflected that mankind would never have needed to invent tact
+if it had not first invented social complications.
+
+It had been understood, with his good-night to Miss Viner, that the next
+morning he was to look up the Joigny trains, and see her safely to
+the station; but, while he breakfasted and waited for a time-table, he
+recalled again her cry of joy at the prospect of seeing Cerdine. It was
+certainly a pity, since that most elusive and incalculable of artists
+was leaving the next week for South America, to miss what might be a
+last sight of her in her greatest part; and Darrow, having dressed and
+made the requisite excerpts from the time-table, decided to carry the
+result of his deliberations to his neighbour's door.
+
+It instantly opened at his knock, and she came forth looking as if she
+had been plunged into some sparkling element which had curled up all her
+drooping tendrils and wrapped her in a shimmer of fresh leaves.
+
+"Well, what do you think of me?" she cried; and with a hand at her waist
+she spun about as if to show off some miracle of Parisian dress-making.
+
+"I think the missing trunk has come--and that it was worth waiting for!"
+
+"You DO like my dress?"
+
+"I adore it! I always adore new dresses--why, you don't mean to say it's
+NOT a new one?"
+
+She laughed out her triumph.
+
+"No, no, no! My trunk hasn't come, and this is only my old rag of
+yesterday--but I never knew the trick to fail!" And, as he stared: "You
+see," she joyously explained, "I've always had to dress in all kinds of
+dreary left-overs, and sometimes, when everybody else was smart and
+new, it used to make me awfully miserable. So one day, when Mrs. Murrett
+dragged me down unexpectedly to fill a place at dinner, I suddenly
+thought I'd try spinning around like that, and say to every one: 'WELL,
+WHAT DO YOU THINK OF ME?' And, do you know, they were all taken in,
+including Mrs. Murrett, who didn't recognize my old turned and dyed
+rags, and told me afterward it was awfully bad form to dress as if I
+were somebody that people would expect to know! And ever since, whenever
+I've particularly wanted to look nice, I've just asked people what they
+thought of my new frock; and they're always, always taken in!"
+
+She dramatized her explanation so vividly that Darrow felt as if his
+point were gained.
+
+"Ah, but this confirms your vocation--of course," he cried, "you must
+see Cerdine!" and, seeing her face fall at this reminder of the change
+in her prospects, he hastened to set forth his plan. As he did so, he
+saw how easy it was to explain things to her. She would either accept
+his suggestion, or she would not: but at least she would waste no time
+in protestations and objections, or any vain sacrifice to the idols of
+conformity. The conviction that one could, on any given point, almost
+predicate this of her, gave him the sense of having advanced far enough
+in her intimacy to urge his arguments against a hasty pursuit of her
+friends.
+
+Yes, it would certainly be foolish--she at once agreed--in the case
+of such dear indefinite angels as the Farlows, to dash off after them
+without more positive proof that they were established at Joigny, and
+so established that they could take her in. She owned it was but too
+probable that they had gone there to "cut down", and might be doing so
+in quarters too contracted to receive her; and it would be unfair, on
+that chance, to impose herself on them unannounced. The simplest way of
+getting farther light on the question would be to go back to the rue de
+la Chaise, where, at that more conversable hour, the concierge might be
+less chary of detail; and she could decide on her next step in the light
+of such facts as he imparted.
+
+Point by point, she fell in with the suggestion, recognizing, in the
+light of their unexplained flight, that the Farlows might indeed be in a
+situation on which one could not too rashly intrude. Her concern for her
+friends seemed to have effaced all thought of herself, and this little
+indication of character gave Darrow a quite disproportionate pleasure.
+She agreed that it would be well to go at once to the rue de la Chaise,
+but met his proposal that they should drive by the declaration that it
+was a "waste" not to walk in Paris; so they set off on foot through the
+cheerful tumult of the streets.
+
+The walk was long enough for him to learn many things about her. The
+storm of the previous night had cleared the air, and Paris shone in
+morning beauty under a sky that was all broad wet washes of white and
+blue; but Darrow again noticed that her visual sensitiveness was less
+keen than her feeling for what he was sure the good Farlows--whom he
+already seemed to know--would have called "the human interest." She
+seemed hardly conscious of sensations of form and colour, or of any
+imaginative suggestion, and the spectacle before them--always, in
+its scenic splendour, so moving to her companion--broke up, under her
+scrutiny, into a thousand minor points: the things in the shops, the
+types of character and manner of occupation shown in the passing faces,
+the street signs, the names of the hotels they passed, the motley
+brightness of the flower-carts, the identity of the churches and public
+buildings that caught her eye. But what she liked best, he divined, was
+the mere fact of being free to walk abroad in the bright air, her
+tongue rattling on as it pleased, while her feet kept time to the mighty
+orchestration of the city's sounds. Her delight in the fresh air, in
+the freedom, light and sparkle of the morning, gave him a sudden insight
+into her stifled past; nor was it indifferent to him to perceive
+how much his presence evidently added to her enjoyment. If only as a
+sympathetic ear, he guessed what he must be worth to her. The girl
+had been dying for some one to talk to, some one before whom she could
+unfold and shake out to the light her poor little shut-away emotions.
+Years of repression were revealed in her sudden burst of confidence; and
+the pity she inspired made Darrow long to fill her few free hours to the
+brim.
+
+She had the gift of rapid definition, and his questions as to the life
+she had led with the Farlows, during the interregnum between the Hoke
+and Murrett eras, called up before him a queer little corner of Parisian
+existence. The Farlows themselves--he a painter, she a "magazine
+writer"--rose before him in all their incorruptible simplicity: an
+elderly New England couple, with vague yearnings for enfranchisement,
+who lived in Paris as if it were a Massachusetts suburb, and dwelt
+hopefully on the "higher side" of the Gallic nature. With equal
+vividness she set before him the component figures of the circle from
+which Mrs. Farlow drew the "Inner Glimpses of French Life" appearing
+over her name in a leading New England journal: the Roumanian lady who
+had sent them tickets for her tragedy, an elderly French gentleman
+who, on the strength of a week's stay at Folkestone, translated English
+fiction for the provincial press, a lady from Wichita, Kansas, who
+advocated free love and the abolition of the corset, a clergyman's
+widow from Torquay who had written an "English Ladies' Guide to Foreign
+Galleries" and a Russian sculptor who lived on nuts and was "almost
+certainly" an anarchist. It was this nucleus, and its outer ring
+of musical, architectural and other American students, which posed
+successively to Mrs. Farlow's versatile fancy as a centre of "University
+Life", a "Salon of the Faubourg St. Germain", a group of Parisian
+"Intellectuals" or a "Cross-section of Montmartre"; but even her faculty
+for extracting from it the most varied literary effects had not sufficed
+to create a permanent demand for the "Inner Glimpses", and there
+were days when--Mr. Farlow's landscapes being equally unmarketable--a
+temporary withdrawal to the country (subsequently utilized as "Peeps
+into Chateau Life") became necessary to the courageous couple.
+
+Five years of Mrs. Murrett's world, while increasing Sophy's tenderness
+for the Farlows, had left her with few illusions as to their power of
+advancing her fortunes; and she did not conceal from Darrow that
+her theatrical projects were of the vaguest. They hung mainly on the
+problematical good-will of an ancient comedienne, with whom Mrs. Farlow
+had a slight acquaintance (extensively utilized in "Stars of the French
+Footlights" and "Behind the Scenes at the Francais"), and who had once,
+with signs of approval, heard Miss Viner recite the Nuit de Mai.
+
+"But of course I know how much that's worth," the girl broke off, with
+one of her flashes of shrewdness. "And besides, it isn't likely that a
+poor old fossil like Mme. Dolle could get anybody to listen to her now,
+even if she really thought I had talent. But she might introduce me to
+people; or at least give me a few tips. If I could manage to earn enough
+to pay for lessons I'd go straight to some of the big people and work
+with them. I'm rather hoping the Farlows may find me a chance of that
+kind--an engagement with some American family in Paris who would want to
+be 'gone round' with like the Hokes, and who'd leave me time enough to
+study."
+
+In the rue de la Chaise they learned little except the exact address
+of the Farlows, and the fact that they had sub-let their flat before
+leaving. This information obtained, Darrow proposed to Miss Viner that
+they should stroll along the quays to a little restaurant looking out on
+the Seine, and there, over the plat du jour, consider the next step
+to be taken. The long walk had given her cheeks a glow indicative of
+wholesome hunger, and she made no difficulty about satisfying it in
+Darrow's company. Regaining the river they walked on in the direction
+of Notre Dame, delayed now and again by the young man's irresistible
+tendency to linger over the bookstalls, and by his ever-fresh response
+to the shifting beauties of the scene. For two years his eyes had been
+subdued to the atmospheric effects of London, to the mysterious fusion
+of darkly-piled city and low-lying bituminous sky; and the transparency
+of the French air, which left the green gardens and silvery stones so
+classically clear yet so softly harmonized, struck him as having a kind
+of conscious intelligence. Every line of the architecture, every arch
+of the bridges, the very sweep of the strong bright river between them,
+while contributing to this effect, sent forth each a separate appeal
+to some sensitive memory; so that, for Darrow, a walk through the Paris
+streets was always like the unrolling of a vast tapestry from which
+countless stored fragrances were shaken out.
+
+It was a proof of the richness and multiplicity of the spectacle that
+it served, without incongruity, for so different a purpose as the
+background of Miss Viner's enjoyment. As a mere drop-scene for her
+personal adventure it was just as much in its place as in the evocation
+of great perspectives of feeling. For her, as he again perceived when
+they were seated at their table in a low window above the Seine, Paris
+was "Paris" by virtue of all its entertaining details, its endless
+ingenuities of pleasantness. Where else, for instance, could one
+find the dear little dishes of hors d'oeuvre, the symmetrically-laid
+anchovies and radishes, the thin golden shells of butter, or the wood
+strawberries and brown jars of cream that gave to their repast the last
+refinement of rusticity? Hadn't he noticed, she asked, that cooking
+always expressed the national character, and that French food was
+clever and amusing just because the people were? And in private houses,
+everywhere, how the dishes always resembled the talk--how the very
+same platitudes seemed to go into people's mouths and come out of them?
+Couldn't he see just what kind of menu it would make, if a fairy waved a
+wand and suddenly turned the conversation at a London dinner into joints
+and puddings? She always thought it a good sign when people liked Irish
+stew; it meant that they enjoyed changes and surprises, and taking life
+as it came; and such a beautiful Parisian version of the dish as the
+navarin that was just being set before them was like the very best kind
+of talk--the kind when one could never tell before-hand just what was
+going to be said!
+
+Darrow, as he watched her enjoyment of their innocent feast, wondered if
+her vividness and vivacity were signs of her calling. She was the kind
+of girl in whom certain people would instantly have recognized the
+histrionic gift. But experience had led him to think that, except at the
+creative moment, the divine flame burns low in its possessors. The one
+or two really intelligent actresses he had known had struck him, in
+conversation, as either bovine or primitively "jolly". He had a notion
+that, save in the mind of genius, the creative process absorbs too
+much of the whole stuff of being to leave much surplus for personal
+expression; and the girl before him, with her changing face and flexible
+fancies, seemed destined to work in life itself rather than in any of
+its counterfeits.
+
+The coffee and liqueurs were already on the table when her mind suddenly
+sprang back to the Farlows. She jumped up with one of her subversive
+movements and declared that she must telegraph at once. Darrow called
+for writing materials and room was made at her elbow for the parched
+ink-bottle and saturated blotter of the Parisian restaurant; but the
+mere sight of these jaded implements seemed to paralyze Miss Viner's
+faculties. She hung over the telegraph-form with anxiously-drawn brow,
+the tip of the pen-handle pressed against her lip; and at length she
+raised her troubled eyes to Darrow's.
+
+"I simply can't think how to say it."
+
+"What--that you're staying over to see Cerdine?"
+
+"But AM I--am I, really?" The joy of it flamed over her face.
+
+Darrow looked at his watch. "You could hardly get an answer to your
+telegram in time to take a train to Joigny this afternoon, even if you
+found your friends could have you."
+
+She mused for a moment, tapping her lip with the pen. "But I must let
+them know I'm here. I must find out as soon as possible if they CAN,
+have me." She laid the pen down despairingly. "I never COULD write a
+telegram!" she sighed.
+
+"Try a letter, then and tell them you'll arrive tomorrow."
+
+This suggestion produced immediate relief, and she gave an energetic dab
+at the ink-bottle; but after another interval of uncertain scratching
+she paused again. "Oh, it's fearful! I don't know what on earth to say. I
+wouldn't for the world have them know how beastly Mrs. Murrett's been."
+
+Darrow did not think it necessary to answer. It was no business of his,
+after all. He lit a cigar and leaned back in his seat, letting his eyes
+take their fill of indolent pleasure. In the throes of invention she
+had pushed back her hat, loosening the stray lock which had invited his
+touch the night before. After looking at it for a while he stood up and
+wandered to the window.
+
+Behind him he heard her pen scrape on.
+
+"I don't want to worry them--I'm so certain they've got bothers of their
+own." The faltering scratches ceased again. "I wish I weren't such an
+idiot about writing: all the words get frightened and scurry away when
+I try to catch them." He glanced back at her with a smile as she bent
+above her task like a school-girl struggling with a "composition." Her
+flushed cheek and frowning brow showed that her difficulty was genuine
+and not an artless device to draw him to her side. She was really
+powerless to put her thoughts in writing, and the inability seemed
+characteristic of her quick impressionable mind, and of the incessant
+come-and-go of her sensations. He thought of Anna Leath's letters, or
+rather of the few he had received, years ago, from the girl who had been
+Anna Summers. He saw the slender firm strokes of the pen, recalled the
+clear structure of the phrases, and, by an abrupt association of ideas,
+remembered that, at that very hour, just such a document might be
+awaiting him at the hotel.
+
+What if it were there, indeed, and had brought him a complete
+explanation of her telegram? The revulsion of feeling produced by this
+thought made him look at the girl with sudden impatience. She struck him
+as positively stupid, and he wondered how he could have wasted half his
+day with her, when all the while Mrs. Leath's letter might be lying on
+his table. At that moment, if he could have chosen, he would have left
+his companion on the spot; but he had her on his hands, and must accept
+the consequences.
+
+Some odd intuition seemed to make her conscious of his change of mood,
+for she sprang from her seat, crumpling the letter in her hand.
+
+"I'm too stupid; but I won't keep you any longer. I'll go back to the
+hotel and write there."
+
+Her colour deepened, and for the first time, as their eyes met, he
+noticed a faint embarrassment in hers. Could it be that his nearness
+was, after all, the cause of her confusion? The thought turned his vague
+impatience with her into a definite resentment toward himself. There was
+really no excuse for his having blundered into such an adventure. Why
+had he not shipped the girl off to Joigny by the evening train, instead
+of urging her to delay, and using Cerdine as a pretext? Paris was full
+of people he knew, and his annoyance was increased by the thought that
+some friend of Mrs. Leath's might see him at the play, and report his
+presence there with a suspiciously good-looking companion. The idea was
+distinctly disagreeable: he did not want the woman he adored to think he
+could forget her for a moment. And by this time he had fully persuaded
+himself that a letter from her was awaiting him, and had even gone so
+far as to imagine that its contents might annul the writer's telegraphed
+injunction, and call him to her side at once...
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+At the porter's desk a brief "Pas de lettres" fell destructively on the
+fabric of these hopes. Mrs. Leath had not written--she had not taken the
+trouble to explain her telegram. Darrow turned away with a sharp pang
+of humiliation. Her frugal silence mocked his prodigality of hopes and
+fears. He had put his question to the porter once before, on returning
+to the hotel after luncheon; and now, coming back again in the late
+afternoon, he was met by the same denial. The second post was in, and
+had brought him nothing.
+
+A glance at his watch showed that he had barely time to dress before
+taking Miss Viner out to dine; but as he turned to the lift a new
+thought struck him, and hurrying back into the hall he dashed off
+another telegram to his servant: "Have you forwarded any letter with
+French postmark today? Telegraph answer Terminus."
+
+Some kind of reply would be certain to reach him on his return from the
+theatre, and he would then know definitely whether Mrs. Leath meant
+to write or not. He hastened up to his room and dressed with a lighter
+heart.
+
+Miss Viner's vagrant trunk had finally found its way to its owner;
+and, clad in such modest splendour as it furnished, she shone at Darrow
+across their restaurant table. In the reaction of his wounded vanity he
+found her prettier and more interesting than before. Her dress, sloping
+away from the throat, showed the graceful set of her head on its slender
+neck, and the wide brim of her hat arched above her hair like a dusky
+halo. Pleasure danced in her eyes and on her lips, and as she shone on
+him between the candle-shades Darrow felt that he should not be at all
+sorry to be seen with her in public. He even sent a careless glance
+about him in the vague hope that it might fall on an acquaintance.
+
+At the theatre her vivacity sank into a breathless hush, and she sat
+intent in her corner of their baignoire, with the gaze of a neophyte
+about to be initiated into the sacred mysteries. Darrow placed himself
+behind her, that he might catch her profile between himself and the
+stage. He was touched by the youthful seriousness of her expression. In
+spite of the experiences she must have had, and of the twenty-four
+years to which she owned, she struck him as intrinsically young; and he
+wondered how so evanescent a quality could have been preserved in the
+desiccating Murrett air. As the play progressed he noticed that her
+immobility was traversed by swift flashes of perception. She was not
+missing anything, and her intensity of attention when Cerdine was on the
+stage drew an anxious line between her brows.
+
+After the first act she remained for a few minutes rapt and motionless;
+then she turned to her companion with a quick patter of questions. He
+gathered from them that she had been less interested in following
+the general drift of the play than in observing the details of its
+interpretation. Every gesture and inflection of the great actress's
+had been marked and analyzed; and Darrow felt a secret gratification in
+being appealed to as an authority on the histrionic art. His interest in
+it had hitherto been merely that of the cultivated young man curious of
+all forms of artistic expression; but in reply to her questions he found
+things to say about it which evidently struck his listener as impressive
+and original, and with which he himself was not, on the whole,
+dissatisfied. Miss Viner was much more concerned to hear his views
+than to express her own, and the deference with which she received his
+comments called from him more ideas about the theatre than he had ever
+supposed himself to possess.
+
+With the second act she began to give more attention to the development
+of the play, though her interest was excited rather by what she called
+"the story" than by the conflict of character producing it. Oddly
+combined with her sharp apprehension of things theatrical, her knowledge
+of technical "dodges" and green-room precedents, her glibness about
+"lines" and "curtains", was the primitive simplicity of her attitude
+toward the tale itself, as toward something that was "really happening"
+and at which one assisted as at a street-accident or a quarrel overheard
+in the next room. She wanted to know if Darrow thought the lovers
+"really would" be involved in the catastrophe that threatened them,
+and when he reminded her that his predictions were disqualified by his
+having already seen the play, she exclaimed: "Oh, then, please don't
+tell me what's going to happen!" and the next moment was questioning
+him about Cerdine's theatrical situation and her private history. On the
+latter point some of her enquiries were of a kind that it is not in
+the habit of young girls to make, or even to know how to make; but her
+apparent unconsciousness of the fact seemed rather to reflect on her
+past associates than on herself.
+
+When the second act was over, Darrow suggested their taking a turn
+in the foyer; and seated on one of its cramped red velvet sofas they
+watched the crowd surge up and down in a glare of lights and gilding.
+Then, as she complained of the heat, he led her through the press to the
+congested cafe at the foot of the stairs, where orangeades were thrust
+at them between the shoulders of packed consommateurs and Darrow,
+lighting a cigarette while she sucked her straw, knew the primitive
+complacency of the man at whose companion other men stare.
+
+On a corner of their table lay a smeared copy of a theatrical journal.
+It caught Sophy's eye and after poring over the page she looked up with
+an excited exclamation.
+
+"They're giving Oedipe tomorrow afternoon at the Francais! I suppose
+you've seen it heaps and heaps of times?"
+
+He smiled back at her. "You must see it too. We'll go tomorrow."
+
+She sighed at his suggestion, but without discarding it. "How can I? The
+last train for Joigny leaves at four."
+
+"But you don't know yet that your friends will want you."
+
+"I shall know tomorrow early. I asked Mrs. Farlow to telegraph as soon
+as she got my letter." A twinge of compunction shot through Darrow. Her
+words recalled to him that on their return to the hotel after luncheon
+she had given him her letter to post, and that he had never thought of
+it again. No doubt it was still in the pocket of the coat he had taken
+off when he dressed for dinner. In his perturbation he pushed back his
+chair, and the movement made her look up at him.
+
+"What's the matter?"
+
+"Nothing. Only--you know I don't fancy that letter can have caught this
+afternoon's post."
+
+"Not caught it? Why not?"
+
+"Why, I'm afraid it will have been too late." He bent his head to light
+another cigarette.
+
+She struck her hands together with a gesture which, to his amusement, he
+noticed she had caught from Cerdine.
+
+"Oh, dear, I hadn't thought of that! But surely it will reach them in
+the morning?"
+
+"Some time in the morning, I suppose. You know the French provincial
+post is never in a hurry. I don't believe your letter would have been
+delivered this evening in any case." As this idea occurred to him he
+felt himself almost absolved.
+
+"Perhaps, then, I ought to have telegraphed?"
+
+"I'll telegraph for you in the morning if you say so."
+
+The bell announcing the close of the entr'-acte shrilled through the
+cafe, and she sprang to her feet.
+
+"Oh, come, come! We mustn't miss it!"
+
+Instantly forgetful of the Farlows, she slipped her arm through his and
+turned to push her way back to the theatre.
+
+As soon as the curtain went up she as promptly forgot her companion.
+Watching her from the corner to which he had returned, Darrow saw that
+great waves of sensation were beating deliciously against her brain. It
+was as though every starved sensibility were throwing out feelers to the
+mounting tide; as though everything she was seeing, hearing, imagining,
+rushed in to fill the void of all she had always been denied.
+
+Darrow, as he observed her, again felt a detached enjoyment in her
+pleasure. She was an extraordinary conductor of sensation: she seemed to
+transmit it physically, in emanations that set the blood dancing in his
+veins. He had not often had the opportunity of studying the effects of a
+perfectly fresh impression on so responsive a temperament, and he felt a
+fleeting desire to make its chords vibrate for his own amusement.
+
+At the end of the next act she discovered with dismay that in their
+transit to the cafe she had lost the beautiful pictured programme he
+had bought for her. She wanted to go back and hunt for it, but Darrow
+assured her that he would have no trouble in getting her another. When
+he went out in quest of it she followed him protestingly to the door of
+the box, and he saw that she was distressed at the thought of his having
+to spend an additional franc for her. This frugality smote Darrow by its
+contrast to her natural bright profusion; and again he felt the desire
+to right so clumsy an injustice.
+
+When he returned to the box she was still standing in the doorway,
+and he noticed that his were not the only eyes attracted to her. Then
+another impression sharply diverted his attention. Above the fagged
+faces of the Parisian crowd he had caught the fresh fair countenance
+of Owen Leath signalling a joyful recognition. The young man, slim and
+eager, had detached himself from two companions of his own type, and
+was seeking to push through the press to his step-mother's friend. The
+encounter, to Darrow, could hardly have been more inopportune; it woke
+in him a confusion of feelings of which only the uppermost was allayed
+by seeing Sophy Viner, as if instinctively warned, melt back into the
+shadow of their box.
+
+A minute later Owen Leath was at his side. "I was sure it was you! Such
+luck to run across you! Won't you come off with us to supper after it's
+over? Montmartre, or wherever else you please. Those two chaps over
+there are friends of mine, at the Beaux Arts; both of them rather good
+fellows--and we'd be so glad----"
+
+For half a second Darrow read in his hospitable eye the termination "if
+you'd bring the lady too"; then it deflected into: "We'd all be so glad
+if you'd come."
+
+Darrow, excusing himself with thanks, lingered on for a few minutes'
+chat, in which every word, and every tone of his companion's voice, was
+like a sharp light flashed into aching eyes. He was glad when the bell
+called the audience to their seats, and young Leath left him with the
+friendly question: "We'll see you at Givre later on?"
+
+When he rejoined Miss Viner, Darrow's first care was to find out, by a
+rapid inspection of the house, whether Owen Leath's seat had given him a
+view of their box. But the young man was not visible from it, and Darrow
+concluded that he had been recognized in the corridor and not at his
+companion's side. He scarcely knew why it seemed to him so important
+that this point should be settled; certainly his sense of reassurance
+was less due to regard for Miss Viner than to the persistent vision of
+grave offended eyes...
+
+During the drive back to the hotel this vision was persistently kept
+before him by the thought that the evening post might have brought a
+letter from Mrs. Leath. Even if no letter had yet come, his servant
+might have telegraphed to say that one was on its way; and at the
+thought his interest in the girl at his side again cooled to the
+fraternal, the almost fatherly. She was no more to him, after all, than
+an appealing young creature to whom it was mildly agreeable to have
+offered an evening's diversion; and when, as they rolled into the
+illuminated court of the hotel, she turned with a quick movement which
+brought her happy face close to his, he leaned away, affecting to be
+absorbed in opening the door of the cab.
+
+At the desk the night porter, after a vain search through the
+pigeon-holes, was disposed to think that a letter or telegram had in
+fact been sent up for the gentleman; and Darrow, at the announcement,
+could hardly wait to ascend to his room. Upstairs, he and his companion
+had the long dimly-lit corridor to themselves, and Sophy paused on her
+threshold, gathering up in one hand the pale folds of her cloak, while
+she held the other out to Darrow.
+
+"If the telegram comes early I shall be off by the first train; so I
+suppose this is good-bye," she said, her eyes dimmed by a little shadow
+of regret.
+
+Darrow, with a renewed start of contrition, perceived that he had again
+forgotten her letter; and as their hands met he vowed to himself that
+the moment she had left him he would dash down stairs to post it.
+
+"Oh, I'll see you in the morning, of course!"
+
+A tremor of pleasure crossed her face as he stood before her, smiling a
+little uncertainly.
+
+"At any rate," she said, "I want to thank you now for my good day."
+
+He felt in her hand the same tremor he had seen in her face. "But it's
+YOU, on the contrary--" he began, lifting the hand to his lips.
+
+As he dropped it, and their eyes met, something passed through hers that
+was like a light carried rapidly behind a curtained window.
+
+"Good night; you must be awfully tired," he said with a friendly
+abruptness, turning away without even waiting to see her pass into her
+room. He unlocked his door, and stumbling over the threshold groped in
+the darkness for the electric button. The light showed him a telegram on
+the table, and he forgot everything else as he caught it up.
+
+"No letter from France," the message read.
+
+It fell from Darrow's hand to the floor, and he dropped into a chair
+by the table and sat gazing at the dingy drab and olive pattern of
+the carpet. She had not written, then; she had not written, and it
+was manifest now that she did not mean to write. If she had had any
+intention of explaining her telegram she would certainly, within
+twenty-four hours, have followed it up by a letter. But she evidently
+did not intend to explain it, and her silence could mean only that she
+had no explanation to give, or else that she was too indifferent to be
+aware that one was needed.
+
+Darrow, face to face with these alternatives, felt a recrudescence of
+boyish misery. It was no longer his hurt vanity that cried out. He told
+himself that he could have borne an equal amount of pain, if only it had
+left Mrs. Leath's image untouched; but he could not bear to think of her
+as trivial or insincere. The thought was so intolerable that he felt a
+blind desire to punish some one else for the pain it caused him.
+
+As he sat moodily staring at the carpet its silly intricacies melted
+into a blur from which the eyes of Mrs. Leath again looked out at him.
+He saw the fine sweep of her brows, and the deep look beneath them as
+she had turned from him on their last evening in London. "This will be
+good-bye, then," she had said; and it occurred to him that her parting
+phrase had been the same as Sophy Viner's.
+
+At the thought he jumped to his feet and took down from its hook the
+coat in which he had left Miss Viner's letter. The clock marked the
+third quarter after midnight, and he knew it would make no difference
+if he went down to the post-box now or early the next morning; but he
+wanted to clear his conscience, and having found the letter he went to
+the door.
+
+A sound in the next room made him pause. He had become conscious again
+that, a few feet off, on the other side of a thin partition, a small
+keen flame of life was quivering and agitating the air. Sophy's face
+came hack to him insistently. It was as vivid now as Mrs. Leath's had
+been a moment earlier. He recalled with a faint smile of retrospective
+pleasure the girl's enjoyment of her evening, and the innumerable fine
+feelers of sensation she had thrown out to its impressions.
+
+It gave him a curiously close sense of her presence to think that at
+that moment she was living over her enjoyment as intensely as he was
+living over his unhappiness. His own case was irremediable, but it was
+easy enough to give her a few more hours of pleasure. And did she not
+perhaps secretly expect it of him? After all, if she had been very
+anxious to join her friends she would have telegraphed them on reaching
+Paris, instead of writing. He wondered now that he had not been struck
+at the moment by so artless a device to gain more time. The fact of her
+having practised it did not make him think less well of her; it merely
+strengthened the impulse to use his opportunity. She was starving, poor
+child, for a little amusement, a little personal life--why not give
+her the chance of another day in Paris? If he did so, should he not be
+merely falling in with her own hopes?
+
+At the thought his sympathy for her revived. She became of absorbing
+interest to him as an escape from himself and an object about which his
+thwarted activities could cluster. He felt less drearily alone because
+of her being there, on the other side of the door, and in his gratitude
+to her for giving him this relief he began, with indolent amusement, to
+plan new ways of detaining her. He dropped back into his chair, lit a
+cigar, and smiled a little at the image of her smiling face. He tried to
+imagine what incident of the day she was likely to be recalling at that
+particular moment, and what part he probably played in it. That it
+was not a small part he was certain, and the knowledge was undeniably
+pleasant.
+
+Now and then a sound from her room brought before him more vividly
+the reality of the situation and the strangeness of the vast swarming
+solitude in which he and she were momentarily isolated, amid long lines
+of rooms each holding its separate secret. The nearness of all these
+other mysteries enclosing theirs gave Darrow a more intimate sense of
+the girl's presence, and through the fumes of his cigar his imagination
+continued to follow her to and fro, traced the curve of her slim young
+arms as she raised them to undo her hair, pictured the sliding down of
+her dress to the waist and then to the knees, and the whiteness of her
+feet as she slipped across the floor to bed...
+
+He stood up and shook himself with a yawn, throwing away the end of
+his cigar. His glance, in following it, lit on the telegram which had
+dropped to the floor. The sounds in the next room had ceased, and once
+more he felt alone and unhappy.
+
+Opening the window, he folded his arms on the sill and looked out on the
+vast light-spangled mass of the city, and then up at the dark sky, in
+which the morning planet stood.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+At the Theatre Francais, the next afternoon, Darrow yawned and fidgeted
+in his seat.
+
+The day was warm, the theatre crowded and airless, and the performance,
+it seemed to him, intolerably bad. He stole a glance at his companion,
+wondering if she shared his feelings. Her rapt profile betrayed no
+unrest, but politeness might have caused her to feign an interest that
+she did not feel. He leaned back impatiently, stifling another yawn,
+and trying to fix his attention on the stage. Great things were going
+forward there, and he was not insensible to the stern beauties of the
+ancient drama. But the interpretation of the play seemed to him as
+airless and lifeless as the atmosphere of the theatre. The players were
+the same whom he had often applauded in those very parts, and perhaps
+that fact added to the impression of staleness and conventionality
+produced by their performance. Surely it was time to infuse new blood
+into the veins of the moribund art. He had the impression that the
+ghosts of actors were giving a spectral performance on the shores of
+Styx.
+
+Certainly it was not the most profitable way for a young man with a
+pretty companion to pass the golden hours of a spring afternoon. The
+freshness of the face at his side, reflecting the freshness of the
+season, suggested dapplings of sunlight through new leaves, the sound of
+a brook in the grass, the ripple of tree-shadows over breezy meadows...
+
+When at length the fateful march of the cothurns was stayed by the
+single pause in the play, and Darrow had led Miss Viner out on the
+balcony overhanging the square before the theatre, he turned to see if
+she shared his feelings. But the rapturous look she gave him checked the
+depreciation on his lips.
+
+"Oh, why did you bring me out here? One ought to creep away and sit in
+the dark till it begins again!"
+
+"Is THAT the way they made you feel?"
+
+"Didn't they _YOU?_...As if the gods were there all the while, just behind
+them, pulling the strings?" Her hands were pressed against the railing,
+her face shining and darkening under the wing-beats of successive
+impressions.
+
+Darrow smiled in enjoyment of her pleasure. After all, he had felt all
+that, long ago; perhaps it was his own fault, rather than that of the
+actors, that the poetry of the play seemed to have evaporated...But no,
+he had been right in judging the performance to be dull and stale:
+it was simply his companion's inexperience, her lack of occasions to
+compare and estimate, that made her think it brilliant.
+
+"I was afraid you were bored and wanted to come away."
+
+"BORED?" She made a little aggrieved grimace. "You mean you thought me
+too ignorant and stupid to appreciate it?"
+
+"No; not that." The hand nearest him still lay on the railing of the
+balcony, and he covered it for a moment with his. As he did so he saw
+the colour rise and tremble in her cheek.
+
+"Tell me just what you think," he said, bending his head a little, and
+only half-aware of his words.
+
+She did not turn her face to his, but began to talk rapidly, trying
+to convey something of what she felt. But she was evidently unused to
+analyzing her aesthetic emotions, and the tumultuous rush of the drama
+seemed to have left her in a state of panting wonder, as though it had
+been a storm or some other natural cataclysm. She had no literary or
+historic associations to which to attach her impressions: her education
+had evidently not comprised a course in Greek literature. But she felt
+what would probably have been unperceived by many a young lady who had
+taken a first in classics: the ineluctable fatality of the tale, the
+dread sway in it of the same mysterious "luck" which pulled the threads
+of her own small destiny. It was not literature to her, it was fact: as
+actual, as near by, as what was happening to her at the moment and what
+the next hour held in store. Seen in this light, the play regained for
+Darrow its supreme and poignant reality. He pierced to the heart of
+its significance through all the artificial accretions with which his
+theories of art and the conventions of the stage had clothed it, and saw
+it as he had never seen it: as life.
+
+After this there could be no question of flight, and he took her back to
+the theatre, content to receive his own sensations through the medium of
+hers. But with the continuation of the play, and the oppression of the
+heavy air, his attention again began to wander, straying back over the
+incidents of the morning.
+
+He had been with Sophy Viner all day, and he was surprised to find
+how quickly the time had gone. She had hardly attempted, as the hours
+passed, to conceal her satisfaction on finding that no telegram came
+from the Farlows. "They'll have written," she had simply said; and her
+mind had at once flown on to the golden prospect of an afternoon at the
+theatre. The intervening hours had been disposed of in a stroll through
+the lively streets, and a repast, luxuriously lingered over, under
+the chestnut-boughs of a restaurant in the Champs Elysees. Everything
+entertained and interested her, and Darrow remarked, with an amused
+detachment, that she was not insensible to the impression her charms
+produced. Yet there was no hard edge of vanity in her sense of her
+prettiness: she seemed simply to be aware of it as a note in the general
+harmony, and to enjoy sounding the note as a singer enjoys singing.
+
+After luncheon, as they sat over their coffee, she had again asked
+an immense number of questions and delivered herself of a remarkable
+variety of opinions. Her questions testified to a wholesome and
+comprehensive human curiosity, and her comments showed, like her
+face and her whole attitude, an odd mingling of precocious wisdom and
+disarming ignorance. When she talked to him about "life"--the word was
+often on her lips--she seemed to him like a child playing with a tiger's
+cub; and he said to himself that some day the child would grow up--and
+so would the tiger. Meanwhile, such expertness qualified by such candour
+made it impossible to guess the extent of her personal experience, or
+to estimate its effect on her character. She might be any one of a dozen
+definable types, or she might--more disconcertingly to her companion and
+more perilously to herself--be a shifting and uncrystallized mixture of
+them all.
+
+Her talk, as usual, had promptly reverted to the stage. She was eager
+to learn about every form of dramatic expression which the metropolis
+of things theatrical had to offer, and her curiosity ranged from the
+official temples of the art to its less hallowed haunts. Her searching
+enquiries about a play whose production, on one of the latter scenes,
+had provoked a considerable amount of scandal, led Darrow to throw out
+laughingly: "To see THAT you'll have to wait till you're married!" and
+his answer had sent her off at a tangent.
+
+"Oh, I never mean to marry," she had rejoined in a tone of youthful
+finality.
+
+"I seem to have heard that before!"
+
+"Yes; from girls who've only got to choose!" Her eyes had grown suddenly
+almost old. "I'd like you to see the only men who've ever wanted to
+marry me! One was the doctor on the steamer, when I came abroad with the
+Hokes: he'd been cashiered from the navy for drunkenness. The other was
+a deaf widower with three grown-up daughters, who kept a clock-shop in
+Bayswater!--Besides," she rambled on, "I'm not so sure that I believe
+in marriage. You see I'm all for self-development and the chance to live
+one's life. I'm awfully modern, you know."
+
+It was just when she proclaimed herself most awfully modern that she
+struck him as most helplessly backward; yet the moment after, without
+any bravado, or apparent desire to assume an attitude, she would
+propound some social axiom which could have been gathered only in the
+bitter soil of experience.
+
+All these things came back to him as he sat beside her in the theatre
+and watched her ingenuous absorption. It was on "the story" that her
+mind was fixed, and in life also, he suspected, it would always be "the
+story", rather than its remoter imaginative issues, that would hold her.
+He did not believe there were ever any echoes in her soul...
+
+There was no question, however, that what she felt was felt with
+intensity: to the actual, the immediate, she spread vibrating strings.
+When the play was over, and they came out once more into the sunlight,
+Darrow looked down at her with a smile.
+
+"Well?" he asked.
+
+She made no answer. Her dark gaze seemed to rest on him without seeing
+him. Her cheeks and lips were pale, and the loose hair under her
+hat-brim clung to her forehead in damp rings. She looked like a young
+priestess still dazed by the fumes of the cavern.
+
+"You poor child--it's been almost too much for you!"
+
+She shook her head with a vague smile.
+
+"Come," he went on, putting his hand on her arm, "let's jump into a taxi
+and get some air and sunshine. Look, there are hours of daylight left;
+and see what a night it's going to be!"
+
+He pointed over their heads, to where a white moon hung in the misty
+blue above the roofs of the rue de Rivoli.
+
+She made no answer, and he signed to a motor-cab, calling out to the
+driver: "To the Bois!"
+
+As the carriage turned toward the Tuileries she roused herself. "I must
+go first to the hotel. There may be a message--at any rate I must decide
+on something."
+
+Darrow saw that the reality of the situation had suddenly forced itself
+upon her. "I MUST decide on something," she repeated.
+
+He would have liked to postpone the return, to persuade her to drive
+directly to the Bois for dinner. It would have been easy enough to
+remind her that she could not start for Joigny that evening, and that
+therefore it was of no moment whether she received the Farlows' answer
+then or a few hours later; but for some reason he hesitated to use this
+argument, which had come so naturally to him the day before. After all,
+he knew she would find nothing at the hotel--so what did it matter if
+they went there?
+
+The porter, interrogated, was not sure. He himself had received nothing
+for the lady, but in his absence his subordinate might have sent a
+letter upstairs.
+
+Darrow and Sophy mounted together in the lift, and the young man, while
+she went into her room, unlocked his own door and glanced at the empty
+table. For him at least no message had come; and on her threshold, a
+moment later, she met him with the expected: "No--there's nothing!"
+
+He feigned an unregretful surprise. "So much the better! And now, shall
+we drive out somewhere? Or would you rather take a boat to Bellevue?
+Have you ever dined there, on the terrace, by moonlight? It's not at all
+bad. And there's no earthly use in sitting here waiting."
+
+She stood before him in perplexity.
+
+"But when I wrote yesterday I asked them to telegraph. I suppose they're
+horribly hard up, the poor dears, and they thought a letter would do
+as well as a telegram." The colour had risen to her face. "That's why I
+wrote instead of telegraphing; I haven't a penny to spare myself!"
+
+Nothing she could have said could have filled her listener with a deeper
+contrition. He felt the red in his own face as he recalled the motive
+with which he had credited her in his midnight musings. But that motive,
+after all, had simply been trumped up to justify his own disloyalty: he
+had never really believed in it. The reflection deepened his confusion,
+and he would have liked to take her hand in his and confess the
+injustice he had done her.
+
+She may have interpreted his change of colour as an involuntary protest
+at being initiated into such shabby details, for she went on with a
+laugh: "I suppose you can hardly understand what it means to have to
+stop and think whether one can afford a telegram? But I've always had to
+consider such things. And I mustn't stay here any longer now--I must try
+to get a night train for Joigny. Even if the Farlows can't take me in,
+I can go to the hotel: it will cost less than staying here." She paused
+again and then exclaimed: "I ought to have thought of that sooner; I
+ought to have telegraphed yesterday! But I was sure I should hear from
+them today; and I wanted--oh, I DID so awfully want to stay!" She threw
+a troubled look at Darrow. "Do you happen to remember," she asked, "what
+time it was when you posted my letter?"
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+Darrow was still standing on her threshold. As she put the question he
+entered the room and closed the door behind him.
+
+His heart was beating a little faster than usual and he had no clear
+idea of what he was about to do or say, beyond the definite conviction
+that, whatever passing impulse of expiation moved him, he would not be
+fool enough to tell her that he had not sent her letter. He knew that
+most wrongdoing works, on the whole, less mischief than its useless
+confession; and this was clearly a case where a passing folly might be
+turned, by avowal, into a serious offense.
+
+"I'm so sorry--so sorry; but you must let me help you...You will let me
+help you?" he said.
+
+He took her hands and pressed them together between his, counting on a
+friendly touch to help out the insufficiency of words. He felt her yield
+slightly to his clasp, and hurried on without giving her time to answer.
+
+"Isn't it a pity to spoil our good time together by regretting anything
+you might have done to prevent our having it?"
+
+She drew back, freeing her hands. Her face, losing its look of appealing
+confidence, was suddenly sharpened by distrust.
+
+"You didn't forget to post my letter?"
+
+Darrow stood before her, constrained and ashamed, and ever more keenly
+aware that the betrayal of his distress must be a greater offense than
+its concealment.
+
+"What an insinuation!" he cried, throwing out his hands with a laugh.
+
+Her face instantly melted to laughter. "Well, then--I WON'T be sorry; I
+won't regret anything except that our good time is over!"
+
+The words were so unexpected that they routed all his resolves. If she
+had gone on doubting him he could probably have gone on deceiving her;
+but her unhesitating acceptance of his word made him hate the part he
+was playing. At the same moment a doubt shot up its serpent-head in his
+own bosom. Was it not he rather than she who was childishly trustful?
+Was she not almost too ready to take his word, and dismiss once for all
+the tiresome question of the letter? Considering what her experiences
+must have been, such trustfulness seemed open to suspicion. But the
+moment his eyes fell on her he was ashamed of the thought, and knew it
+for what it really was: another pretext to lessen his own delinquency.
+
+"Why should our good time be over?" he asked. "Why shouldn't it last a
+little longer?"
+
+She looked up, her lips parted in surprise; but before she could speak
+he went on: "I want you to stay with me--I want you, just for a few
+days, to have all the things you've never had. It's not always May
+and Paris--why not make the most of them now? You know me--we're not
+strangers--why shouldn't you treat me like a friend?"
+
+While he spoke she had drawn away a little, but her hand still lay in
+his. She was pale, and her eyes were fixed on him in a gaze in which
+there was neither distrust or resentment, but only an ingenuous wonder.
+He was extraordinarily touched by her expression.
+
+"Oh, do! You must. Listen: to prove that I'm sincere I'll tell
+you...I'll tell you I didn't post your letter...I didn't post it because
+I wanted so much to give you a few good hours...and because I couldn't
+bear to have you go."
+
+He had the feeling that the words were being uttered in spite of him by
+some malicious witness of the scene, and yet that he was not sorry to
+have them spoken.
+
+The girl had listened to him in silence. She remained motionless for a
+moment after he had ceased to speak; then she snatched away her hand.
+
+"You didn't post my letter? You kept it back on purpose? And you tell
+me so NOW, to prove to me that I'd better put myself under your
+protection?" She burst into a laugh that had in it all the piercing
+echoes of her Murrett past, and her face, at the same moment, underwent
+the same change, shrinking into a small malevolent white mask in which
+the eyes burned black. "Thank you--thank you most awfully for
+telling me! And for all your other kind intentions! The plan's
+delightful--really quite delightful, and I'm extremely flattered and
+obliged."
+
+She dropped into a seat beside her dressing-table, resting her chin on
+her lifted hands, and laughing out at him under the elf-lock which had
+shaken itself down over her eyes.
+
+Her outburst did not offend the young man; its immediate effect was that
+of allaying his agitation. The theatrical touch in her manner made his
+offense seem more venial than he had thought it a moment before.
+
+He drew up a chair and sat down beside her. "After all," he said, in a
+tone of good-humoured protest, "I needn't have told you I'd kept back
+your letter; and my telling you seems rather strong proof that I hadn't
+any very nefarious designs on you."
+
+She met this with a shrug, but he did not give her time to answer. "My
+designs," he continued with a smile, "were not nefarious. I saw you'd
+been through a bad time with Mrs. Murrett, and that there didn't seem
+to be much fun ahead for you; and I didn't see--and I don't yet see--the
+harm of trying to give you a few hours of amusement between a depressing
+past and a not particularly cheerful future." He paused again, and then
+went on, in the same tone of friendly reasonableness: "The mistake I
+made was not to tell you this at once--not to ask you straight out to
+give me a day or two, and let me try to make you forget all the things
+that are troubling you. I was a fool not to see that if I'd put it to
+you in that way you'd have accepted or refused, as you chose; but that
+at least you wouldn't have mistaken my intentions.--Intentions!" He
+stood up, walked the length of the room, and turned back to where she
+still sat motionless, her elbows propped on the dressing-table, her chin
+on her hands. "What rubbish we talk about intentions! The truth is I
+hadn't any: I just liked being with you. Perhaps you don't know how
+extraordinarily one can like being with you...I was depressed and adrift
+myself; and you made me forget my bothers; and when I found you were
+going--and going back to dreariness, as I was--I didn't see why we
+shouldn't have a few hours together first; so I left your letter in my
+pocket."
+
+He saw her face melt as she listened, and suddenly she unclasped her
+hands and leaned to him.
+
+"But are YOU unhappy too? Oh, I never understood--I never dreamed it! I
+thought you'd always had everything in the world you wanted!"
+
+Darrow broke into a laugh at this ingenuous picture of his state. He
+was ashamed of trying to better his case by an appeal to her pity, and
+annoyed with himself for alluding to a subject he would rather have
+kept out of his thoughts. But her look of sympathy had disarmed him; his
+heart was bitter and distracted; she was near him, her eyes were shining
+with compassion--he bent over her and kissed her hand.
+
+"Forgive me--do forgive me," he said.
+
+She stood up with a smiling head-shake. "Oh, it's not so often that
+people try to give me any pleasure--much less two whole days of it!
+I sha'n't forget how kind you've been. I shall have plenty of time to
+remember. But this IS good-bye, you know. I must telegraph at once to
+say I'm coming."
+
+"To say you're coming? Then I'm not forgiven?"
+
+"Oh, you're forgiven--if that's any comfort."
+
+"It's not, the very least, if your way of proving it is to go away!"
+
+She hung her head in meditation. "But I can't stay.--How CAN I stay?"
+she broke out, as if arguing with some unseen monitor.
+
+"Why can't you? No one knows you're here...No one need ever know."
+
+She looked up, and their eyes exchanged meanings for a rapid minute. Her
+gaze was as clear as a boy's. "Oh, it's not THAT," she exclaimed,
+almost impatiently; "it's not people I'm afraid of! They've never put
+themselves out for me--why on earth should I care about them?"
+
+He liked her directness as he had never liked it before. "Well, then,
+what is it? Not ME, I hope?"
+
+"No, not you: I like you. It's the money! With me that's always the root
+of the matter. I could never yet afford a treat in my life!"
+
+"Is _THAT_ all?" He laughed, relieved by her naturalness. "Look here;
+since we re talking as man to man--can't you trust me about that too?"
+
+"Trust you? How do you mean? You'd better not trust ME!" she laughed
+back sharply. "I might never be able to pay up!"
+
+His gesture brushed aside the allusion. "Money may be the root of the
+matter; it can't be the whole of it, between friends. Don't you think
+one friend may accept a small service from another without looking too
+far ahead or weighing too many chances? The question turns entirely on
+what you think of me. If you like me well enough to be willing to take
+a few days' holiday with me, just for the pleasure of the thing, and the
+pleasure you'll be giving me, let's shake hands on it. If you don't like
+me well enough we'll shake hands too; only I shall be sorry," he ended.
+
+"Oh, but I shall be sorry too!" Her face, as she lifted it to his,
+looked so small and young that Darrow felt a fugitive twinge of
+compunction, instantly effaced by the excitement of pursuit.
+
+"Well, then?" He stood looking down on her, his eyes persuading her.
+He was now intensely aware that his nearness was having an effect which
+made it less and less necessary for him to choose his words, and he went
+on, more mindful of the inflections of his voice than of what he was
+actually saying: "Why on earth should we say good-bye if we're both
+sorry to? Won't you tell me your reason? It's not a bit like you to let
+anything stand in the way of your saying just what you feel. You mustn't
+mind offending me, you know!"
+
+She hung before him like a leaf on the meeting of cross-currents, that
+the next ripple may sweep forward or whirl back. Then she flung up
+her head with the odd boyish movement habitual to her in moments of
+excitement. "What I feel? Do you want to know what I feel? That you're
+giving me the only chance I've ever had!"
+
+She turned about on her heel and, dropping into the nearest chair, sank
+forward, her face hidden against the dressing-table.
+
+Under the folds of her thin summer dress the modelling of her back and
+of her lifted arms, and the slight hollow between her shoulder-blades,
+recalled the faint curves of a terra-cotta statuette, some young image
+of grace hardly more than sketched in the clay. Darrow, as he stood
+looking at her, reflected that her character, for all its seeming
+firmness, its flashing edges of "opinion", was probably no less
+immature. He had not expected her to yield so suddenly to his
+suggestion, or to confess her yielding in that way. At first he was
+slightly disconcerted; then he saw how her attitude simplified his own.
+Her behaviour had all the indecision and awkwardness of inexperience. It
+showed that she was a child after all; and all he could do--all he had
+ever meant to do--was to give her a child's holiday to look back to.
+
+For a moment he fancied she was crying; but the next she was on her feet
+and had swept round on him a face she must have turned away only to hide
+the first rush of her pleasure.
+
+For a while they shone on each other without speaking; then she sprang
+to him and held out both hands.
+
+"Is it true? Is it really true? Is it really going to happen to ME?"
+
+He felt like answering: "You're the very creature to whom it was bound
+to happen"; but the words had a double sense that made him wince, and
+instead he caught her proffered hands and stood looking at her across
+the length of her arms, without attempting to bend them or to draw
+her closer. He wanted her to know how her words had moved him; but his
+thoughts were blurred by the rush of the same emotion that possessed
+her, and his own words came with an effort.
+
+He ended by giving her back a laugh as frank as her own, and declaring,
+as he dropped her hands: "All that and more too--you'll see!"
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+All day, since the late reluctant dawn, the rain had come down in
+torrents. It streamed against Darrow's high-perched windows, reduced
+their vast prospect of roofs and chimneys to a black oily huddle, and
+filled the room with the drab twilight of an underground aquarium.
+
+The streams descended with the regularity of a third day's rain, when
+trimming and shuffling are over, and the weather has settled down to do
+its worst. There were no variations of rhythm, no lyrical ups and downs:
+the grey lines streaking the panes were as dense and uniform as a page
+of unparagraphed narrative.
+
+George Darrow had drawn his armchair to the fire. The time-table he
+had been studying lay on the floor, and he sat staring with dull
+acquiescence into the boundless blur of rain, which affected him like a
+vast projection of his own state of mind. Then his eyes travelled slowly
+about the room.
+
+It was exactly ten days since his hurried unpacking had strewn it with
+the contents of his portmanteaux. His brushes and razors were spread out
+on the blotched marble of the chest of drawers. A stack of newspapers
+had accumulated on the centre table under the "electrolier", and half a
+dozen paper novels lay on the mantelpiece among cigar-cases and toilet
+bottles; but these traces of his passage had made no mark on the
+featureless dulness of the room, its look of being the makeshift setting
+of innumerable transient collocations. There was something sardonic,
+almost sinister, in its appearance of having deliberately "made up" for
+its anonymous part, all in noncommittal drabs and browns, with a
+carpet and paper that nobody would remember, and chairs and tables as
+impersonal as railway porters.
+
+Darrow picked up the time-table and tossed it on to the table. Then he
+rose to his feet, lit a cigar and went to the window. Through the rain
+he could just discover the face of a clock in a tall building beyond the
+railway roofs. He pulled out his watch, compared the two time-pieces,
+and started the hands of his with such a rush that they flew past the
+hour and he had to make them repeat the circuit more deliberately. He
+felt a quite disproportionate irritation at the trifling blunder. When
+he had corrected it he went back to his chair and threw himself down,
+leaning back his head against his hands. Presently his cigar went out,
+and he got up, hunted for the matches, lit it again and returned to his
+seat.
+
+The room was getting on his nerves. During the first few days, while
+the skies were clear, he had not noticed it, or had felt for it only the
+contemptuous indifference of the traveller toward a provisional shelter.
+But now that he was leaving it, was looking at it for the last time,
+it seemed to have taken complete possession of his mind, to be soaking
+itself into him like an ugly indelible blot. Every detail pressed itself
+on his notice with the familiarity of an accidental confidant: whichever
+way he turned, he felt the nudge of a transient intimacy...
+
+The one fixed point in his immediate future was that his leave was over
+and that he must be back at his post in London the next morning. Within
+twenty-four hours he would again be in a daylight world of recognized
+activities, himself a busy, responsible, relatively necessary factor in
+the big whirring social and official machine. That fixed obligation
+was the fact he could think of with the least discomfort, yet for some
+unaccountable reason it was the one on which he found it most difficult
+to fix his thoughts. Whenever he did so, the room jerked him back into
+the circle of its insistent associations. It was extraordinary with what
+a microscopic minuteness of loathing he hated it all: the grimy carpet
+and wallpaper, the black marble mantel-piece, the clock with a gilt
+allegory under a dusty bell, the high-bolstered brown-counterpaned bed,
+the framed card of printed rules under the electric light switch, and
+the door of communication with the next room. He hated the door most of
+all...
+
+At the outset, he had felt no special sense of responsibility. He was
+satisfied that he had struck the right note, and convinced of his power
+of sustaining it. The whole incident had somehow seemed, in spite of its
+vulgar setting and its inevitable prosaic propinquities, to be enacting
+itself in some unmapped region outside the pale of the usual. It was not
+like anything that had ever happened to him before, or in which he had
+ever pictured himself as likely to be involved; but that, at first, had
+seemed no argument against his fitness to deal with it.
+
+Perhaps but for the three days' rain he might have got away without a
+doubt as to his adequacy. The rain had made all the difference. It had
+thrown the whole picture out of perspective, blotted out the mystery
+of the remoter planes and the enchantment of the middle distance, and
+thrust into prominence every commonplace fact of the foreground. It was
+the kind of situation that was not helped by being thought over; and
+by the perversity of circumstance he had been forced into the unwilling
+contemplation of its every aspect...
+
+His cigar had gone out again, and he threw it into the fire and vaguely
+meditated getting up to find another. But the mere act of leaving his
+chair seemed to call for a greater exertion of the will than he was
+capable of, and he leaned his head back with closed eyes and listened to
+the drumming of the rain.
+
+A different noise aroused him. It was the opening and closing of
+the door leading from the corridor into the adjoining room. He sat
+motionless, without opening his eyes; but now another sight forced
+itself under his lowered lids. It was the precise photographic picture
+of that other room. Everything in it rose before him and pressed itself
+upon his vision with the same acuity of distinctness as the objects
+surrounding him. A step sounded on the floor, and he knew which way the
+step was directed, what pieces of furniture it had to skirt, where it
+would probably pause, and what was likely to arrest it. He heard another
+sound, and recognized it as that of a wet umbrella placed in the black
+marble jamb of the chimney-piece, against the hearth. He caught the
+creak of a hinge, and instantly differentiated it as that of the
+wardrobe against the opposite wall. Then he heard the mouse-like squeal
+of a reluctant drawer, and knew it was the upper one in the chest of
+drawers beside the bed: the clatter which followed was caused by the
+mahogany toilet-glass jumping on its loosened pivots...
+
+The step crossed the floor again. It was strange how much better he knew
+it than the person to whom it belonged! Now it was drawing near the door
+of communication between the two rooms. He opened his eyes and looked.
+The step had ceased and for a moment there was silence. Then he heard
+a low knock. He made no response, and after an interval he saw that
+the door handle was being tentatively turned. He closed his eyes once
+more...
+
+The door opened, and the step was in the room, coming cautiously toward
+him. He kept his eyes shut, relaxing his body to feign sleep. There
+was another pause, then a wavering soft advance, the rustle of a dress
+behind his chair, the warmth of two hands pressed for a moment on his
+lids. The palms of the hands had the lingering scent of some stuff that
+he had bought on the Boulevard...He looked up and saw a letter falling
+over his shoulder to his knee...
+
+"Did I disturb you? I'm so sorry! They gave me this just now when I came
+in."
+
+The letter, before he could catch it, had slipped between his knees to
+the floor. It lay there, address upward, at his feet, and while he sat
+staring down at the strong slender characters on the blue-gray envelope
+an arm reached out from behind to pick it up.
+
+"Oh, don't--DON'T" broke from him, and he bent over and caught the arm.
+The face above it was close to his.
+
+"Don't what?"
+
+----"take the trouble," he stammered.
+
+He dropped the arm and stooped down. His grasp closed over the letter,
+he fingered its thickness and weight and calculated the number of sheets
+it must contain.
+
+Suddenly he felt the pressure of the hand on his shoulder, and became
+aware that the face was still leaning over him, and that in a moment he
+would have to look up and kiss it...
+
+He bent forward first and threw the unopened letter into the middle of
+the fire.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK II
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+The light of the October afternoon lay on an old high-roofed house which
+enclosed in its long expanse of brick and yellowish stone the breadth of
+a grassy court filled with the shadow and sound of limes.
+
+From the escutcheoned piers at the entrance of the court a level drive,
+also shaded by limes, extended to a white-barred gate beyond which
+an equally level avenue of grass, cut through a wood, dwindled to a
+blue-green blur against a sky banked with still white slopes of cloud.
+
+In the court, half-way between house and drive, a lady stood. She held
+a parasol above her head, and looked now at the house-front, with its
+double flight of steps meeting before a glazed door under sculptured
+trophies, now down the drive toward the grassy cutting through the wood.
+Her air was less of expectancy than of contemplation: she seemed not so
+much to be watching for any one, or listening for an approaching sound,
+as letting the whole aspect of the place sink into her while she held
+herself open to its influence. Yet it was no less apparent that the
+scene was not new to her. There was no eagerness of investigation in her
+survey: she seemed rather to be looking about her with eyes to which,
+for some intimate inward reason, details long since familiar had
+suddenly acquired an unwonted freshness.
+
+This was in fact the exact sensation of which Mrs. Leath was conscious
+as she came forth from the house and descended into the sunlit court.
+She had come to meet her step-son, who was likely to be returning
+at that hour from an afternoon's shooting in one of the more distant
+plantations, and she carried in her hand the letter which had sent her
+in search of him; but with her first step out of the house all thought
+of him had been effaced by another series of impressions.
+
+The scene about her was known to satiety. She had seen Givre at all
+seasons of the year, and for the greater part of every year, since the
+far-off day of her marriage; the day when, ostensibly driving through
+its gates at her husband's side, she had actually been carried there on
+a cloud of iris-winged visions.
+
+The possibilities which the place had then represented were still
+vividly present to her. The mere phrase "a French chateau" had called
+up to her youthful fancy a throng of romantic associations, poetic,
+pictorial and emotional; and the serene face of the old house seated in
+its park among the poplar-bordered meadows of middle France, had
+seemed, on her first sight of it, to hold out to her a fate as noble and
+dignified as its own mien.
+
+Though she could still call up that phase of feeling it had long since
+passed, and the house had for a time become to her the very symbol
+of narrowness and monotony. Then, with the passing of years, it had
+gradually acquired a less inimical character, had become, not again a
+castle of dreams, evoker of fair images and romantic legend, but the
+shell of a life slowly adjusted to its dwelling: the place one came back
+to, the place where one had one's duties, one's habits and one's books,
+the place one would naturally live in till one died: a dull house, an
+inconvenient house, of which one knew all the defects, the shabbinesses,
+the discomforts, but to which one was so used that one could hardly,
+after so long a time, think one's self away from it without suffering a
+certain loss of identity.
+
+Now, as it lay before her in the autumn mildness, its mistress was
+surprised at her own insensibility. She had been trying to see the
+house through the eyes of an old friend who, the next morning, would be
+driving up to it for the first time; and in so doing she seemed to be
+opening her own eyes upon it after a long interval of blindness.
+
+The court was very still, yet full of a latent life: the wheeling and
+rustling of pigeons about the rectangular yews and across the sunny
+gravel; the sweep of rooks above the lustrous greyish-purple slates of
+the roof, and the stir of the tree-tops as they met the breeze which
+every day, at that hour, came punctually up from the river.
+
+Just such a latent animation glowed in Anna Leath. In every nerve and
+vein she was conscious of that equipoise of bliss which the fearful
+human heart scarce dares acknowledge. She was not used to strong or
+full emotions; but she had always known that she should not be afraid of
+them. She was not afraid now; but she felt a deep inward stillness.
+
+The immediate effect of the feeling had been to send her forth in quest
+of her step-son. She wanted to stroll back with him and have a quiet
+talk before they re-entered the house. It was always easy to talk to
+him, and at this moment he was the one person to whom she could have
+spoken without fear of disturbing her inner stillness. She was glad, for
+all sorts of reasons, that Madame de Chantelle and Effie were still
+at Ouchy with the governess, and that she and Owen had the house to
+themselves. And she was glad that even he was not yet in sight. She
+wanted to be alone a little longer; not to think, but to let the long
+slow waves of joy break over her one by one.
+
+She walked out of the court and sat down on one of the benches that
+bordered the drive. From her seat she had a diagonal view of the long
+house-front and of the domed chapel terminating one of the wings. Beyond
+a gate in the court-yard wall the flower-garden drew its dark-green
+squares and raised its statues against the yellowing background of the
+park. In the borders only a few late pinks and crimsons smouldered,
+but a peacock strutting in the sun seemed to have gathered into his
+out-spread fan all the summer glories of the place.
+
+In Mrs. Leath's hand was the letter which had opened her eyes to these
+things, and a smile rose to her lips at the mere feeling of the paper
+between her fingers. The thrill it sent through her gave a keener edge
+to every sense. She felt, saw, breathed the shining world as though a
+thin impenetrable veil had suddenly been removed from it.
+
+Just such a veil, she now perceived, had always hung between herself and
+life. It had been like the stage gauze which gives an illusive air of
+reality to the painted scene behind it, yet proves it, after all, to be
+no more than a painted scene.
+
+She had been hardly aware, in her girlhood, of differing from others in
+this respect. In the well-regulated well-fed Summers world the unusual
+was regarded as either immoral or ill-bred, and people with emotions
+were not visited. Sometimes, with a sense of groping in a topsy-turvy
+universe, Anna had wondered why everybody about her seemed to ignore all
+the passions and sensations which formed the stuff of great poetry and
+memorable action. In a community composed entirely of people like her
+parents and her parents' friends she did not see how the magnificent
+things one read about could ever have happened. She was sure that if
+anything of the kind had occurred in her immediate circle her mother
+would have consulted the family clergyman, and her father perhaps even
+have rung up the police; and her sense of humour compelled her to own
+that, in the given conditions, these precautions might not have been
+unjustified.
+
+Little by little the conditions conquered her, and she learned to regard
+the substance of life as a mere canvas for the embroideries of poet
+and painter, and its little swept and fenced and tended surface as its
+actual substance. It was in the visioned region of action and emotion
+that her fullest hours were spent; but it hardly occurred to her that
+they might be translated into experience, or connected with anything
+likely to happen to a young lady living in West Fifty-fifth Street.
+
+She perceived, indeed, that other girls, leading outwardly the same life
+as herself, and seemingly unaware of her world of hidden beauty, were
+yet possessed of some vital secret which escaped her. There seemed to be
+a kind of freemasonry between them; they were wider awake than she, more
+alert, and surer of their wants if not of their opinions. She supposed
+they were "cleverer", and accepted her inferiority good-humouredly, half
+aware, within herself, of a reserve of unused power which the others
+gave no sign of possessing.
+
+This partly consoled her for missing so much of what made their "good
+time"; but the resulting sense of exclusion, of being somehow laughingly
+but firmly debarred from a share of their privileges, threw her back on
+herself and deepened the reserve which made envious mothers cite her as
+a model of ladylike repression. Love, she told herself, would one day
+release her from this spell of unreality. She was persuaded that the
+sublime passion was the key to the enigma; but it was difficult to
+relate her conception of love to the forms it wore in her experience.
+Two or three of the girls she had envied for their superior acquaintance
+with the arts of life had contracted, in the course of time, what were
+variously described as "romantic" or "foolish" marriages; one even made
+a runaway match, and languished for a while under a cloud of social
+reprobation. Here, then, was passion in action, romance converted
+to reality; yet the heroines of these exploits returned from them
+untransfigured, and their husbands were as dull as ever when one had to
+sit next to them at dinner.
+
+Her own case, of course, would be different. Some day she would find the
+magic bridge between West Fifty-fifth Street and life; once or twice she
+had even fancied that the clue was in her hand. The first time was
+when she had met young Darrow. She recalled even now the stir of the
+encounter. But his passion swept over her like a wind that shakes the
+roof of the forest without reaching its still glades or rippling its
+hidden pools. He was extraordinarily intelligent and agreeable, and her
+heart beat faster when he was with her. He had a tall fair easy presence
+and a mind in which the lights of irony played pleasantly through the
+shades of feeling. She liked to hear his voice almost as much as to
+listen to what he was saying, and to listen to what he was saying almost
+as much as to feel that he was looking at her; but he wanted to kiss
+her, and she wanted to talk to him about books and pictures, and have
+him insinuate the eternal theme of their love into every subject they
+discussed.
+
+Whenever they were apart a reaction set in. She wondered how she could
+have been so cold, called herself a prude and an idiot, questioned if
+any man could really care for her, and got up in the dead of night to
+try new ways of doing her hair. But as soon as he reappeared her head
+straightened itself on her slim neck and she sped her little shafts of
+irony, or flew her little kites of erudition, while hot and cold waves
+swept over her, and the things she really wanted to say choked in her
+throat and burned the palms of her hands.
+
+Often she told herself that any silly girl who had waltzed through a
+season would know better than she how to attract a man and hold him; but
+when she said "a man" she did not really mean George Darrow.
+
+Then one day, at a dinner, she saw him sitting next to one of the silly
+girls in question: the heroine of the elopement which had shaken West
+Fifty-fifth Street to its base. The young lady had come back from her
+adventure no less silly than when she went; and across the table the
+partner of her flight, a fat young man with eye-glasses, sat stolidly
+eating terrapin and talking about polo and investments.
+
+The young woman was undoubtedly as silly as ever; yet after watching
+her for a few minutes Miss Summers perceived that she had somehow grown
+luminous, perilous, obscurely menacing to nice girls and the young men
+they intended eventually to accept. Suddenly, at the sight, a rage of
+possessorship awoke in her. She must save Darrow, assert her right
+to him at any price. Pride and reticence went down in a hurricane
+of jealousy. She heard him laugh, and there was something new in his
+laugh...She watched him talking, talking...He sat slightly sideways, a
+faint smile beneath his lids, lowering his voice as he lowered it when
+he talked to her. She caught the same inflections, but his eyes were
+different. It would have offended her once if he had looked at her like
+that. Now her one thought was that none but she had a right to be so
+looked at. And that girl of all others! What illusions could he have
+about a girl who, hardly a year ago, had made a fool of herself over
+the fat young man stolidly eating terrapin across the table? If that
+was where romance and passion ended, it was better to take to district
+visiting or algebra!
+
+All night she lay awake and wondered: "What was she saying to him? How
+shall I learn to say such things?" and she decided that her heart would
+tell her--that the next time they were alone together the irresistible
+word would spring to her lips. He came the next day, and they were
+alone, and all she found was: "I didn't know that you and Kitty Mayne
+were such friends."
+
+He answered with indifference that he didn't know it either, and in the
+reaction of relief she declared: "She's certainly ever so much prettier
+than she was..."
+
+"She's rather good fun," he admitted, as though he had not noticed her
+other advantages; and suddenly Anna saw in his eyes the look she had
+seen there the previous evening.
+
+She felt as if he were leagues and leagues away from her. All her hopes
+dissolved, and she was conscious of sitting rigidly, with high head and
+straight lips, while the irresistible word fled with a last wing-beat
+into the golden mist of her illusions...
+
+
+She was still quivering with the pain and bewilderment of this adventure
+when Fraser Leath appeared. She met him first in Italy, where she was
+travelling with her parents; and the following winter he came to
+New York. In Italy he had seemed interesting: in New York he became
+remarkable. He seldom spoke of his life in Europe, and let drop but the
+most incidental allusions to the friends, the tastes, the pursuits which
+filled his cosmopolitan days; but in the atmosphere of West Fifty-fifth
+Street he seemed the embodiment of a storied past. He presented Miss
+Summers with a prettily-bound anthology of the old French poets and,
+when she showed a discriminating pleasure in the gift, observed with his
+grave smile: "I didn't suppose I should find any one here who would feel
+about these things as I do." On another occasion he asked her acceptance
+of a half-effaced eighteenth century pastel which he had surprisingly
+picked up in a New York auction-room. "I know no one but you who would
+really appreciate it," he explained.
+
+He permitted himself no other comments, but these conveyed with
+sufficient directness that he thought her worthy of a different setting.
+That she should be so regarded by a man living in an atmosphere of art
+and beauty, and esteeming them the vital elements of life, made her
+feel for the first time that she was understood. Here was some one whose
+scale of values was the same as hers, and who thought her opinion
+worth hearing on the very matters which they both considered of supreme
+importance. The discovery restored her self-confidence, and she revealed
+herself to Mr. Leath as she had never known how to reveal herself to
+Darrow.
+
+As the courtship progressed, and they grew more confidential, her
+suitor surprised and delighted her by little explosions of revolutionary
+sentiment. He said: "Shall you mind, I wonder, if I tell you that you
+live in a dread-fully conventional atmosphere?" and, seeing that she
+manifestly did not mind: "Of course I shall say things now and then that
+will horrify your dear delightful parents--I shall shock them awfully, I
+warn you."
+
+In confirmation of this warning he permitted himself an occasional
+playful fling at the regular church-going of Mr. and Mrs. Summers, at
+the innocuous character of the literature in their library, and at their
+guileless appreciations in art. He even ventured to banter Mrs. Summers
+on her refusal to receive the irrepressible Kitty Mayne who, after a
+rapid passage with George Darrow, was now involved in another and more
+flagrant adventure.
+
+"In Europe, you know, the husband is regarded as the only judge in such
+matters. As long as he accepts the situation--" Mr. Leath explained
+to Anna, who took his view the more emphatically in order to convince
+herself that, personally, she had none but the most tolerant sentiments
+toward the lady.
+
+The subversiveness of Mr. Leath's opinions was enhanced by the
+distinction of his appearance and the reserve of his manners. He was
+like the anarchist with a gardenia in his buttonhole who figures in
+the higher melodrama. Every word, every allusion, every note of his
+agreeably-modulated voice, gave Anna a glimpse of a society at once
+freer and finer, which observed the traditional forms but had discarded
+the underlying prejudices; whereas the world she knew had discarded many
+of the forms and kept almost all the prejudices.
+
+In such an atmosphere as his an eager young woman, curious as to all the
+manifestations of life, yet instinctively desiring that they should come
+to her in terms of beauty and fine feeling, must surely find the largest
+scope for self-expression. Study, travel, the contact of the world, the
+comradeship of a polished and enlightened mind, would combine to enrich
+her days and form her character; and it was only in the rare moments
+when Mr. Leath's symmetrical blond mask bent over hers, and his kiss
+dropped on her like a cold smooth pebble, that she questioned the
+completeness of the joys he offered.
+
+There had been a time when the walls on which her gaze now rested had
+shed a glare of irony on these early dreams. In the first years of her
+marriage the sober symmetry of Givre had suggested only her husband's
+neatly-balanced mind. It was a mind, she soon learned, contentedly
+absorbed in formulating the conventions of the unconventional. West
+Fifty-fifth Street was no more conscientiously concerned than Givre with
+the momentous question of "what people did"; it was only the type of
+deed investigated that was different. Mr. Leath collected his social
+instances with the same seriousness and patience as his snuff-boxes.
+He exacted a rigid conformity to his rules of non-conformity and his
+scepticism had the absolute accent of a dogma. He even cherished certain
+exceptions to his rules as the book-collector prizes a "defective" first
+edition. The Protestant church-going of Anna's parents had provoked
+his gentle sarcasm; but he prided himself on his mother's devoutness,
+because Madame de Chantelle, in embracing her second husband's creed,
+had become part of a society which still observes the outward rites of
+piety.
+
+Anna, in fact, had discovered in her amiable and elegant mother-in-law
+an unexpected embodiment of the West Fifty-fifth Street ideal. Mrs.
+Summers and Madame de Chantelle, however strongly they would have
+disagreed as to the authorized source of Christian dogma, would have
+found themselves completely in accord on all the momentous minutiae of
+drawing-room conduct; yet Mr. Leath treated his mother's foibles with a
+respect which Anna's experience of him forbade her to attribute wholly
+to filial affection.
+
+In the early days, when she was still questioning the Sphinx instead of
+trying to find an answer to it, she ventured to tax her husband with his
+inconsistency.
+
+"You say your mother won't like it if I call on that amusing little
+woman who came here the other day, and was let in by mistake; but
+Madame de Chantelle tells me she lives with her husband, and when mother
+refused to visit Kitty Mayne you said----"
+
+Mr. Leath's smile arrested her. "My dear child, I don't pretend to apply
+the principles of logic to my poor mother's prejudices."
+
+"But if you admit that they ARE prejudices----?"
+
+"There are prejudices and prejudices. My mother, of course, got hers
+from Monsieur de Chantelle, and they seem to me as much in their place
+in this house as the pot-pourri in your hawthorn jar. They preserve a
+social tradition of which I should be sorry to lose the least perfume.
+Of course I don't expect you, just at first, to feel the difference, to
+see the nuance. In the case of little Madame de Vireville, for instance:
+you point out that she's still under her husband's roof. Very true; and
+if she were merely a Paris acquaintance--especially if you had met her,
+as one still might, in the RIGHT KIND of house in Paris--I should be the
+last to object to your visiting her. But in the country it's different.
+Even the best provincial society is what you would call narrow: I
+don't deny it; and if some of our friends met Madame de Vireville at
+Givre--well, it would produce a bad impression. You're inclined to
+ridicule such considerations, but gradually you'll come to see their
+importance; and meanwhile, do trust me when I ask you to be guided by
+my mother. It is always well for a stranger in an old society to err a
+little on the side of what you call its prejudices but I should rather
+describe as its traditions."
+
+After that she no longer tried to laugh or argue her husband out of his
+convictions. They WERE convictions, and therefore unassailable. Nor
+was any insincerity implied in the fact that they sometimes seemed to
+coincide with hers. There were occasions when he really did look at
+things as she did; but for reasons so different as to make the distance
+between them all the greater. Life, to Mr. Leath, was like a walk
+through a carefully classified museum, where, in moments of doubt, one
+had only to look at the number and refer to one's catalogue; to his wife
+it was like groping about in a huge dark lumber-room where the exploring
+ray of curiosity lit up now some shape of breathing beauty and now a
+mummy's grin.
+
+In the first bewilderment of her new state these discoveries had had the
+effect of dropping another layer of gauze between herself and reality.
+She seemed farther than ever removed from the strong joys and pangs for
+which she felt herself made. She did not adopt her husband's views, but
+insensibly she began to live his life. She tried to throw a compensating
+ardour into the secret excursions of her spirit, and thus the old
+vicious distinction between romance and reality was re-established for
+her, and she resigned herself again to the belief that "real life" was
+neither real nor alive.
+
+The birth of her little girl swept away this delusion. At last she felt
+herself in contact with the actual business of living: but even this
+impression was not enduring.
+
+Everything but the irreducible crude fact of child-bearing assumed, in
+the Leath household, the same ghostly tinge of unreality. Her husband,
+at the time, was all that his own ideal of a husband required. He was
+attentive, and even suitably moved: but as he sat by her bedside, and
+thoughtfully proffered to her the list of people who had "called to
+enquire", she looked first at him, and then at the child between them,
+and wondered at the blundering alchemy of Nature...
+
+With the exception of the little girl herself, everything connected with
+that time had grown curiously remote and unimportant. The days that had
+moved so slowly as they passed seemed now to have plunged down head-long
+steeps of time; and as she sat in the autumn sun, with Darrow's letter
+in her hand, the history of Anna Leath appeared to its heroine like some
+grey shadowy tale that she might have read in an old book, one night as
+she was falling asleep...
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+Two brown blurs emerging from the farther end of the wood-vista
+gradually defined themselves as her step-son and an attendant
+game-keeper. They grew slowly upon the bluish background, with
+occasional delays and re-effacements, and she sat still, waiting till
+they should reach the gate at the end of the drive, where the keeper
+would turn off to his cottage and Owen continue on to the house.
+
+She watched his approach with a smile. From the first days of her
+marriage she had been drawn to the boy, but it was not until after
+Effie's birth that she had really begun to know him. The eager
+observation of her own child had shown her how much she had still to
+learn about the slight fair boy whom the holidays periodically restored
+to Givre. Owen, even then, both physically and morally, furnished her
+with the oddest of commentaries on his father's mien and mind. He would
+never, the family sighingly recognized, be nearly as handsome as Mr.
+Leath; but his rather charmingly unbalanced face, with its brooding
+forehead and petulant boyish smile, suggested to Anna what his father's
+countenance might have been could one have pictured its neat features
+disordered by a rattling breeze. She even pushed the analogy farther,
+and descried in her step-son's mind a quaintly-twisted reflection of
+her husband's. With his bursts of door-slamming activity, his fits of
+bookish indolence, his crude revolutionary dogmatizing and his flashes
+of precocious irony, the boy was not unlike a boisterous embodiment of
+his father's theories. It was as though Fraser Leath's ideas, accustomed
+to hang like marionettes on their pegs, should suddenly come down
+and walk. There were moments, indeed, when Owen's humours must have
+suggested to his progenitor the gambols of an infant Frankenstein; but
+to Anna they were the voice of her secret rebellions, and her tenderness
+to her step-son was partly based on her severity toward herself. As he
+had the courage she had lacked, so she meant him to have the chances
+she had missed; and every effort she made for him helped to keep her own
+hopes alive.
+
+Her interest in Owen led her to think more often of his mother, and
+sometimes she would slip away and stand alone before her predecessor's
+portrait. Since her arrival at Givre the picture--a "full-length" by a
+once fashionable artist--had undergone the successive displacements of
+an exiled consort removed farther and farther from the throne; and
+Anna could not help noting that these stages coincided with the gradual
+decline of the artist's fame. She had a fancy that if his credit had
+been in the ascendant the first Mrs. Leath might have continued to
+throne over the drawing-room mantel-piece, even to the exclusion of
+her successor's effigy. Instead of this, her peregrinations had finally
+landed her in the shrouded solitude of the billiard-room, an apartment
+which no one ever entered, but where it was understood that "the light
+was better," or might have been if the shutters had not been always
+closed.
+
+Here the poor lady, elegantly dressed, and seated in the middle of a
+large lonely canvas, in the blank contemplation of a gilt console, had
+always seemed to Anna to be waiting for visitors who never came.
+
+"Of course they never came, you poor thing! I wonder how long it
+took you to find out that they never would?" Anna had more than once
+apostrophized her, with a derision addressed rather to herself than to
+the dead; but it was only after Effie's birth that it occurred to her to
+study more closely the face in the picture, and speculate on the kind of
+visitors that Owen's mother might have hoped for.
+
+"She certainly doesn't look as if they would have been the same kind as
+mine: but there's no telling, from a portrait that was so obviously done
+'to please the family', and that leaves Owen so unaccounted for. Well,
+they never came, the visitors; they never came; and she died of it. She
+died of it long before they buried her: I'm certain of that. Those are
+stone-dead eyes in the picture...The loneliness must have been awful, if
+even Owen couldn't keep her from dying of it. And to feel it so she must
+have HAD feelings--real live ones, the kind that twitch and tug. And all
+she had to look at all her life was a gilt console--yes, that's it, a
+gilt console screwed to the wall! That's exactly and absolutely what he
+is!"
+
+She did not mean, if she could help it, that either Effie or Owen should
+know that loneliness, or let her know it again. They were three, now, to
+keep each other warm, and she embraced both children in the same passion
+of motherhood, as though one were not enough to shield her from her
+predecessor's fate.
+
+Sometimes she fancied that Owen Leath's response was warmer than that
+of her own child. But then Effie was still hardly more than a baby,
+and Owen, from the first, had been almost "old enough to understand":
+certainly DID understand now, in a tacit way that yet perpetually spoke
+to her. This sense of his understanding was the deepest element in their
+feeling for each other. There were so many things between them that were
+never spoken of, or even indirectly alluded to, yet that, even in their
+occasional discussions and differences, formed the unadduced arguments
+making for final agreement...
+
+Musing on this, she continued to watch his approach; and her heart began
+to beat a little faster at the thought of what she had to say to him.
+But when he reached the gate she saw him pause, and after a moment he
+turned aside as if to gain a cross-road through the park.
+
+She started up and waved her sunshade, but he did not see her. No doubt
+he meant to go back with the gamekeeper, perhaps to the kennels, to see
+a retriever who had hurt his leg. Suddenly she was seized by the whim
+to overtake him. She threw down the parasol, thrust her letter into her
+bodice, and catching up her skirts began to run.
+
+She was slight and light, with a natural ease and quickness of gait, but
+she could not recall having run a yard since she had romped with Owen in
+his school-days; nor did she know what impulse moved her now. She only
+knew that run she must, that no other motion, short of flight, would
+have been buoyant enough for her humour. She seemed to be keeping pace
+with some inward rhythm, seeking to give bodily expression to the lyric
+rush of her thoughts. The earth always felt elastic under her, and she
+had a conscious joy in treading it; but never had it been as soft and
+springy as today. It seemed actually to rise and meet her as she went,
+so that she had the feeling, which sometimes came to her in dreams, of
+skimming miraculously over short bright waves. The air, too, seemed to
+break in waves against her, sweeping by on its current all the slanted
+lights and moist sharp perfumes of the failing day. She panted to
+herself: "This is nonsense!" her blood hummed back: "But it's glorious!"
+and she sped on till she saw that Owen had caught sight of her and was
+striding back in her direction.
+
+Then she stopped and waited, flushed and laughing, her hands clasped
+against the letter in her breast.
+
+"No, I'm not mad," she called out; "but there's something in the air
+today--don't you feel it?--And I wanted to have a little talk with you,"
+she added as he came up to her, smiling at him and linking her arm in
+his.
+
+He smiled back, but above the smile she saw the shade of anxiety which,
+for the last two months, had kept its fixed line between his handsome
+eyes.
+
+"Owen, don't look like that! I don't want you to!" she said imperiously.
+
+He laughed. "You said that exactly like Effie. What do you want me to
+do? To race with you as I do Effie? But I shouldn't have a show!" he
+protested, still with the little frown between his eyes.
+
+"Where are you going?" she asked.
+
+"To the kennels. But there's not the least need. The vet has seen Garry
+and he's all right. If there's anything you wanted to tell me----"
+
+"Did I say there was? I just came out to meet you--I wanted to know if
+you'd had good sport."
+
+The shadow dropped on him again. "None at all. The fact is I didn't try.
+Jean and I have just been knocking about in the woods. I wasn't in a
+sanguinary mood."
+
+They walked on with the same light gait, so nearly of a height that
+keeping step came as naturally to them as breathing. Anna stole another
+look at the young face on a level with her own.
+
+"You DID say there was something you wanted to tell me," her step-son
+began after a pause.
+
+"Well, there is." She slackened her pace involuntarily, and they came to
+a pause and stood facing each other under the limes.
+
+"Is Darrow coming?" he asked.
+
+She seldom blushed, but at the question a sudden heat suffused her. She
+held her head high.
+
+"Yes: he's coming. I've just heard. He arrives to-morrow. But that's
+not----" She saw her blunder and tried to rectify it. "Or rather, yes,
+in a way it is my reason for wanting to speak to you----"
+
+"Because he's coming?"
+
+"Because he's not yet here."
+
+"It's about him, then?"
+
+He looked at her kindly, half-humourously, an almost fraternal wisdom in
+his smile.
+
+"About----? No, no: I meant that I wanted to speak today because it's
+our last day alone together."
+
+"Oh, I see." He had slipped his hands into the pockets of his tweed
+shooting jacket and lounged along at her side, his eyes bent on the
+moist ruts of the drive, as though the matter had lost all interest for
+him.
+
+"Owen----"
+
+He stopped again and faced her. "Look here, my dear, it's no sort of
+use."
+
+"What's no use?"
+
+"Anything on earth you can any of you say."
+
+She challenged him: "Am I one of 'any of you'?"
+
+He did not yield. "Well, then--anything on earth that even YOU can say."
+"You don't in the least know what I can say--or what I mean to."
+
+"Don't I, generally?"
+
+She gave him this point, but only to make another. "Yes; but this is
+particularly. I want to say...Owen, you've been admirable all through."
+
+He broke into a laugh in which the odd elder-brotherly note was once
+more perceptible.
+
+"Admirable," she emphasized. "And so has SHE."
+
+"Oh, and so have you to HER!" His voice broke down to boyishness. "I've
+never lost sight of that for a minute. It's been altogether easier for
+her, though," he threw off presently.
+
+"On the whole, I suppose it has. Well----" she summed up with a laugh,
+"aren't you all the better pleased to be told you've behaved as well as
+she?"
+
+"Oh, you know, I've not done it for you," he tossed back at her, without
+the least note of hostility in the affected lightness of his tone.
+
+"Haven't you, though, perhaps--the least bit? Because, after all, you
+knew I understood?"
+
+"You've been awfully kind about pretending to."
+
+She laughed. "You don't believe me? You must remember I had your
+grandmother to consider."
+
+"Yes: and my father--and Effie, I suppose--and the outraged shades of
+Givre!" He paused, as if to lay more stress on the boyish sneer: "Do you
+likewise include the late Monsieur de Chantelle?"
+
+His step-mother did not appear to resent the thrust. She went on, in the
+same tone of affectionate persuasion: "Yes: I must have seemed to you
+too subject to Givre. Perhaps I have been. But you know that was not my
+real object in asking you to wait, to say nothing to your grandmother
+before her return."
+
+He considered. "Your real object, of course, was to gain time."
+
+"Yes--but for whom? Why not for YOU?"
+
+"For me?" He flushed up quickly. "You don't mean----?"
+
+She laid her hand on his arm and looked gravely into his handsome eyes.
+
+"I mean that when your grandmother gets back from Ouchy I shall speak to
+her----" "You'll speak to her...?"
+
+"Yes; if only you'll promise to give me time----"
+
+"Time for her to send for Adelaide Painter?"
+
+"Oh, she'll undoubtedly send for Adelaide Painter!"
+
+The allusion touched a spring of mirth in both their minds, and they
+exchanged a laughing look.
+
+"Only you must promise not to rush things. You must give me time to
+prepare Adelaide too," Mrs. Leath went on.
+
+"Prepare her too?" He drew away for a better look at her. "Prepare her
+for what?"
+
+"Why, to prepare your grandmother! For your marriage. Yes, that's what I
+mean. I'm going to see you through, you know----"
+
+His feint of indifference broke down and he caught her hand. "Oh, you
+dear divine thing! I didn't dream----"
+
+"I know you didn't." She dropped her gaze and began to walk on slowly.
+"I can't say you've convinced me of the wisdom of the step. Only I
+seem to see that other things matter more--and that not missing things
+matters most. Perhaps I've changed--or YOUR not changing has convinced
+me. I'm certain now that you won't budge. And that was really all I ever
+cared about."
+
+"Oh, as to not budging--I told you so months ago: you might have been
+sure of that! And how can you be any surer today than yesterday?"
+
+"I don't know. I suppose one learns something every day----"
+
+"Not at Givre!" he laughed, and shot a half-ironic look at her. "But you
+haven't really BEEN at Givre lately--not for months! Don't you suppose
+I've noticed that, my dear?"
+
+She echoed his laugh to merge it in an undenying sigh. "Poor Givre..."
+
+"Poor empty Givre! With so many rooms full and yet not a soul in
+it--except of course my grandmother, who is its soul!"
+
+They had reached the gateway of the court and stood looking with a
+common accord at the long soft-hued facade on which the autumn light was
+dying. "It looks so made to be happy in----" she murmured.
+
+"Yes--today, today!" He pressed her arm a little. "Oh, you darling--to
+have given it that look for me!" He paused, and then went on in a lower
+voice: "Don't you feel we owe it to the poor old place to do what we can
+to give it that look? You, too, I mean? Come, let's make it grin
+from wing to wing! I've such a mad desire to say outrageous things to
+it--haven't you? After all, in old times there must have been living
+people here!"
+
+Loosening her arm from his she continued to gaze up at the house-front,
+which seemed, in the plaintive decline of light, to send her back the
+mute appeal of something doomed.
+
+"It IS beautiful," she said.
+
+"A beautiful memory! Quite perfect to take out and turn over when I'm
+grinding at the law in New York, and you're----" He broke off and looked
+at her with a questioning smile. "Come! Tell me. You and I don't have
+to say things to talk to each other. When you turn suddenly absentminded
+and mysterious I always feel like saying: 'Come back. All is
+discovered'."
+
+She returned his smile. "You know as much as I know. I promise you
+that."
+
+He wavered, as if for the first time uncertain how far he might go. "I
+don't know Darrow as much as you know him," he presently risked.
+
+She frowned a little. "You said just now we didn't need to say things"
+
+"Was I speaking? I thought it was your eyes----" He caught her by both
+elbows and spun her halfway round, so that the late sun shed a betraying
+gleam on her face. "They're such awfully conversational eyes! Don't you
+suppose they told me long ago why it's just today you've made up your
+mind that people have got to live their own lives--even at Givre?"
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+"This is the south terrace," Anna said. "Should you like to walk down to
+the river?"
+
+She seemed to listen to herself speaking from a far-off airy height, and
+yet to be wholly gathered into the circle of consciousness which drew
+its glowing ring about herself and Darrow. To the aerial listener her
+words sounded flat and colourless, but to the self within the ring each
+one beat with a separate heart.
+
+It was the day after Darrow's arrival, and he had come down early, drawn
+by the sweetness of the light on the lawns and gardens below his window.
+Anna had heard the echo of his step on the stairs, his pause in the
+stone-flagged hall, his voice as he asked a servant where to find her.
+She was at the end of the house, in the brown-panelled sitting-room
+which she frequented at that season because it caught the sunlight first
+and kept it longest. She stood near the window, in the pale band of
+brightness, arranging some salmon-pink geraniums in a shallow porcelain
+bowl. Every sensation of touch and sight was thrice-alive in her. The
+grey-green fur of the geranium leaves caressed her fingers and the
+sunlight wavering across the irregular surface of the old parquet floor
+made it seem as bright and shifting as the brown bed of a stream.
+
+Darrow stood framed in the door-way of the farthest drawing-room, a
+light-grey figure against the black and white flagging of the hall; then
+he began to move toward her down the empty pale-panelled vista, crossing
+one after another the long reflections which a projecting cabinet or
+screen cast here and there upon the shining floors.
+
+As he drew nearer, his figure was suddenly displaced by that of her
+husband, whom, from the same point, she had so often seen advancing down
+the same perspective. Straight, spare, erect, looking to right and
+left with quick precise turns of the head, and stopping now and then to
+straighten a chair or alter the position of a vase, Fraser Leath used
+to march toward her through the double file of furniture like a general
+reviewing a regiment drawn up for his inspection. At a certain point,
+midway across the second room, he always stopped before the mantel-piece
+of pinkish-yellow marble and looked at himself in the tall garlanded
+glass that surmounted it. She could not remember that he had ever found
+anything to straighten or alter in his own studied attire, but she had
+never known him to omit the inspection when he passed that particular
+mirror.
+
+When it was over he continued more briskly on his way, and the resulting
+expression of satisfaction was still on his face when he entered the oak
+sitting-room to greet his wife...
+
+The spectral projection of this little daily scene hung but for a moment
+before Anna, but in that moment she had time to fling a wondering glance
+across the distance between her past and present. Then the footsteps of
+the present came close, and she had to drop the geraniums to give her
+hand to Darrow...
+
+"Yes, let us walk down to the river."
+
+They had neither of them, as yet, found much to say to each other.
+Darrow had arrived late on the previous afternoon, and during the
+evening they had had between them Owen Leath and their own thoughts. Now
+they were alone for the first time and the fact was enough in itself.
+Yet Anna was intensely aware that as soon as they began to talk more
+intimately they would feel that they knew each other less well.
+
+They passed out onto the terrace and down the steps to the gravel walk
+below. The delicate frosting of dew gave the grass a bluish shimmer, and
+the sunlight, sliding in emerald streaks along the tree-boles, gathered
+itself into great luminous blurs at the end of the wood-walks, and hung
+above the fields a watery glory like the ring about an autumn moon.
+
+"It's good to be here," Darrow said.
+
+They took a turn to the left and stopped for a moment to look back at
+the long pink house-front, plainer, friendlier, less adorned than on the
+side toward the court. So prolonged yet delicate had been the friction
+of time upon its bricks that certain expanses had the bloom and texture
+of old red velvet, and the patches of gold lichen spreading over them
+looked like the last traces of a dim embroidery. The dome of the chapel,
+with its gilded cross, rose above one wing, and the other ended in a
+conical pigeon-house, above which the birds were flying, lustrous and
+slatey, their breasts merged in the blue of the roof when they dropped
+down on it.
+
+"And this is where you've been all these years."
+
+They turned away and began to walk down a long tunnel of yellowing
+trees. Benches with mossy feet stood against the mossy edges of the
+path, and at its farther end it widened into a circle about a basin
+rimmed with stone, in which the opaque water strewn with leaves looked
+like a slab of gold-flecked agate. The path, growing narrower, wound on
+circuitously through the woods, between slender serried trunks twined
+with ivy. Patches of blue appeared above them through the dwindling
+leaves, and presently the trees drew back and showed the open fields
+along the river.
+
+They walked on across the fields to the tow-path. In a curve of the wall
+some steps led up to a crumbling pavilion with openings choked with ivy.
+Anna and Darrow seated themselves on the bench projecting from the inner
+wall of the pavilion and looked across the river at the slopes divided
+into blocks of green and fawn-colour, and at the chalk-tinted village
+lifting its squat church-tower and grey roofs against the precisely
+drawn lines of the landscape. Anna sat silent, so intensely aware of
+Darrow's nearness that there was no surprise in the touch he laid on her
+hand. They looked at each other, and he smiled and said: "There are to
+be no more obstacles now."
+
+"Obstacles?" The word startled her. "What obstacles?"
+
+"Don't you remember the wording of the telegram that turned me back
+last May? 'Unforeseen obstacle': that was it. What was the earth-shaking
+problem, by the way? Finding a governess for Effie, wasn't it?"
+
+"But I gave you my reason: the reason why it was an obstacle. I wrote
+you fully about it."
+
+"Yes, I know you did." He lifted her hand and kissed it. "How far off it
+all seems, and how little it all matters today!"
+
+She looked at him quickly. "Do you feel that? I suppose I'm different. I
+want to draw all those wasted months into today--to make them a part of
+it."
+
+"But they are, to me. You reach back and take everything--back to the
+first days of all."
+
+She frowned a little, as if struggling with an inarticulate perplexity.
+"It's curious how, in those first days, too, something that I didn't
+understand came between us."
+
+"Oh, in those days we neither of us understood, did we? It's part of
+what's called the bliss of being young."
+
+"Yes, I thought that, too: thought it, I mean, in looking back. But it
+couldn't, even then, have been as true of you as of me; and now----"
+
+"Now," he said, "the only thing that matters is that we're sitting here
+together."
+
+He dismissed the rest with a lightness that might have seemed conclusive
+evidence of her power over him. But she took no pride in such triumphs.
+It seemed to her that she wanted his allegiance and his adoration not so
+much for herself as for their mutual love, and that in treating lightly
+any past phase of their relation he took something from its present
+beauty. The colour rose to her face.
+
+"Between you and me everything matters."
+
+"Of course!" She felt the unperceiving sweetness of his smile. "That's
+why," he went on, "'everything,' for me, is here and now: on this bench,
+between you and me."
+
+She caught at the phrase. "That's what I meant: it's here and now; we
+can't get away from it."
+
+"Get away from it? Do you want to? AGAIN?"
+
+Her heart was beating unsteadily. Something in her, fitfully and with
+reluctance, struggled to free itself, but the warmth of his nearness
+penetrated every sense as the sunlight steeped the landscape. Then,
+suddenly, she felt that she wanted no less than the whole of her
+happiness.
+
+"'Again'? But wasn't it YOU, the last time----?"
+
+She paused, the tremor in her of Psyche holding up the lamp. But in the
+interrogative light of her pause her companion's features underwent no
+change.
+
+"The last time? Last spring? But it was you who--for the best of
+reasons, as you've told me--turned me back from your very door last
+spring!"
+
+She saw that he was good-humouredly ready to "thresh out," for her
+sentimental satisfaction, a question which, for his own, Time had so
+conclusively dealt with; and the sense of his readiness reassured her.
+
+"I wrote as soon as I could," she rejoined. "I explained the delay and
+asked you to come. And you never even answered my letter."
+
+"It was impossible to come then. I had to go back to my post."
+
+"And impossible to write and tell me so?"
+
+"Your letter was a long time coming. I had waited a week--ten days. I
+had some excuse for thinking, when it came, that you were in no great
+hurry for an answer."
+
+"You thought that--really--after reading it?"
+
+"I thought it."
+
+Her heart leaped up to her throat. "Then why are you here today?"
+
+He turned on her with a quick look of wonder. "God knows--if you can ask
+me that!"
+
+"You see I was right to say I didn't understand."
+
+He stood up abruptly and stood facing her, blocking the view over the
+river and the checkered slopes. "Perhaps I might say so too."
+
+"No, no: we must neither of us have any reason for saying it again."
+She looked at him gravely. "Surely you and I needn't arrange the lights
+before we show ourselves to each other. I want you to see me just as I
+am, with all my irrational doubts and scruples; the old ones and the new
+ones too."
+
+He came back to his seat beside her. "Never mind the old ones. They were
+justified--I'm willing to admit it. With the governess having suddenly
+to be packed off, and Effie on your hands, and your mother-in-law ill,
+I see the impossibility of your letting me come. I even see that, at the
+moment, it was difficult to write and explain. But what does all that
+matter now? The new scruples are the ones I want to tackle."
+
+Again her heart trembled. She felt her happiness so near, so sure, that
+to strain it closer might be like a child's crushing a pet bird in its
+caress. But her very security urged her on. For so long her doubts had
+been knife-edged: now they had turned into bright harmless toys that she
+could toss and catch without peril!
+
+"You didn't come, and you didn't answer my letter; and after waiting
+four months I wrote another." "And I answered that one; and I'm here."
+
+"Yes." She held his eyes. "But in my last letter I repeated exactly what
+I'd said in the first--the one I wrote you last June. I told you then
+that I was ready to give you the answer to what you'd asked me in
+London; and in telling you that, I told you what the answer was."
+
+"My dearest! My dearest!" Darrow murmured.
+
+"You ignored that letter. All summer you made no sign. And all I ask now
+is, that you should frankly tell me why."
+
+"I can only repeat what I've just said. I was hurt and unhappy and
+I doubted you. I suppose if I'd cared less I should have been more
+confident. I cared so much that I couldn't risk another failure. For
+you'd made me feel that I'd miserably failed. So I shut my eyes and set
+my teeth and turned my back. There's the whole pusillanimous truth of
+it!"
+
+"Oh, if it's the WHOLE truth!----" She let him clasp her. "There's my
+torment, you see. I thought that was what your silence meant till I made
+you break it. Now I want to be sure that I was right."
+
+"What can I tell you to make you sure?"
+
+"You can let me tell YOU everything first." She drew away, but without
+taking her hands from him. "Owen saw you in Paris," she began.
+
+She looked at him and he faced her steadily. The light was full on his
+pleasantly-browned face, his grey eyes, his frank white forehead. She
+noticed for the first time a seal-ring in a setting of twisted silver on
+the hand he had kept on hers.
+
+"In Paris? Oh, yes...So he did."
+
+"He came back and told me. I think you talked to him a moment in a
+theatre. I asked if you'd spoken of my having put you off--or if you'd
+sent me any message. He didn't remember that you had."
+
+"In a crush--in a Paris foyer? My dear!"
+
+"It was absurd of me! But Owen and I have always been on odd kind of
+brother-and-sister terms. I think he guessed about us when he saw you
+with me in London. So he teased me a little and tried to make me curious
+about you; and when he saw he'd succeeded he told me he hadn't had time
+to say much to you because you were in such a hurry to get back to the
+lady you were with."
+
+He still held her hands, but she felt no tremor in his, and the blood
+did not stir in his brown cheek. He seemed to be honestly turning over
+his memories. "Yes: and what else did he tell you?"
+
+"Oh, not much, except that she was awfully pretty. When I asked him
+to describe her he said you had her tucked away in a baignoire and he
+hadn't actually seen her; but he saw the tail of her cloak, and somehow
+knew from that that she was pretty. One DOES, you know...I think he said
+the cloak was pink."
+
+Darrow broke into a laugh. "Of course it was--they always are! So that
+was at the bottom of your doubts?"
+
+"Not at first. I only laughed. But afterward, when I wrote you and you
+didn't answer----Oh, you DO see?" she appealed to him.
+
+He was looking at her gently. "Yes: I see."
+
+"It's not as if this were a light thing between us. I want you to know
+me as I am. If I thought that at that moment...when you were on your way
+here, almost----"
+
+He dropped her hand and stood up. "Yes, yes--I understand."
+
+"But do you?" Her look followed him. "I'm not a goose of a girl. I
+know...of course I KNOW...but there are things a woman feels...when
+what she knows doesn't make any difference. It's not that I want you to
+explain--I mean about that particular evening. It's only that I want you
+to have the whole of my feeling. I didn't know what it was till I saw
+you again. I never dreamed I should say such things to you!"
+
+"I never dreamed I should be here to hear you say them!" He turned back
+and lifting a floating end of her scarf put his lips to it. "But now
+that you have, I know--I know," he smiled down at her.
+
+"You know?"
+
+"That this is no light thing between us. Now you may ask me anything you
+please! That was all I wanted to ask YOU."
+
+For a long moment they looked at each other without speaking. She saw
+the dancing spirit in his eyes turn grave and darken to a passionate
+sternness. He stooped and kissed her, and she sat as if folded in wings.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+It was in the natural order of things that, on the way back to the
+house, their talk should have turned to the future.
+
+Anna was not eager to define it. She had an extraordinary sensitiveness
+to the impalpable elements of happiness, and as she walked at Darrow's
+side her imagination flew back and forth, spinning luminous webs of
+feeling between herself and the scene about her. Every heightening of
+emotion produced for her a new effusion of beauty in visible things, and
+with it the sense that such moments should be lingered over and absorbed
+like some unrenewable miracle. She understood Darrow's impatience to see
+their plans take shape. She knew it must be so, she would not have had
+it otherwise; but to reach a point where she could fix her mind on his
+appeal for dates and decisions was like trying to break her way through
+the silver tangle of an April wood.
+
+Darrow wished to use his diplomatic opportunities as a means of studying
+certain economic and social problems with which he presently hoped to
+deal in print; and with this in view he had asked for, and obtained, a
+South American appointment. Anna was ready to follow where he led, and
+not reluctant to put new sights as well as new thoughts between herself
+and her past. She had, in a direct way, only Effie and Effie's education
+to consider; and there seemed, after due reflection, no reason why the
+most anxious regard for these should not be conciliated with the demands
+of Darrow's career. Effie, it was evident, could be left to Madame de
+Chantelle's care till the couple should have organized their life; and
+she might even, as long as her future step-father's work retained him
+in distant posts, continue to divide her year between Givre and the
+antipodes.
+
+As for Owen, who had reached his legal majority two years before, and
+was soon to attain the age fixed for the taking over of his paternal
+inheritance, the arrival of this date would reduce his step-mother's
+responsibility to a friendly concern for his welfare. This made for the
+prompt realization of Darrow's wishes, and there seemed no reason why
+the marriage should not take place within the six weeks that remained of
+his leave.
+
+They passed out of the wood-walk into the open brightness of the garden.
+The noon sunlight sheeted with gold the bronze flanks of the polygonal
+yews. Chrysanthemums, russet, saffron and orange, glowed like the
+efflorescence of an enchanted forest; belts of red begonia purpling to
+wine-colour ran like smouldering flame among the borders; and above
+this outspread tapestry the house extended its harmonious length, the
+soberness of its lines softened to grace in the luminous misty air.
+
+Darrow stood still, and Anna felt that his glance was travelling from
+her to the scene about them and then back to her face.
+
+"You're sure you're prepared to give up Givre? You look so made for each
+other!"
+
+"Oh, Givre----" She broke off suddenly, feeling as if her too careless
+tone had delivered all her past into his hands; and with one of her
+instinctive movements of recoil she added: "When Owen marries I shall
+have to give it up."
+
+"When Owen marries? That's looking some distance ahead! I want to be
+told that meanwhile you'll have no regrets."
+
+She hesitated. Why did he press her to uncover to him her poor starved
+past? A vague feeling of loyalty, a desire to spare what could no
+longer harm her, made her answer evasively: "There will probably be no
+'meanwhile.' Owen may marry before long."
+
+She had not meant to touch on the subject, for her step-son had sworn
+her to provisional secrecy; but since the shortness of Darrow's leave
+necessitated a prompt adjustment of their own plans, it was, after all,
+inevitable that she should give him at least a hint of Owen's.
+
+"Owen marry? Why, he always seems like a faun in flannels! I hope he's
+found a dryad. There might easily be one left in these blue-and-gold
+woods."
+
+"I can't tell you yet where he found his dryad, but she IS one, I
+believe: at any rate she'll become the Givre woods better than I do.
+Only there may be difficulties----"
+
+"Well! At that age they're not always to be wished away."
+
+She hesitated. "Owen, at any rate, has made up his mind to overcome
+them; and I've promised to see him through."
+
+She went on, after a moment's consideration, to explain that her
+step-son's choice was, for various reasons, not likely to commend itself
+to his grandmother. "She must be prepared for it, and I've promised to
+do the preparing. You know I always HAVE seen him through things, and he
+rather counts on me now."
+
+She fancied that Darrow's exclamation had in it a faint note of
+annoyance, and wondered if he again suspected her of seeking a pretext
+for postponement.
+
+"But once Owen's future is settled, you won't, surely, for the sake
+of what you call seeing him through, ask that I should go away again
+without you?" He drew her closer as they walked. "Owen will understand,
+if you don't. Since he's in the same case himself I'll throw myself on
+his mercy. He'll see that I have the first claim on you; he won't even
+want you not to see it."
+
+"Owen sees everything: I'm not afraid of that. But his future isn't
+settled. He's very young to marry--too young, his grandmother is sure to
+think--and the marriage he wants to make is not likely to convince her
+to the contrary."
+
+"You don't mean that it's like his first choice?"
+
+"Oh, no! But it's not what Madame de Chantelle would call a good match;
+it's not even what I call a wise one."
+
+"Yet you're backing him up?"
+
+"Yet I'm backing him up." She paused. "I wonder if you'll understand?
+What I've most wanted for him, and shall want for Effie, is that
+they shall always feel free to make their own mistakes, and never, if
+possible, be persuaded to make other people's. Even if Owen's marriage
+is a mistake, and has to be paid for, I believe he'll learn and grow in
+the paying. Of course I can't make Madame de Chantelle see this; but I
+can remind her that, with his character--his big rushes of impulse,
+his odd intervals of ebb and apathy--she may drive him into some worse
+blunder if she thwarts him now."
+
+"And you mean to break the news to her as soon as she comes back from
+Ouchy?"
+
+"As soon as I see my way to it. She knows the girl and likes her: that's
+our hope. And yet it may, in the end, prove our danger, make it harder
+for us all, when she learns the truth, than if Owen had chosen a
+stranger. I can't tell you more till I've told her: I've promised Owen
+not to tell any one. All I ask you is to give me time, to give me a few
+days at any rate She's been wonderfully 'nice,' as she would call it,
+about you, and about the fact of my having soon to leave Givre; but
+that, again, may make it harder for Owen. At any rate, you can see,
+can't you, how it makes me want to stand by him? You see, I couldn't
+bear it if the least fraction of my happiness seemed to be stolen from
+his--as if it were a little scrap of happiness that had to be pieced out
+with other people's!" She clasped her hands on Darrow's arm. "I want
+our life to be like a house with all the windows lit: I'd like to string
+lanterns from the roof and chimneys!"
+
+She ended with an inward tremor. All through her exposition and her
+appeal she had told herself that the moment could hardly have been less
+well chosen. In Darrow's place she would have felt, as he doubtless
+did, that her carefully developed argument was only the disguise of an
+habitual indecision. It was the hour of all others when she would have
+liked to affirm herself by brushing aside every obstacle to his wishes;
+yet it was only by opposing them that she could show the strength of
+character she wanted him to feel in her.
+
+But as she talked she began to see that Darrow's face gave back no
+reflection of her words, that he continued to wear the abstracted look
+of a man who is not listening to what is said to him. It caused her a
+slight pang to discover that his thoughts could wander at such a moment;
+then, with a flush of joy she perceived the reason.
+
+In some undefinable way she had become aware, without turning her
+head, that he was steeped in the sense of her nearness, absorbed in
+contemplating the details of her face and dress; and the discovery
+made the words throng to her lips. She felt herself speak with ease,
+authority, conviction. She said to herself: "He doesn't care what I
+say--it's enough that I say it--even if it's stupid he'll like me better
+for it..." She knew that every inflexion of her voice, every gesture,
+every characteristic of her person--its very defects, the fact that her
+forehead was too high, that her eyes were not large enough, that her
+hands, though slender, were not small, and that the fingers did not
+taper--she knew that these deficiencies were so many channels through
+which her influence streamed to him; that she pleased him in spite of
+them, perhaps because of them; that he wanted her as she was, and not as
+she would have liked to be; and for the first time she felt in her veins
+the security and lightness of happy love.
+
+They reached the court and walked under the limes toward the house. The
+hall door stood wide, and through the windows opening on the terrace the
+sun slanted across the black and white floor, the faded tapestry chairs,
+and Darrow's travelling coat and cap, which lay among the cloaks and
+rugs piled on a bench against the wall.
+
+The sight of these garments, lying among her own wraps, gave her a sense
+of homely intimacy. It was as if her happiness came down from the skies
+and took on the plain dress of daily things. At last she seemed to hold
+it in her hand.
+
+As they entered the hall her eye lit on an unstamped note conspicuously
+placed on the table.
+
+"From Owen! He must have rushed off somewhere in the motor."
+
+She felt a secret stir of pleasure at the immediate inference that she
+and Darrow would probably lunch alone. Then she opened the note and
+stared at it in wonder.
+
+"Dear," Owen wrote, "after what you said yesterday I can't wait another
+hour, and I'm off to Francheuil, to catch the Dijon express and travel
+back with them. Don't be frightened; I won't speak unless it's safe to.
+Trust me for that--but I had to go."
+
+She looked up slowly.
+
+"He's gone to Dijon to meet his grandmother. Oh, I hope I haven't made a
+mistake!"
+
+"You? Why, what have you to do with his going to Dijon?"
+
+She hesitated. "The day before yesterday I told him, for the first time,
+that I meant to see him through, no matter what happened. And I'm afraid
+he's lost his head, and will be imprudent and spoil things. You see, I
+hadn't meant to say a word to him till I'd had time to prepare Madame de
+Chantelle."
+
+She felt that Darrow was looking at her and reading her thoughts, and
+the colour flew to her face. "Yes: it was when I heard you were coming
+that I told him. I wanted him to feel as I felt...it seemed too unkind
+to make him wait!" Her hand was in his, and his arm rested for a moment
+on her shoulder.
+
+"It WOULD have been too unkind to make him wait."
+
+They moved side by side toward the stairs. Through the haze of bliss
+enveloping her, Owen's affairs seemed curiously unimportant and remote.
+Nothing really mattered but this torrent of light in her veins. She put
+her foot on the lowest step, saying: "It's nearly luncheon time--I must
+take off my hat..." and as she started up the stairs Darrow stood below
+in the hall and watched her. But the distance between them did not make
+him seem less near: it was as if his thoughts moved with her and touched
+her like endearing hands.
+
+In her bedroom she shut the door and stood still, looking about her in
+a fit of dreamy wonder. Her feelings were unlike any she had ever known:
+richer, deeper, more complete. For the first time everything in her,
+from head to foot, seemed to be feeding the same full current of
+sensation.
+
+She took off her hat and went to the dressing-table to smooth her hair.
+The pressure of the hat had flattened the dark strands on her forehead;
+her face was paler than usual, with shadows about the eyes. She felt a
+pang of regret for the wasted years. "If I look like this today," she
+said to herself, "what will he think of me when I'm ill or worried?" She
+began to run her fingers through her hair, rejoicing in its thickness;
+then she desisted and sat still, resting her chin on her hands.
+
+"I want him to see me as I am," she thought.
+
+Deeper than the deepest fibre of her vanity was the triumphant sense
+that AS SHE WAS, with her flattened hair, her tired pallor, her thin
+sleeves a little tumbled by the weight of her jacket, he would like her
+even better, feel her nearer, dearer, more desirable, than in all the
+splendours she might put on for him. In the light of this discovery she
+studied her face with a new intentness, seeing its defects as she had
+never seen them, yet seeing them through a kind of radiance, as though
+love were a luminous medium into which she had been bodily plunged.
+
+She was glad now that she had confessed her doubts and her jealousy.
+She divined that a man in love may be flattered by such involuntary
+betrayals, that there are moments when respect for his liberty appeals
+to him less than the inability to respect it: moments so propitious
+that a woman's very mistakes and indiscretions may help to establish her
+dominion. The sense of power she had been aware of in talking to Darrow
+came back with ten-fold force. She felt like testing him by the most
+fantastic exactions, and at the same moment she longed to humble herself
+before him, to make herself the shadow and echo of his mood. She wanted
+to linger with him in a world of fancy and yet to walk at his side in
+the world of fact. She wanted him to feel her power and yet to love her
+for her ignorance and humility. She felt like a slave, and a goddess,
+and a girl in her teens...
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+Darrow, late that evening, threw himself into an armchair before his
+fire and mused.
+
+The room was propitious to meditation. The red-veiled lamp, the corners
+of shadow, the splashes of firelight on the curves of old full-bodied
+wardrobes and cabinets, gave it an air of intimacy increased by its
+faded hangings, its slightly frayed and threadbare rugs. Everything in
+it was harmoniously shabby, with a subtle sought-for shabbiness in which
+Darrow fancied he discerned the touch of Fraser Leath. But Fraser Leath
+had grown so unimportant a factor in the scheme of things that these
+marks of his presence caused the young man no emotion beyond that of a
+faint retrospective amusement.
+
+The afternoon and evening had been perfect.
+
+After a moment of concern over her step-son's departure, Anna had
+surrendered herself to her happiness with an impetuosity that Darrow had
+never suspected in her. Early in the afternoon they had gone out in the
+motor, traversing miles of sober-tinted landscape in which, here and
+there, a scarlet vineyard flamed, clattering through the streets of
+stony villages, coming out on low slopes above the river, or winding
+through the pale gold of narrow wood-roads with the blue of clear-cut
+hills at their end. Over everything lay a faint sunshine that seemed
+dissolved in the still air, and the smell of wet roots and decaying
+leaves was merged in the pungent scent of burning underbrush. Once, at
+the turn of a wall, they stopped the motor before a ruined gateway and,
+stumbling along a road full of ruts, stood before a little old deserted
+house, fantastically carved and chimneyed, which lay in a moat under the
+shade of ancient trees. They paced the paths between the trees, found
+a mouldy Temple of Love on an islet among reeds and plantains, and,
+sitting on a bench in the stable-yard, watched the pigeons circling
+against the sunset over their cot of patterned brick. Then the motor
+flew on into the dusk...
+
+When they came in they sat beside the fire in the oak drawing-room,
+and Darrow noticed how delicately her head stood out against the sombre
+panelling, and mused on the enjoyment there would always be in the mere
+fact of watching her hands as they moved about among the tea-things...
+
+They dined late, and facing her across the table, with its low lights
+and flowers, he felt an extraordinary pleasure in seeing her again in
+evening dress, and in letting his eyes dwell on the proud shy set of her
+head, the way her dark hair clasped it, and the girlish thinness of her
+neck above the slight swell of the breast. His imagination was struck
+by the quality of reticence in her beauty. She suggested a fine portrait
+kept down to a few tones, or a Greek vase on which the play of light is
+the only pattern.
+
+After dinner they went out on the terrace for a look at the moon-misted
+park. Through the crepuscular whiteness the trees hung in blotted
+masses. Below the terrace, the garden drew its dark diagrams between
+statues that stood like muffled conspirators on the edge of the shadow.
+Farther off, the meadows unrolled a silver-shot tissue to the mantling
+of mist above the river; and the autumn stars trembled overhead like
+their own reflections seen in dim water.
+
+He lit his cigar, and they walked slowly up and down the flags in the
+languid air, till he put an arm about her, saying: "You mustn't stay
+till you're chilled"; then they went back into the room and drew up
+their chairs to the fire.
+
+It seemed only a moment later that she said: "It must be after eleven,"
+and stood up and looked down on him, smiling faintly. He sat
+still, absorbing the look, and thinking: "There'll be evenings and
+evenings"--till she came nearer, bent over him, and with a hand on his
+shoulder said: "Good night."
+
+He got to his feet and put his arms about her.
+
+"Good night," he answered, and held her fast; and they gave each other a
+long kiss of promise and communion.
+
+The memory of it glowed in him still as he sat over his crumbling fire;
+but beneath his physical exultation he felt a certain gravity of mood.
+His happiness was in some sort the rallying-point of many scattered
+purposes. He summed it up vaguely by saying to himself that to be loved
+by a woman like that made "all the difference"...He was a little tired
+of experimenting on life; he wanted to "take a line", to follow things
+up, to centralize and concentrate, and produce results. Two or three
+more years of diplomacy--with her beside him!--and then their real life
+would begin: study, travel and book-making for him, and for her--well,
+the joy, at any rate, of getting out of an atmosphere of bric-a-brac and
+card-leaving into the open air of competing activities.
+
+The desire for change had for some time been latent in him, and his
+meeting with Mrs. Leath the previous spring had given it a definite
+direction. With such a comrade to focus and stimulate his energies he
+felt modestly but agreeably sure of "doing something". And under this
+assurance was the lurking sense that he was somehow worthy of his
+opportunity. His life, on the whole, had been a creditable affair. Out
+of modest chances and middling talents he had built himself a fairly
+marked personality, known some exceptional people, done a number of
+interesting and a few rather difficult things, and found himself, at
+thirty-seven, possessed of an intellectual ambition sufficient to occupy
+the passage to a robust and energetic old age. As for the private and
+personal side of his life, it had come up to the current standards, and
+if it had dropped, now and then, below a more ideal measure, even these
+declines had been brief, parenthetic, incidental. In the recognized
+essentials he had always remained strictly within the limit of his
+scruples.
+
+From this reassuring survey of his case he came back to the
+contemplation of its crowning felicity. His mind turned again to his
+first meeting with Anna Summers and took up one by one the threads of
+their faintly sketched romance. He dwelt with pardonable pride on
+the fact that fate had so early marked him for the high privilege of
+possessing her: it seemed to mean that they had really, in the truest
+sense of the ill-used phrase, been made for each other.
+
+Deeper still than all these satisfactions was the mere elemental sense
+of well-being in her presence. That, after all, was what proved her to
+be the woman for him: the pleasure he took in the set of her head, the
+way her hair grew on her forehead and at the nape, her steady gaze when
+he spoke, the grave freedom of her gait and gestures. He recalled every
+detail of her face, the fine veinings of the temples, the bluish-brown
+shadows in her upper lids, and the way the reflections of two stars
+seemed to form and break up in her eyes when he held her close to him...
+
+If he had had any doubt as to the nature of her feeling for him those
+dissolving stars would have allayed it. She was reserved, she was shy
+even, was what the shallow and effusive would call "cold". She was like
+a picture so hung that it can be seen only at a certain angle: an angle
+known to no one but its possessor. The thought flattered his sense
+of possessorship...He felt that the smile on his lips would have been
+fatuous had it had a witness. He was thinking of her look when she had
+questioned him about his meeting with Owen at the theatre: less of her
+words than of her look, and of the effort the question cost her: the
+reddening of her cheek, the deepening of the strained line between her
+brows, the way her eyes sought shelter and then turned and drew on him.
+Pride and passion were in the conflict--magnificent qualities in a wife!
+The sight almost made up for his momentary embarrassment at the rousing
+of a memory which had no place in his present picture of himself.
+
+Yes! It was worth a good deal to watch that fight between her instinct
+and her intelligence, and know one's self the object of the struggle...
+
+Mingled with these sensations were considerations of another order. He
+reflected with satisfaction that she was the kind of woman with whom
+one would like to be seen in public. It would be distinctly agreeable
+to follow her into drawing-rooms, to walk after her down the aisle of a
+theatre, to get in and out of trains with her, to say "my wife" of her
+to all sorts of people. He draped these details in the handsome
+phrase "She's a woman to be proud of", and felt that this fact somehow
+justified and ennobled his instinctive boyish satisfaction in loving
+her.
+
+He stood up, rambled across the room and leaned out for a while into
+the starry night. Then he dropped again into his armchair with a sigh of
+deep content.
+
+"Oh, hang it," he suddenly exclaimed, "it's the best thing that's ever
+happened to me, anyhow!"
+
+
+The next day was even better. He felt, and knew she felt, that they had
+reached a clearer understanding of each other. It was as if, after a
+swim through bright opposing waves, with a dazzle of sun in their eyes,
+they had gained an inlet in the shades of a cliff, where they could
+float on the still surface and gaze far down into the depths.
+
+Now and then, as they walked and talked, he felt a thrill of youthful
+wonder at the coincidence of their views and their experiences, at the
+way their minds leapt to the same point in the same instant.
+
+"The old delusion, I suppose," he smiled to himself. "Will Nature never
+tire of the trick?"
+
+But he knew it was more than that. There were moments in their talk when
+he felt, distinctly and unmistakably, the solid ground of friendship
+underneath the whirling dance of his sensations. "How I should like her
+if I didn't love her!" he summed it up, wondering at the miracle of such
+a union.
+
+In the course of the morning a telegram had come from Owen Leath,
+announcing that he, his grandmother and Effie would arrive from Dijon
+that afternoon at four. The station of the main line was eight or ten
+miles from Givre, and Anna, soon after three, left in the motor to meet
+the travellers.
+
+When she had gone Darrow started for a walk, planning to get back late,
+in order that the reunited family might have the end of the afternoon
+to themselves. He roamed the country-side till long after dark, and the
+stable-clock of Givre was striking seven as he walked up the avenue to
+the court.
+
+In the hall, coming down the stairs, he encountered Anna. Her face was
+serene, and his first glance showed him that Owen had kept his word and
+that none of her forebodings had been fulfilled.
+
+She had just come down from the school-room, where Effie and the
+governess were having supper; the little girl, she told him, looked
+immensely better for her Swiss holiday, but was dropping with sleep
+after the journey, and too tired to make her habitual appearance in the
+drawing-room before being put to bed. Madame de Chantelle was resting,
+but would be down for dinner; and as for Owen, Anna supposed he was off
+somewhere in the park--he had a passion for prowling about the park at
+nightfall...
+
+Darrow followed her into the brown room, where the tea-table had been
+left for him. He declined her offer of tea, but she lingered a moment
+to tell him that Owen had in fact kept his word, and that Madame de
+Chantelle had come back in the best of humours, and unsuspicious of the
+blow about to fall.
+
+"She has enjoyed her month at Ouchy, and it has given her a lot to talk
+about--her symptoms, and the rival doctors, and the people at the hotel.
+It seems she met your Ambassadress there, and Lady Wantley, and
+some other London friends of yours, and she's heard what she calls
+'delightful things' about you: she told me to tell you so. She attaches
+great importance to the fact that your grandmother was an Everard of
+Albany. She's prepared to open her arms to you. I don't know whether it
+won't make it harder for poor Owen...the contrast, I mean...There are no
+Ambassadresses or Everards to vouch for HIS choice! But you'll help me,
+won't you? You'll help me to help him? To-morrow I'll tell you the rest.
+Now I must rush up and tuck in Effie..."
+
+"Oh, you'll see, we'll pull it off for him!" he assured her; "together,
+we can't fail to pull it off."
+
+He stood and watched her with a smile as she fled down the half-lit
+vista to the hall.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+
+If Darrow, on entering the drawing-room before dinner, examined its new
+occupant with unusual interest, it was more on Owen Leath's account than
+his own.
+
+Anna's hints had roused his interest in the lad's love affair, and he
+wondered what manner of girl the heroine of the coming conflict might
+be. He had guessed that Owen's rebellion symbolized for his step-mother
+her own long struggle against the Leath conventions, and he understood
+that if Anna so passionately abetted him it was partly because, as she
+owned, she wanted his liberation to coincide with hers.
+
+The lady who was to represent, in the impending struggle, the forces of
+order and tradition was seated by the fire when Darrow entered. Among
+the flowers and old furniture of the large pale-panelled room, Madame
+de Chantelle had the inanimate elegance of a figure introduced into a
+"still-life" to give the scale. And this, Darrow reflected, was exactly
+what she doubtless regarded as her chief obligation: he was sure she
+thought a great deal of "measure", and approved of most things only
+up to a certain point. She was a woman of sixty, with a figure at once
+young and old-fashioned. Her fair faded tints, her quaint corseting,
+the passementerie on her tight-waisted dress, the velvet band on her
+tapering arm, made her resemble a "carte de visite" photograph of the
+middle sixties. One saw her, younger but no less invincibly lady-like,
+leaning on a chair with a fringed back, a curl in her neck, a locket
+on her tuckered bosom, toward the end of an embossed morocco album
+beginning with The Beauties of the Second Empire.
+
+She received her daughter-in-law's suitor with an affability which
+implied her knowledge and approval of his suit. Darrow had already
+guessed her to be a person who would instinctively oppose any suggested
+changes, and then, after one had exhausted one's main arguments,
+unexpectedly yield to some small incidental reason, and adhere doggedly
+to her new position. She boasted of her old-fashioned prejudices, talked
+a good deal of being a grandmother, and made a show of reaching up to
+tap Owen's shoulder, though his height was little more than hers.
+
+She was full of a small pale prattle about the people she had seen
+at Ouchy, as to whom she had the minute statistical information of a
+gazetteer, without any apparent sense of personal differences. She said
+to Darrow: "They tell me things are very much changed in America...Of
+course in my youth there WAS a Society"...She had no desire to return
+there she was sure the standards must be so different. "There are
+charming people everywhere...and one must always look on the best
+side...but when one has lived among Traditions it's difficult to adapt
+one's self to the new ideas...These dreadful views of marriage...it's
+so hard to explain them to my French relations...I'm thankful to say I
+don't pretend to understand them myself! But YOU'RE an Everard--I told
+Anna last spring in London that one sees that instantly"...
+
+She wandered off to the cooking and the service of the hotel at Ouchy.
+She attached great importance to gastronomic details and to the manners
+of hotel servants. There, too, there was a falling off, she said. "I don
+t know, of course; but people say it's owing to the Americans. Certainly
+my waiter had a way of slapping down the dishes...they tell me that many
+of them are Anarchists...belong to Unions, you know." She appealed
+to Darrow's reported knowledge of economic conditions to confirm this
+ominous rumour.
+
+After dinner Owen Leath wandered into the next room, where the piano
+stood, and began to play among the shadows. His step-mother presently
+joined him, and Darrow sat alone with Madame de Chantelle.
+
+She took up the thread of her mild chat and carried it on at the
+same pace as her knitting. Her conversation resembled the large
+loose-stranded web between her fingers: now and then she dropped a
+stitch, and went on regardless of the gap in the pattern.
+
+Darrow listened with a lazy sense of well-being. In the mental lull of
+the after-dinner hour, with harmonious memories murmuring through
+his mind, and the soft tints and shadowy spaces of the fine old room
+charming his eyes to indolence, Madame de Chantelle's discourse seemed
+not out of place. He could understand that, in the long run, the
+atmosphere of Givre might be suffocating; but in his present mood its
+very limitations had a grace.
+
+Presently he found the chance to say a word in his own behalf; and
+thereupon measured the advantage, never before particularly apparent to
+him, of being related to the Everards of Albany. Madame de Chantelle's
+conception of her native country--to which she had not returned since
+her twentieth year--reminded him of an ancient geographer's map of the
+Hyperborean regions. It was all a foggy blank, from which only one or
+two fixed outlines emerged; and one of these belonged to the Everards of
+Albany.
+
+The fact that they offered such firm footing--formed, so to speak,
+a friendly territory on which the opposing powers could meet and
+treat--helped him through the task of explaining and justifying himself
+as the successor of Fraser Leath. Madame de Chantelle could not resist
+such incontestable claims. She seemed to feel her son's hovering and
+discriminating presence, and she gave Darrow the sense that he was being
+tested and approved as a last addition to the Leath Collection.
+
+She also made him aware of the immense advantage he possessed in
+belonging to the diplomatic profession. She spoke of this humdrum
+calling as a Career, and gave Darrow to understand that she supposed him
+to have been seducing Duchesses when he was not negotiating Treaties.
+He heard again quaint phrases which romantic old ladies had used in his
+youth: "Brilliant diplomatic society...social advantages...the entree
+everywhere...nothing else FORMS a young man in the same way..." and she
+sighingly added that she could have wished her grandson had chosen the
+same path to glory.
+
+Darrow prudently suppressed his own view of the profession, as well
+as the fact that he had adopted it provisionally, and for reasons
+less social than sociological; and the talk presently passed on to the
+subject of his future plans.
+
+Here again, Madame de Chantelle's awe of the Career made her admit
+the necessity of Anna's consenting to an early marriage. The fact that
+Darrow was "ordered" to South America seemed to put him in the romantic
+light of a young soldier charged to lead a forlorn hope: she sighed and
+said: "At such moments a wife's duty is at her husband's side."
+
+The problem of Effie's future might have disturbed her, she added; but
+since Anna, for a time, consented to leave the little girl with her,
+that problem was at any rate deferred. She spoke plaintively of the
+responsibility of looking after her granddaughter, but Darrow divined
+that she enjoyed the flavour of the word more than she felt the weight
+of the fact.
+
+"Effie's a perfect child. She's more like my son, perhaps, than dear
+Owen. She'll never intentionally give me the least trouble. But of
+course the responsibility will be great...I'm not sure I should dare
+to undertake it if it were not for her having such a treasure of a
+governess. Has Anna told you about our little governess? After all the
+worry we had last year, with one impossible creature after another, it
+seems providential, just now, to have found her. At first we were afraid
+she was too young; but now we've the greatest confidence in her. So
+clever and amusing--and SUCH a lady! I don't say her education's all it
+might be...no drawing or singing...but one can't have everything; and
+she speaks Italian..."
+
+Madame de Chantelle's fond insistence on the likeness between Effie
+Leath and her father, if not particularly gratifying to Darrow, had at
+least increased his desire to see the little girl. It gave him an
+odd feeling of discomfort to think that she should have any of the
+characteristics of the late Fraser Leath: he had, somehow, fantastically
+pictured her as the mystical offspring of the early tenderness between
+himself and Anna Summers.
+
+His encounter with Effie took place the next morning, on the lawn below
+the terrace, where he found her, in the early sunshine, knocking about
+golf balls with her brother. Almost at once, and with infinite relief,
+he saw that the resemblance of which Madame de Chantelle boasted was
+mainly external. Even that discovery was slightly distasteful, though
+Darrow was forced to own that Fraser Leath's straight-featured fairness
+had lent itself to the production of a peculiarly finished image of
+childish purity. But it was evident that other elements had also gone
+to the making of Effie, and that another spirit sat in her eyes. Her
+serious handshake, her "pretty" greeting, were worthy of the Leath
+tradition, and he guessed her to be more malleable than Owen, more
+subject to the influences of Givre; but the shout with which she
+returned to her romp had in it the note of her mother's emancipation.
+
+He had begged a holiday for her, and when Mrs. Leath appeared he and she
+and the little girl went off for a ramble. Anna wished her daughter to
+have time to make friends with Darrow before learning in what relation
+he was to stand to her; and the three roamed the woods and fields till
+the distant chime of the stable-clock made them turn back for luncheon.
+
+Effie, who was attended by a shaggy terrier, had picked up two or three
+subordinate dogs at the stable; and as she trotted on ahead with her
+yapping escort, Anna hung back to throw a look at Darrow.
+
+"Yes," he answered it, "she's exquisite...Oh, I see what I'm asking of
+you! But she'll be quite happy here, won't she? And you must remember it
+won't be for long..."
+
+Anna sighed her acquiescence. "Oh, she'll be happy here. It's her nature
+to be happy. She'll apply herself to it, conscientiously, as she does
+to her lessons, and to what she calls 'being good'...In a way, you see,
+that's just what worries me. Her idea of 'being good' is to please the
+person she's with--she puts her whole dear little mind on it! And so, if
+ever she's with the wrong person----"
+
+"But surely there's no danger of that just now? Madame de Chantelle
+tells me that you've at last put your hand on a perfect governess----"
+
+Anna, without answering, glanced away from him toward her daughter.
+
+"It's lucky, at any rate," Darrow continued, "that Madame de Chantelle
+thinks her so."
+
+"Oh, I think very highly of her too."
+
+"Highly enough to feel quite satisfied to leave her with Effie?"
+
+"Yes. She's just the person for Effie. Only, of course, one never
+knows...She's young, and she might take it into her head to leave us..."
+After a pause she added: "I'm naturally anxious to know what you think
+of her."
+
+When they entered the house the hands of the hall clock stood within a
+few minutes of the luncheon hour. Anna led Effie off to have her hair
+smoothed and Darrow wandered into the oak sitting-room, which he found
+untenanted. The sun lay pleasantly on its brown walls, on the scattered
+books and the flowers in old porcelain vases. In his eyes lingered the
+vision of the dark-haired mother mounting the stairs with her little
+fair daughter. The contrast between them seemed a last touch of grace
+in the complex harmony of things. He stood in the window, looking out at
+the park, and brooding inwardly upon his happiness...
+
+He was roused by Effie's voice and the scamper of her feet down the long
+floors behind him.
+
+"Here he is! Here he is!" she cried, flying over the threshold.
+
+He turned and stooped to her with a smile, and as she caught his hand he
+perceived that she was trying to draw him toward some one who had paused
+behind her in the doorway, and whom he supposed to be her mother.
+
+"HERE he is!" Effie repeated, with her sweet impatience.
+
+The figure in the doorway came forward and Darrow, looking up, found
+himself face to face with Sophy Viner. They stood still, a yard or two
+apart, and looked at each other without speaking.
+
+As they paused there, a shadow fell across one of the terrace windows,
+and Owen Leath stepped whistling into the room. In his rough shooting
+clothes, with the glow of exercise under his fair skin, he looked
+extraordinarily light-hearted and happy. Darrow, with a quick
+side-glance, noticed this, and perceived also that the glow on the
+youth's cheek had deepened suddenly to red. He too stopped short, and
+the three stood there motionless for a barely perceptible beat of time.
+During its lapse, Darrow's eyes had turned back from Owen's face to that
+of the girl between them. He had the sense that, whatever was done, it
+was he who must do it, and that it must be done immediately. He went
+forward and held out his hand.
+
+"How do you do, Miss Viner?"
+
+She answered: "How do you do?" in a voice that sounded clear and
+natural; and the next moment he again became aware of steps behind him,
+and knew that Mrs. Leath was in the room.
+
+To his strained senses there seemed to be another just measurable
+pause before Anna said, looking gaily about the little group: "Has Owen
+introduced you? This is Effie's friend, Miss Viner."
+
+Effie, still hanging on her governess's arm, pressed herself closer with
+a little gesture of appropriation; and Miss Viner laid her hand on her
+pupil's hair.
+
+Darrow felt that Anna's eyes had turned to him.
+
+"I think Miss Viner and I have met already--several years ago in
+London."
+
+"I remember," said Sophy Viner, in the same clear voice.
+
+"How charming! Then we're all friends. But luncheon must be ready," said
+Mrs. Leath.
+
+She turned back to the door, and the little procession moved down the
+two long drawing-rooms, with Effie waltzing on ahead.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+
+Madame de Chantelle and Anna had planned, for the afternoon, a visit to
+a remotely situated acquaintance whom the introduction of the motor had
+transformed into a neighbour. Effie was to pay for her morning's holiday
+by an hour or two in the school-room, and Owen suggested that he and
+Darrow should betake themselves to a distant covert in the desultory
+quest for pheasants.
+
+Darrow was not an ardent sportsman, but any pretext for physical
+activity would have been acceptable at the moment; and he was glad both
+to get away from the house and not to be left to himself.
+
+When he came downstairs the motor was at the door, and Anna stood before
+the hall mirror, swathing her hat in veils. She turned at the sound of
+his step and smiled at him for a long full moment.
+
+"I'd no idea you knew Miss Viner," she said, as he helped her into her
+long coat.
+
+"It came back to me, luckily, that I'd seen her two or three times in
+London, several years ago. She was secretary, or something of the sort,
+in the background of a house where I used to dine."
+
+He loathed the slighting indifference of the phrase, but he had uttered
+it deliberately, had been secretly practising it all through the
+interminable hour at the luncheon-table. Now that it was spoken, he
+shivered at its note of condescension. In such cases one was almost sure
+to overdo...But Anna seemed to notice nothing unusual.
+
+"Was she really? You must tell me all about it--tell me exactly how she
+struck you. I'm so glad it turns out that you know her."
+
+"'Know' is rather exaggerated: we used to pass each other on the
+stairs."
+
+Madame de Chantelle and Owen appeared together as he spoke, and Anna,
+gathering up her wraps, said: "You'll tell me about that, then. Try and
+remember everything you can."
+
+As he tramped through the woods at his young host's side, Darrow felt
+the partial relief from thought produced by exercise and the obligation
+to talk. Little as he cared for shooting, he had the habit of
+concentration which makes it natural for a man to throw himself wholly
+into whatever business he has in hand, and there were moments of the
+afternoon when a sudden whirr in the undergrowth, a vivider gleam
+against the hazy browns and greys of the woods, was enough to fill the
+foreground of his attention. But all the while, behind these voluntarily
+emphasized sensations, his secret consciousness continued to revolve on
+a loud wheel of thought. For a time it seemed to be sweeping him through
+deep gulfs of darkness. His sensations were too swift and swarming to be
+disentangled. He had an almost physical sense of struggling for air,
+of battling helplessly with material obstructions, as though the russet
+covert through which he trudged were the heart of a maleficent jungle...
+
+Snatches of his companion's talk drifted to him intermittently through
+the confusion of his thoughts. He caught eager self-revealing phrases,
+and understood that Owen was saying things about himself, perhaps
+hinting indirectly at the hopes for which Darrow had been prepared by
+Anna's confidences. He had already become aware that the lad liked
+him, and had meant to take the first opportunity of showing that he
+reciprocated the feeling. But the effort of fixing his attention on
+Owen's words was so great that it left no power for more than the
+briefest and most inexpressive replies.
+
+Young Leath, it appeared, felt that he had reached a turning-point in
+his career, a height from which he could impartially survey his past
+progress and projected endeavour. At one time he had had musical and
+literary yearnings, visions of desultory artistic indulgence; but these
+had of late been superseded by the resolute determination to plunge into
+practical life.
+
+"I don't want, you see," Darrow heard him explaining, "to drift into
+what my grandmother, poor dear, is trying to make of me: an adjunct of
+Givre. I don't want--hang it all!--to slip into collecting sensations
+as my father collected snuff-boxes. I want Effie to have Givre--it's my
+grandmother's, you know, to do as she likes with; and I've understood
+lately that if it belonged to me it would gradually gobble me up. I want
+to get out of it, into a life that's big and ugly and struggling. If
+I can extract beauty out of THAT, so much the better: that'll prove my
+vocation. But I want to MAKE beauty, not be drowned in the ready-made,
+like a bee in a pot of honey."
+
+Darrow knew that he was being appealed to for corroboration of these
+views and for encouragement in the course to which they pointed. To his
+own ears his answers sounded now curt, now irrelevant: at one moment he
+seemed chillingly indifferent, at another he heard himself launching out
+on a flood of hazy discursiveness. He dared not look at Owen, for fear
+of detecting the lad's surprise at these senseless transitions. And
+through the confusion of his inward struggles and outward loquacity he
+heard the ceaseless trip-hammer beat of the question: "What in God's
+name shall I do?"...
+
+To get back to the house before Anna's return seemed his most pressing
+necessity. He did not clearly know why: he simply felt that he ought to
+be there. At one moment it occurred to him that Miss Viner might want to
+speak to him alone--and again, in the same flash, that it would probably
+be the last thing she would want...At any rate, he felt he ought to try
+to speak to HER; or at least be prepared to do so, if the chance should
+occur...
+
+Finally, toward four, he told his companion that he had some letters
+on his mind and must get back to the house and despatch them before the
+ladies returned. He left Owen with the beater and walked on to the edge
+of the covert. At the park gates he struck obliquely through the trees,
+following a grass avenue at the end of which he had caught a glimpse
+of the roof of the chapel. A grey haze had blotted out the sun and the
+still air clung about him tepidly. At length the house-front raised
+before him its expanse of damp-silvered brick, and he was struck afresh
+by the high decorum of its calm lines and soberly massed surfaces. It
+made him feel, in the turbid coil of his fears and passions, like a
+muddy tramp forcing his way into some pure sequestered shrine...
+
+By and bye, he knew, he should have to think the complex horror out,
+slowly, systematically, bit by bit; but for the moment it was whirling
+him about so fast that he could just clutch at its sharp spikes and
+be tossed off again. Only one definite immediate fact stuck in his
+quivering grasp. He must give the girl every chance--must hold himself
+passive till she had taken them...
+
+In the court Effie ran up to him with her leaping terrier.
+
+"I was coming out to meet you--you and Owen. Miss Viner was coming, too,
+and then she couldn't because she's got such a headache. I'm afraid I
+gave it to her because I did my division so disgracefully. It's too bad,
+isn't it? But won't you walk back with me? Nurse won't mind the least
+bit; she'd so much rather go in to tea."
+
+Darrow excused himself laughingly, on the plea that he had letters to
+write, which was much worse than having a headache, and not infrequently
+resulted in one.
+
+"Oh, then you can go and write them in Owen's study. That's where
+gentlemen always write their letters."
+
+She flew on with her dog and Darrow pursued his way to the house.
+Effie's suggestion struck him as useful. He had pictured himself
+as vaguely drifting about the drawing-rooms, and had perceived the
+difficulty of Miss Viner's having to seek him there; but the study,
+a small room on the right of the hall, was in easy sight from the
+staircase, and so situated that there would be nothing marked in his
+being found there in talk with her.
+
+He went in, leaving the door open, and sat down at the writing-table.
+The room was a friendly heterogeneous place, the one repository, in the
+well-ordered and amply-servanted house, of all its unclassified odds and
+ends: Effie's croquet-box and fishing rods, Owen's guns and golf-sticks
+and racquets, his step-mother's flower-baskets and gardening implements,
+even Madame de Chantelle's embroidery frame, and the back numbers of the
+Catholic Weekly. The early twilight had begun to fall, and presently
+a slanting ray across the desk showed Darrow that a servant was coming
+across the hall with a lamp. He pulled out a sheet of note-paper and
+began to write at random, while the man, entering, put the lamp at his
+elbow and vaguely "straightened" the heap of newspapers tossed on the
+divan. Then his steps died away and Darrow sat leaning his head on his
+locked hands.
+
+Presently another step sounded on the stairs, wavered a moment and then
+moved past the threshold of the study. Darrow got up and walked into
+the hall, which was still unlighted. In the dimness he saw Sophy Viner
+standing by the hall door in her hat and jacket. She stopped at sight
+of him, her hand on the door-bolt, and they stood for a second without
+speaking.
+
+"Have you seen Effie?" she suddenly asked. "She went out to meet you."
+
+"She DID meet me, just now, in the court. She's gone on to join her
+brother."
+
+Darrow spoke as naturally as he could, but his voice sounded to his own
+ears like an amateur actor's in a "light" part.
+
+Miss Viner, without answering, drew back the bolt. He watched her in
+silence as the door swung open; then he said: "She has her nurse with
+her. She won't be long."
+
+She stood irresolute, and he added: "I was writing in there--won't you
+come and have a little talk? Every one's out."
+
+The last words struck him as not well-chosen, but there was no time to
+choose. She paused a second longer and then crossed the threshold of the
+study. At luncheon she had sat with her back to the window, and beyond
+noting that she had grown a little thinner, and had less colour and
+vivacity, he had seen no change in her; but now, as the lamplight fell
+on her face, its whiteness startled him.
+
+"Poor thing...poor thing...what in heaven's name can she suppose?" he
+wondered.
+
+"Do sit down--I want to talk to you," he said and pushed a chair toward
+her.
+
+She did not seem to see it, or, if she did, she deliberately chose
+another seat. He came back to his own chair and leaned his elbows on the
+blotter. She faced him from the farther side of the table.
+
+"You promised to let me hear from you now and then," he began awkwardly,
+and with a sharp sense of his awkwardness.
+
+A faint smile made her face more tragic. "Did I? There was nothing to
+tell. I've had no history--like the happy countries..."
+
+He waited a moment before asking: "You ARE happy here?"
+
+"I WAS," she said with a faint emphasis.
+
+"Why do you say 'was'? You're surely not thinking of going? There can't
+be kinder people anywhere." Darrow hardly knew what he was saying; but
+her answer came to him with deadly definiteness.
+
+"I suppose it depends on you whether I go or stay."
+
+"On me?" He stared at her across Owen's scattered papers. "Good God!
+What can you think of me, to say that?"
+
+The mockery of the question flashed back at him from her wretched face.
+She stood up, wandered away, and leaned an instant in the darkening
+window-frame. From there she turned to fling back at him: "Don't imagine
+I'm the least bit sorry for anything!"
+
+He steadied his elbows on the table and hid his face in his hands.
+It was harder, oh, damnably harder, than he had expected! Arguments,
+expedients, palliations, evasions, all seemed to be slipping away
+from him: he was left face to face with the mere graceless fact of his
+inferiority. He lifted his head to ask at random: "You've been here,
+then, ever since?"
+
+"Since June; yes. It turned out that the Farlows were hunting for
+me--all the while--for this."
+
+She stood facing him, her back to the window, evidently impatient to be
+gone, yet with something still to say, or that she expected to hear him
+say. The sense of her expectancy benumbed him. What in heaven's name
+could he say to her that was not an offense or a mockery?
+
+"Your idea of the theatre--you gave that up at once, then?"
+
+"Oh, the theatre!" She gave a little laugh. "I couldn't wait for the
+theatre. I had to take the first thing that offered; I took this."
+
+He pushed on haltingly: "I'm glad--extremely glad--you're happy
+here...I'd counted on your letting me know if there was anything I could
+do...The theatre, now--if you still regret it--if you're not contented
+here...I know people in that line in London--I'm certain I can manage it
+for you when I get back----"
+
+She moved up to the table and leaned over it to ask, in a voice that was
+hardly above a whisper: "Then you DO want me to leave? Is that it?"
+
+He dropped his arms with a groan. "Good heavens! How can you think such
+things? At the time, you know, I begged you to let me do what I could,
+but you wouldn't hear of it...and ever since I've been wanting to be of
+use--to do something, anything, to help you..."
+
+She heard him through, motionless, without a quiver of the clasped hands
+she rested on the edge of the table.
+
+"If you want to help me, then--you can help me to stay here," she
+brought out with low-toned intensity.
+
+Through the stillness of the pause which followed, the bray of a
+motor-horn sounded far down the drive. Instantly she turned, with a last
+white look at him, and fled from the room and up the stairs. He stood
+motionless, benumbed by the shock of her last words. She was afraid,
+then--afraid of him--sick with fear of him! The discovery beat him down
+to a lower depth...
+
+The motor-horn sounded again, close at hand, and he turned and went
+up to his room. His letter-writing was a sufficient pretext for not
+immediately joining the party about the tea-table, and he wanted to be
+alone and try to put a little order into his tumultuous thinking.
+
+Upstairs, the room held out the intimate welcome of its lamp and fire.
+Everything in it exhaled the same sense of peace and stability which,
+two evenings before, had lulled him to complacent meditation. His
+armchair again invited him from the hearth, but he was too agitated to
+sit still, and with sunk head and hands clasped behind his back he began
+to wander up and down the room.
+
+His five minutes with Sophy Viner had flashed strange lights into the
+shadowy corners of his consciousness. The girl's absolute candour,
+her hard ardent honesty, was for the moment the vividest point in his
+thoughts. He wondered anew, as he had wondered before, at the way in
+which the harsh discipline of life had stripped her of false sentiment
+without laying the least touch on her pride. When they had parted, five
+months before, she had quietly but decidedly rejected all his offers
+of help, even to the suggestion of his trying to further her theatrical
+aims: she had made it clear that she wished their brief alliance to
+leave no trace on their lives save that of its own smiling memory. But
+now that they were unexpectedly confronted in a situation which seemed,
+to her terrified fancy, to put her at his mercy, her first impulse was
+to defend her right to the place she had won, and to learn as quickly
+as possible if he meant to dispute it. While he had pictured her as
+shrinking away from him in a tremor of self-effacement she had watched
+his movements, made sure of her opportunity, and come straight down to
+"have it out" with him. He was so struck by the frankness and energy of
+the proceeding that for a moment he lost sight of the view of his own
+character implied in it.
+
+"Poor thing...poor thing!" he could only go on saying; and with the
+repetition of the words the picture of himself as she must see him
+pitiably took shape again.
+
+He understood then, for the first time, how vague, in comparison with
+hers, had been his own vision of the part he had played in the brief
+episode of their relation. The incident had left in him a sense of
+exasperation and self-contempt, but that, as he now perceived, was
+chiefly, if not altogether, as it bore on his preconceived ideal of his
+attitude toward another woman. He had fallen below his own standard of
+sentimental loyalty, and if he thought of Sophy Viner it was mainly
+as the chance instrument of his lapse. These considerations were not
+agreeable to his pride, but they were forced on him by the example of
+her valiant common-sense. If he had cut a sorry figure in the business,
+he owed it to her not to close his eyes to the fact any longer...
+
+But when he opened them, what did he see? The situation, detestable at
+best, would yet have been relatively simple if protecting Sophy Viner
+had been the only duty involved in it. The fact that that duty was
+paramount did not do away with the contingent obligations. It was
+Darrow's instinct, in difficult moments, to go straight to the bottom
+of the difficulty; but he had never before had to take so dark a dive
+as this, and for the minute he shivered on the brink...Well, his first
+duty, at any rate, was to the girl: he must let her see that he meant to
+fulfill it to the last jot, and then try to find out how to square the
+fulfillment with the other problems already in his path...
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+
+In the oak room he found Mrs. Leath, her mother-in-law and Effie. The
+group, as he came toward it down the long drawing-rooms, composed itself
+prettily about the tea-table. The lamps and the fire crossed their
+gleams on silver and porcelain, on the bright haze of Effie's hair and
+on the whiteness of Anna's forehead, as she leaned back in her chair
+behind the tea-urn.
+
+She did not move at Darrow's approach, but lifted to him a deep gaze of
+peace and confidence. The look seemed to throw about him the spell of
+a divine security: he felt the joy of a convalescent suddenly waking to
+find the sunlight on his face.
+
+Madame de Chantelle, across her knitting, discoursed of their
+afternoon's excursion, with occasional pauses induced by the hypnotic
+effect of the fresh air; and Effie, kneeling, on the hearth, softly but
+insistently sought to implant in her terrier's mind some notion of the
+relation between a vertical attitude and sugar.
+
+Darrow took a chair behind the little girl, so that he might look across
+at her mother. It was almost a necessity for him, at the moment, to
+let his eyes rest on Anna's face, and to meet, now and then, the proud
+shyness of her gaze.
+
+Madame de Chantelle presently enquired what had become of Owen, and
+a moment later the window behind her opened, and her grandson, gun in
+hand, came in from the terrace. As he stood there in the lamp-light,
+with dead leaves and bits of bramble clinging to his mud-spattered
+clothes, the scent of the night about him and its chill on his pale
+bright face, he really had the look of a young faun strayed in from the
+forest.
+
+Effie abandoned the terrier to fly to him. "Oh, Owen, where in the world
+have you been? I walked miles and miles with Nurse and couldn't find
+you, and we met Jean and he said he didn't know where you'd gone."
+
+"Nobody knows where I go, or what I see when I get there--that's the
+beauty of it!" he laughed back at her. "But if you're good," he added,
+"I'll tell you about it one of these days."
+
+"Oh, now, Owen, now! I don't really believe I'll ever be much better
+than I am now."
+
+"Let Owen have his tea first," her mother suggested; but the young man,
+declining the offer, propped his gun against the wall, and, lighting
+a cigarette, began to pace up and down the room in a way that reminded
+Darrow of his own caged wanderings. Effie pursued him with her
+blandishments, and for a while he poured out to her a low-voiced stream
+of nonsense; then he sat down beside his step-mother and leaned over to
+help himself to tea.
+
+"Where's Miss Viner?" he asked, as Effie climbed up on him. "Why isn't
+she here to chain up this ungovernable infant?"
+
+"Poor Miss Viner has a headache. Effie says she went to her room as soon
+as lessons were over, and sent word that she wouldn't be down for tea."
+
+"Ah," said Owen, abruptly setting down his cup. He stood up, lit another
+cigarette, and wandered away to the piano in the room beyond.
+
+From the twilight where he sat a lonely music, borne on fantastic
+chords, floated to the group about the tea-table. Under its influence
+Madame de Chantelle's meditative pauses increased in length and
+frequency, and Effie stretched herself on the hearth, her drowsy head
+against the dog. Presently her nurse appeared, and Anna rose at the same
+time. "Stop a minute in my sitting-room on your way up," she paused to
+say to Darrow as she went.
+
+A few hours earlier, her request would have brought him instantly to his
+feet. She had given him, on the day of his arrival, an inviting glimpse
+of the spacious book-lined room above stairs in which she had gathered
+together all the tokens of her personal tastes: the retreat in which,
+as one might fancy, Anna Leath had hidden the restless ghost of Anna
+Summers; and the thought of a talk with her there had been in his mind
+ever since. But now he sat motionless, as if spell-bound by the play of
+Madame de Chantelle's needles and the pulsations of Owen's fitful music.
+
+"She will want to ask me about the girl," he repeated to himself, with a
+fresh sense of the insidious taint that embittered all his thoughts;
+the hand of the slender-columned clock on the mantel-piece had spanned
+a half-hour before shame at his own indecision finally drew him to his
+feet.
+
+From her writing-table, where she sat over a pile of letters, Anna
+lifted her happy smile. The impulse to press his lips to it made him
+come close and draw her upward. She threw her head back, as if surprised
+at the abruptness of the gesture; then her face leaned to his with the
+slow droop of a flower. He felt again the sweep of the secret tides, and
+all his fears went down in them.
+
+She sat down in the sofa-corner by the fire and he drew an armchair
+close to her. His gaze roamed peacefully about the quiet room.
+
+"It's just like you--it is you," he said, as his eyes came back to her.
+
+"It's a good place to be alone in--I don't think I've ever before cared
+to talk with any one here."
+
+"Let's be quiet, then: it's the best way of talking."
+
+"Yes; but we must save it up till later. There are things I want to say
+to you now."
+
+He leaned back in his chair. "Say them, then, and I'll listen."
+
+"Oh, no. I want you to tell me about Miss Viner."
+
+"About Miss Viner?" He summoned up a look of faint interrogation.
+
+He thought she seemed surprised at his surprise. "It's important,
+naturally," she explained, "that I should find out all I can about her
+before I leave."
+
+"Important on Effie's account?"
+
+"On Effie's account--of course."
+
+"Of course...But you've every reason to be satisfied, haven't you?"
+
+"Every apparent reason. We all like her. Effie's very fond of her, and
+she seems to have a delightful influence on the child. But we know so
+little, after all--about her antecedents, I mean, and her past history.
+That's why I want you to try and recall everything you heard about her
+when you used to see her in London."
+
+"Oh, on that score I'm afraid I sha'n't be of much use. As I told you,
+she was a mere shadow in the background of the house I saw her in--and
+that was four or five years ago..."
+
+"When she was with a Mrs. Murrett?"
+
+"Yes; an appalling woman who runs a roaring dinner-factory that used now
+and then to catch me in its wheels. I escaped from them long ago; but
+in my time there used to be half a dozen fagged 'hands' to tend the
+machine, and Miss Viner was one of them. I'm glad she's out of it, poor
+girl!" "Then you never really saw anything of her there?"
+
+"I never had the chance. Mrs. Murrett discouraged any competition on the
+part of her subordinates."
+
+"Especially such pretty ones, I suppose?" Darrow made no comment, and
+she continued: "And Mrs. Murrett's own opinion--if she'd offered you
+one--probably wouldn't have been of much value?"
+
+"Only in so far as her disapproval would, on general principles, have
+been a good mark for Miss Viner. But surely," he went on after a pause,
+"you could have found out about her from the people through whom you
+first heard of her?"
+
+Anna smiled. "Oh, we heard of her through Adelaide Painter--;" and in
+reply to his glance of interrogation she explained that the lady in
+question was a spinster of South Braintree, Massachusetts, who, having
+come to Paris some thirty years earlier, to nurse a brother through an
+illness, had ever since protestingly and provisionally camped there in a
+state of contemptuous protestation oddly manifested by her never taking
+the slip-covers off her drawing-room chairs. Her long residence on
+Gallic soil had not mitigated her hostility toward the creed and customs
+of the race, but though she always referred to the Catholic Church as
+the Scarlet Woman and took the darkest views of French private
+life, Madame de Chantelle placed great reliance on her judgment and
+experience, and in every domestic crisis the irreducible Adelaide was
+immediately summoned to Givre.
+
+"It's all the odder because my mother-in-law, since her second marriage,
+has lived so much in the country that she's practically lost sight
+of all her other American friends. Besides which, you can see how
+completely she has identified herself with Monsieur de Chantelle's
+nationality and adopted French habits and prejudices. Yet when anything
+goes wrong she always sends for Adelaide Painter, who's more American
+than the Stars and Stripes, and might have left South Braintree
+yesterday, if she hadn't, rather, brought it over with her in her
+trunk."
+
+Darrow laughed. "Well, then, if South Braintree vouches for Miss
+Viner----"
+
+"Oh, but only indirectly. When we had that odious adventure with
+Mademoiselle Grumeau, who'd been so highly recommended by Monsieur de
+Chantelle's aunt, the Chanoinesse, Adelaide was of course sent for, and
+she said at once: 'I'm not the least bit surprised. I've always told you
+that what you wanted for Effie was a sweet American girl, and not one of
+these nasty foreigners.' Unluckily she couldn't, at the moment, put her
+hand on a sweet American; but she presently heard of Miss Viner through
+the Farlows, an excellent couple who live in the Quartier Latin and
+write about French life for the American papers. I was only too thankful
+to find anyone who was vouched for by decent people; and so far I've had
+no cause to regret my choice. But I know, after all, very little about
+Miss Viner; and there are all kinds of reasons why I want, as soon as
+possible, to find out more--to find out all I can."
+
+"Since you've got to leave Effie I understand your feeling in that way.
+But is there, in such a case, any recommendation worth half as much as
+your own direct experience?"
+
+"No; and it's been so favourable that I was ready to accept it as
+conclusive. Only, naturally, when I found you'd known her in London I
+was in hopes you'd give me some more specific reasons for liking her as
+much as I do."
+
+"I'm afraid I can give you nothing more specific than my general vague
+impression that she seems very plucky and extremely nice."
+
+"You don't, at any rate, know anything specific to the contrary?"
+
+"To the contrary? How should I? I'm not conscious of ever having heard
+any one say two words about her. I only infer that she must have pluck
+and character to have stuck it out so long at Mrs. Murrett's."
+
+"Yes, poor thing! She has pluck, certainly; and pride, too; which must
+have made it all the harder." Anna rose to her feet. "You don't know how
+glad I am that your impression's on the whole so good. I particularly
+wanted you to like her."
+
+He drew her to him with a smile. "On that condition I'm prepared to love
+even Adelaide Painter."
+
+"I almost hope you wont have the chance to--poor Adelaide! Her
+appearance here always coincides with a catastrophe."
+
+"Oh, then I must manage to meet her elsewhere." He held Anna closer,
+saying to himself, as he smoothed back the hair from her forehead: "What
+does anything matter but just THIS?--Must I go now?" he added aloud.
+
+She answered absently: "It must be time to dress"; then she drew back a
+little and laid her hands on his shoulders. "My love--oh, my dear love!"
+she said.
+
+It came to him that they were the first words of endearment he had heard
+her speak, and their rareness gave them a magic quality of reassurance,
+as though no danger could strike through such a shield.
+
+A knock on the door made them draw apart. Anna lifted her hand to
+her hair and Darrow stooped to examine a photograph of Effie on the
+writing-table.
+
+"Come in!" Anna said.
+
+The door opened and Sophy Viner entered. Seeing Darrow, she drew back.
+
+"Do come in, Miss Viner," Anna repeated, looking at her kindly.
+
+The girl, a quick red in her cheeks, still hesitated on the threshold.
+
+"I'm so sorry; but Effie has mislaid her Latin grammar, and I thought
+she might have left it here. I need it to prepare for tomorrow's
+lesson."
+
+"Is this it?" Darrow asked, picking up a book from the table.
+
+"Oh, thank you!"
+
+He held it out to her and she took it and moved to the door.
+
+"Wait a minute, please, Miss Viner," Anna said; and as the girl turned
+back, she went on with her quiet smile: "Effie told us you'd gone to
+your room with a headache. You mustn't sit up over tomorrow's lessons if
+you don't feel well."
+
+Sophy's blush deepened. "But you see I have to. Latin's one of my weak
+points, and there's generally only one page of this book between me and
+Effie." She threw the words off with a half-ironic smile. "Do excuse my
+disturbing you," she added.
+
+"You didn't disturb me," Anna answered. Darrow perceived that she was
+looking intently at the girl, as though struck by something tense and
+tremulous in her face, her voice, her whole mien and attitude. "You DO
+look tired. You'd much better go straight to bed. Effie won't be sorry
+to skip her Latin."
+
+"Thank you--but I'm really all right," murmured Sophy Viner. Her glance,
+making a swift circuit of the room, dwelt for an appreciable instant on
+the intimate propinquity of arm-chair and sofa-corner; then she turned
+back to the door.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK III
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+
+At dinner that evening Madame de Chantelle's slender monologue was
+thrown out over gulfs of silence. Owen was still in the same state of
+moody abstraction as when Darrow had left him at the piano; and even
+Anna's face, to her friend's vigilant eye, revealed not, perhaps, a
+personal preoccupation, but a vague sense of impending disturbance.
+
+She smiled, she bore a part in the talk, her eyes dwelt on Darrow's with
+their usual deep reliance; but beneath the surface of her serenity his
+tense perceptions detected a hidden stir.
+
+He was sufficiently self-possessed to tell himself that it was doubtless
+due to causes with which he was not directly concerned. He knew the
+question of Owen's marriage was soon to be raised, and the abrupt
+alteration in the young man's mood made it seem probable that he was
+himself the centre of the atmospheric disturbance, For a moment it
+occurred to Darrow that Anna might have employed her afternoon in
+preparing Madame de Chantelle for her grandson's impending announcement;
+but a glance at the elder lady's unclouded brow showed that he must seek
+elsewhere the clue to Owen's taciturnity and his step-mother's concern.
+Possibly Anna had found reason to change her own attitude in the matter,
+and had made the change known to Owen. But this, again, was negatived by
+the fact that, during the afternoon's shooting, young Leath had been in
+a mood of almost extravagant expansiveness, and that, from the moment of
+his late return to the house till just before dinner, there had been,
+to Darrow's certain knowledge, no possibility of a private talk between
+himself and his step-mother.
+
+This obscured, if it narrowed, the field of conjecture; and Darrow's
+gropings threw him back on the conclusion that he was probably reading
+too much significance into the moods of a lad he hardly knew, and who
+had been described to him as subject to sudden changes of humour. As to
+Anna's fancied perturbation, it might simply be due to the fact that she
+had decided to plead Owen's cause the next day, and had perhaps already
+had a glimpse of the difficulties awaiting her. But Darrow knew that he
+was too deep in his own perplexities to judge the mental state of those
+about him. It might be, after all, that the variations he felt in the
+currents of communication were caused by his own inward tremor.
+
+Such, at any rate, was the conclusion he had reached when, shortly after
+the two ladies left the drawing-room, he bade Owen good-night and went
+up to his room. Ever since the rapid self-colloquy which had followed on
+his first sight of Sophy Viner, he had known there were other questions
+to be faced behind the one immediately confronting him. On the score
+of that one, at least, his mind, if not easy, was relieved. He had
+done what was possible to reassure the girl, and she had apparently
+recognized the sincerity of his intention. He had patched up as decent a
+conclusion as he could to an incident that should obviously have had
+no sequel; but he had known all along that with the securing of Miss
+Viner's peace of mind only a part of his obligation was discharged, and
+that with that part his remaining duty was in conflict. It had been his
+first business to convince the girl that their secret was safe with
+him; but it was far from easy to square this with the equally urgent
+obligation of safe-guarding Anna's responsibility toward her child.
+Darrow was not much afraid of accidental disclosures. Both he and Sophy
+Viner had too much at stake not to be on their guard. The fear that
+beset him was of another kind, and had a profounder source. He wanted to
+do all he could for the girl, but the fact of having had to urge Anna
+to confide Effie to her was peculiarly repugnant to him. His own ideas
+about Sophy Viner were too mixed and indeterminate for him not to feel
+the risk of such an experiment; yet he found himself in the intolerable
+position of appearing to press it on the woman he desired above all
+others to protect...
+
+Till late in the night his thoughts revolved in a turmoil of indecision.
+His pride was humbled by the discrepancy between what Sophy Viner had
+been to him and what he had thought of her. This discrepancy, which at
+the time had seemed to simplify the incident, now turned out to be
+its most galling complication. The bare truth, indeed, was that he had
+hardly thought of her at all, either at the time or since, and that he
+was ashamed to base his judgement of her on his meagre memory of their
+adventure.
+
+The essential cheapness of the whole affair--as far as his share in it
+was concerned--came home to him with humiliating distinctness. He would
+have liked to be able to feel that, at the time at least, he had
+staked something more on it, and had somehow, in the sequel, had a more
+palpable loss to show. But the plain fact was that he hadn't spent a
+penny on it; which was no doubt the reason of the prodigious score it
+had since been rolling up. At any rate, beat about the case as he would,
+it was clear that he owed it to Anna--and incidentally to his own peace
+of mind--to find some way of securing Sophy Viner's future without
+leaving her installed at Givre when he and his wife should depart for
+their new post.
+
+The night brought no aid to the solving of this problem; but it gave
+him, at any rate, the clear conviction that no time was to be lost. His
+first step must be to obtain from Miss Viner the chance of another and
+calmer talk; and he resolved to seek it at the earliest hour.
+
+He had gathered that Effie's lessons were preceded by an early scamper
+in the park, and conjecturing that her governess might be with her he
+betook himself the next morning to the terrace, whence he wandered on to
+the gardens and the walks beyond.
+
+The atmosphere was still and pale. The muffled sunlight gleamed like
+gold tissue through grey gauze, and the beech alleys tapered away to a
+blue haze blent of sky and forest. It was one of those elusive days
+when the familiar forms of things seem about to dissolve in a prismatic
+shimmer.
+
+The stillness was presently broken by joyful barks, and Darrow, tracking
+the sound, overtook Effie flying down one of the long alleys at the head
+of her pack. Beyond her he saw Miss Viner seated near the stone-rimmed
+basin beside which he and Anna had paused on their first walk to the
+river.
+
+The girl, coming forward at his approach, returned his greeting almost
+gaily. His first glance showed him that she had regained her composure,
+and the change in her appearance gave him the measure of her fears. For
+the first time he saw in her again the sidelong grace that had charmed
+his eyes in Paris; but he saw it now as in a painted picture.
+
+"Shall we sit down a minute?" he asked, as Effie trotted off.
+
+The girl looked away from him. "I'm afraid there's not much time; we
+must be back at lessons at half-past nine."
+
+"But it's barely ten minutes past. Let's at least walk a little way
+toward the river."
+
+She glanced down the long walk ahead of them and then back in the
+direction of the house. "If you like," she said in a low voice, with one
+of her quick fluctuations of colour; but instead of taking the way he
+proposed she turned toward a narrow path which branched off obliquely
+through the trees.
+
+Darrow was struck, and vaguely troubled, by the change in her look
+and tone. There was in them an undefinable appeal, whether for help or
+forbearance he could not tell. Then it occurred to him that there might
+have been something misleading in his so pointedly seeking her, and he
+felt a momentary constraint. To ease it he made an abrupt dash at the
+truth.
+
+"I came out to look for you because our talk of yesterday was so
+unsatisfactory. I want to hear more about you--about your plans and
+prospects. I've been wondering ever since why you've so completely given
+up the theatre."
+
+Her face instantly sharpened to distrust. "I had to live," she said in
+an off-hand tone.
+
+"I understand perfectly that you should like it here--for a time."
+His glance strayed down the gold-roofed windings ahead of them. "It's
+delightful: you couldn't be better placed. Only I wonder a little at
+your having so completely given up any idea of a different future."
+
+She waited for a moment before answering: "I suppose I'm less restless
+than I used to be."
+
+"It's certainly natural that you should be less restless here than at
+Mrs. Murrett's; yet somehow I don't seem to see you permanently given up
+to forming the young."
+
+"What--exactly--DO you seem to see me permanently given up to? You know
+you warned me rather emphatically against the theatre." She threw
+off the statement without impatience, as though they were discussing
+together the fate of a third person in whom both were benevolently
+interested. Darrow considered his reply. "If I did, it was because you
+so emphatically refused to let me help you to a start."
+
+She stopped short and faced him "And you think I may let you now?"
+
+Darrow felt the blood in his cheek. He could not understand her
+attitude--if indeed she had consciously taken one, and her changes of
+tone did not merely reflect the involuntary alternations of her mood. It
+humbled him to perceive once more how little he had to guide him in his
+judgment of her. He said to himself: "If I'd ever cared a straw for
+her I should know how to avoid hurting her now"--and his insensibility
+struck him as no better than a vulgar obtuseness. But he had a fixed
+purpose ahead and could only push on to it.
+
+"I hope, at any rate, you'll listen to my reasons. There's been time,
+on both sides, to think them over since----" He caught himself back
+and hung helpless on the "since": whatever words he chose, he seemed to
+stumble among reminders of their past.
+
+She walked on beside him, her eyes on the ground. "Then I'm to
+understand--definitely--that you DO renew your offer?" she asked
+
+"With all my heart! If you'll only let me----"
+
+She raised a hand, as though to check him. "It's extremely friendly of
+you--I DO believe you mean it as a friend--but I don't quite understand
+why, finding me, as you say, so well placed here, you should show more
+anxiety about my future than at a time when I was actually, and rather
+desperately, adrift."
+
+"Oh, no, not more!"
+
+"If you show any at all, it must, at any rate, be for different
+reasons.--In fact, it can only be," she went on, with one of her
+disconcerting flashes of astuteness, "for one of two reasons; either
+because you feel you ought to help me, or because, for some reason, you
+think you owe it to Mrs. Leath to let her know what you know of me."
+
+Darrow stood still in the path. Behind him he heard Effie's call, and at
+the child's voice he saw Sophy turn her head with the alertness of one
+who is obscurely on the watch. The look was so fugitive that he could
+not have said wherein it differed from her normal professional air of
+having her pupil on her mind.
+
+Effie sprang past them, and Darrow took up the girl's challenge.
+
+"What you suggest about Mrs. Leath is hardly worth answering. As to my
+reasons for wanting to help you, a good deal depends on the words one
+uses to define rather indefinite things. It's true enough that I want to
+help you; but the wish isn't due to...to any past kindness on your part,
+but simply to my own interest in you. Why not put it that our friendship
+gives me the right to intervene for what I believe to be your benefit?"
+
+She took a few hesitating steps and then paused again. Darrow noticed
+that she had grown pale and that there were rings of shade about her
+eyes.
+
+"You've known Mrs. Leath a long time?" she asked him suddenly.
+
+He paused with a sense of approaching peril. "A long time--yes."
+
+"She told me you were friends--great friends"
+
+"Yes," he admitted, "we're great friends."
+
+"Then you might naturally feel yourself justified in telling her that
+you don't think I'm the right person for Effie." He uttered a sound of
+protest, but she disregarded it. "I don't say you'd LIKE to do it. You
+wouldn't: you'd hate it. And the natural alternative would be to try
+to persuade me that I'd be better off somewhere else than here. But
+supposing that failed, and you saw I was determined to stay? THEN you
+might think it your duty to tell Mrs. Leath."
+
+She laid the case before him with a cold lucidity. "I should, in your
+place, I believe," she ended with a little laugh.
+
+"I shouldn't feel justified in telling her, behind your back, if
+I thought you unsuited for the place; but I should certainly feel
+justified," he rejoined after a pause, "in telling YOU if I thought the
+place unsuited to you."
+
+"And that's what you're trying to tell me now?"
+
+"Yes; but not for the reasons you imagine."
+
+"What, then, are your reasons, if you please?"
+
+"I've already implied them in advising you not to give up all idea
+of the theatre. You're too various, too gifted, too personal, to tie
+yourself down, at your age, to the dismal drudgery of teaching."
+
+"And is THAT what you've told Mrs. Leath?"
+
+She rushed the question out at him as if she expected to trip him up
+over it. He was moved by the simplicity of the stratagem.
+
+"I've told her exactly nothing," he replied.
+
+"And what--exactly--do you mean by 'nothing'? You and she were talking
+about me when I came into her sitting-room yesterday."
+
+Darrow felt his blood rise at the thrust.
+
+"I've told her, simply, that I'd seen you once or twice at Mrs.
+Murrett's."
+
+"And not that you've ever seen me since?"
+
+"And not that I've ever seen you since..."
+
+"And she believes you--she completely believes you?"
+
+He uttered a protesting exclamation, and his flush reflected itself in
+the girl's cheek.
+
+"Oh, I beg your pardon! I didn't mean to ask you that." She halted, and
+again cast a rapid glance behind and ahead of her. Then she held out her
+hand. "Well, then, thank you--and let me relieve your fears. I sha'n't
+be Effie's governess much longer."
+
+At the announcement, Darrow tried to merge his look of relief into the
+expression of friendly interest with which he grasped her hand. "You
+really do agree with me, then? And you'll give me a chance to talk
+things over with you?"
+
+She shook her head with a faint smile. "I'm not thinking of the stage.
+I've had another offer: that's all."
+
+The relief was hardly less great. After all, his personal responsibility
+ceased with her departure from Givre.
+
+"You'll tell me about that, then--won't you?"
+
+Her smile flickered up. "Oh, you'll hear about it soon...I must catch
+Effie now and drag her back to the blackboard."
+
+She walked on for a few yards, and then paused again and confronted him.
+"I've been odious to you--and not quite honest," she broke out suddenly.
+
+"Not quite honest?" he repeated, caught in a fresh wave of wonder.
+
+"I mean, in seeming not to trust you. It's come over me again as we
+talked that, at heart, I've always KNOWN I could..."
+
+Her colour rose in a bright wave, and her eyes clung to his for a swift
+instant of reminder and appeal. For the same space of time the past
+surged up in him confusedly; then a veil dropped between them.
+
+"Here's Effie now!" she exclaimed.
+
+He turned and saw the little girl trotting back to them, her hand in
+Owen Leath's. Even through the stir of his subsiding excitement Darrow
+was at once aware of the change effected by the young man's approach.
+For a moment Sophy Viner's cheeks burned redder; then they faded to
+the paleness of white petals. She lost, however, nothing of the bright
+bravery which it was her way to turn on the unexpected. Perhaps no one
+less familiar with her face than Darrow would have discerned the
+tension of the smile she transferred from himself to Owen Leath, or
+have remarked that her eyes had hardened from misty grey to a shining
+darkness. But her observer was less struck by this than by the
+corresponding change in Owen Leath. The latter, when he came in sight,
+had been laughing and talking unconcernedly with Effie; but as his eye
+fell on Miss Viner his expression altered as suddenly as hers.
+
+The change, for Darrow, was less definable; but, perhaps for that
+reason, it struck him as more sharply significant. Only--just what did
+it signify? Owen, like Sophy Viner, had the kind of face which seems
+less the stage on which emotions move than the very stuff they work
+in. In moments of excitement his odd irregular features seemed to grow
+fluid, to unmake and remake themselves like the shadows of clouds on a
+stream. Darrow, through the rapid flight of the shadows, could not seize
+on any specific indication of feeling: he merely perceived that the
+young man was unaccountably surprised at finding him with Miss
+Viner, and that the extent of his surprise might cover all manner of
+implications.
+
+Darrow's first idea was that Owen, if he suspected that the conversation
+was not the result of an accidental encounter, might wonder at his
+step-mother's suitor being engaged, at such an hour, in private talk
+with her little girl's governess. The thought was so disturbing that,
+as the three turned back to the house, he was on the point of saying to
+Owen: "I came out to look for your mother." But, in the contingency he
+feared, even so simple a phrase might seem like an awkward attempt at
+explanation; and he walked on in silence at Miss Viner's side. Presently
+he was struck by the fact that Owen Leath and the girl were silent also;
+and this gave a new turn to his thoughts. Silence may be as variously
+shaded as speech; and that which enfolded Darrow and his two companions
+seemed to his watchful perceptions to be quivering with cross-threads of
+communication. At first he was aware only of those that centred in
+his own troubled consciousness; then it occurred to him that an equal
+activity of intercourse was going on outside of it. Something was in
+fact passing mutely and rapidly between young Leath and Sophy Viner; but
+what it was, and whither it tended, Darrow, when they reached the house,
+was but just beginning to divine...
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+
+Anna Leath, from the terrace, watched the return of the little group.
+
+She looked down on them, as they advanced across the garden, from the
+serene height of her unassailable happiness. There they were, coming
+toward her in the mild morning light, her child, her step-son, her
+promised husband: the three beings who filled her life. She smiled a
+little at the happy picture they presented, Effie's gambols encircling
+it in a moving frame within which the two men came slowly forward in the
+silence of friendly understanding. It seemed part of the deep intimacy
+of the scene that they should not be talking to each other, and it did
+not till afterward strike her as odd that neither of them apparently
+felt it necessary to address a word to Sophy Viner.
+
+Anna herself, at the moment, was floating in the mid-current of
+felicity, on a tide so bright and buoyant that she seemed to be one with
+its warm waves. The first rush of bliss had stunned and dazzled her;
+but now that, each morning, she woke to the calm certainty of its
+recurrence, she was growing used to the sense of security it gave.
+
+"I feel as if I could trust my happiness to carry me; as if it had grown
+out of me like wings." So she phrased it to Darrow, as, later in the
+morning, they paced the garden-paths together. His answering look gave
+her the same assurance of safety. The evening before he had seemed
+preoccupied, and the shadow of his mood had faintly encroached on the
+great golden orb of their blessedness; but now it was uneclipsed again,
+and hung above them high and bright as the sun at noon.
+
+Upstairs in her sitting-room, that afternoon, she was thinking of
+these things. The morning mists had turned to rain, compelling the
+postponement of an excursion in which the whole party were to have
+joined. Effie, with her governess, had been despatched in the motor to
+do some shopping at Francheuil; and Anna had promised Darrow to join
+him, later in the afternoon, for a quick walk in the rain.
+
+He had gone to his room after luncheon to get some belated letters off
+his conscience; and when he had left her she had continued to sit in the
+same place, her hands crossed on her knees, her head slightly bent, in
+an attitude of brooding retrospection. As she looked back at her past
+life, it seemed to her to have consisted of one ceaseless effort to pack
+into each hour enough to fill out its slack folds; but now each moment
+was like a miser's bag stretched to bursting with pure gold.
+
+She was roused by the sound of Owen's step in the gallery outside her
+room. It paused at her door and in answer to his knock she called out
+"Come in!"
+
+As the door closed behind him she was struck by his look of pale
+excitement, and an impulse of compunction made her say: "You've come to
+ask me why I haven't spoken to your grandmother!" He sent about him a
+glance vaguely reminding her of the strange look with which Sophy Viner
+had swept the room the night before; then his brilliant eyes came back
+to her.
+
+"I've spoken to her myself," he said.
+
+Anna started up, incredulous.
+
+"You've spoken to her? When?"
+
+"Just now. I left her to come here."
+
+Anna's first feeling was one of annoyance. There was really something
+comically incongruous in this boyish surrender to impulse on the part of
+a young man so eager to assume the responsibilities of life. She looked
+at him with a faintly veiled amusement.
+
+"You asked me to help you and I promised you I would. It was hardly
+worth while to work out such an elaborate plan of action if you intended
+to take the matter out of my hands without telling me."
+
+"Oh, don't take that tone with me!" he broke out, almost angrily.
+
+"That tone? What tone?" She stared at his quivering face. "I might," she
+pursued, still half-laughing, "more properly make that request of YOU!"
+
+Owen reddened and his vehemence suddenly subsided.
+
+"I meant that I HAD to speak--that's all. You don't give me a chance to
+explain..."
+
+She looked at him gently, wondering a little at her own impatience.
+
+"Owen! Don't I always want to give you every chance? It's because I DO
+that I wanted to talk to your grandmother first--that I was waiting and
+watching for the right moment..."
+
+"The right moment? So was I. That's why I've spoken." His voice rose
+again and took the sharp edge it had in moments of high pressure.
+
+His step-mother turned away and seated herself in her sofa-corner. "Oh,
+my dear, it's not a privilege to quarrel over! You've taken a load off
+my shoulders. Sit down and tell me all about it."
+
+He stood before her, irresolute. "I can't sit down," he said.
+
+"Walk about, then. Only tell me: I'm impatient."
+
+His immediate response was to throw himself into the armchair at her
+side, where he lounged for a moment without speaking, his legs stretched
+out, his arms locked behind his thrown-back head. Anna, her eyes on his
+face, waited quietly for him to speak.
+
+"Well--of course it was just what one expected."
+
+"She takes it so badly, you mean?"
+
+"All the heavy batteries were brought up: my father, Givre, Monsieur de
+Chantelle, the throne and the altar. Even my poor mother was dragged out
+of oblivion and armed with imaginary protests."
+
+Anna sighed out her sympathy. "Well--you were prepared for all that?"
+
+"I thought I was, till I began to hear her say it. Then it sounded so
+incredibly silly that I told her so."
+
+"Oh, Owen--Owen!"
+
+"Yes: I know. I was a fool; but I couldn't help it."
+
+"And you've mortally offended her, I suppose? That's exactly what I
+wanted to prevent." She laid a hand on his shoulder. "You tiresome boy,
+not to wait and let me speak for you!"
+
+He moved slightly away, so that her hand slipped from its place. "You
+don't understand," he said, frowning.
+
+"I don't see how I can, till you explain. If you thought the time had
+come to tell your grandmother, why not have asked me to do it? I had my
+reasons for waiting; but if you'd told me to speak I should have done
+so, naturally."
+
+He evaded her appeal by a sudden turn. "What WERE your reasons for
+waiting?"
+
+Anna did not immediately answer. Her step-son's eyes were on her face,
+and under his gaze she felt a faint disquietude.
+
+"I was feeling my way...I wanted to be absolutely sure..."
+
+"Absolutely sure of what?"
+
+She delayed again for a just perceptible instant. "Why, simply of OUR
+side of the case."
+
+"But you told me you were, the other day, when we talked it over before
+they came back from Ouchy."
+
+"Oh, my dear--if you think that, in such a complicated matter, every
+day, every hour, doesn't more or less modify one's surest sureness!"
+
+"That's just what I'm driving at. I want to know what has modified
+yours."
+
+She made a slight gesture of impatience. "What does it matter, now the
+thing's done? I don't know that I could give any clear reason..."
+
+He got to his feet and stood looking down on her with a tormented brow.
+"But it's absolutely necessary that you should."
+
+At his tone her impatience flared up. "It's not necessary that I should
+give you any explanation whatever, since you've taken the matter out of
+my hands. All I can say is that I was trying to help you: that no other
+thought ever entered my mind." She paused a moment and then added: "If
+you doubted it, you were right to do what you've done."
+
+"Oh, I never doubted YOU!" he retorted, with a fugitive stress on
+the pronoun. His face had cleared to its old look of trust. "Don't be
+offended if I've seemed to," he went on. "I can't quite explain myself,
+either...it's all a kind of tangle, isn't it? That's why I thought I'd
+better speak at once; or rather why I didn't think at all, but just
+suddenly blurted the thing out----"
+
+Anna gave him back his look of conciliation. "Well, the how and why
+don't much matter now. The point is how to deal with your grandmother.
+You've not told me what she means to do."
+
+"Oh, she means to send for Adelaide Painter."
+
+The name drew a faint note of mirth from him and relaxed both their
+faces to a smile.
+
+"Perhaps," Anna added, "it's really the best thing for us all."
+
+Owen shrugged his shoulders. "It's too preposterous and humiliating.
+Dragging that woman into our secrets----!"
+
+"This could hardly be a secret much longer."
+
+He had moved to the hearth, where he stood pushing about the small
+ornaments on the mantel-shelf; but at her answer he turned back to her.
+
+"You haven't, of course, spoken of it to any one?"
+
+"No; but I intend to now."
+
+She paused for his reply, and as it did not come she continued: "If
+Adelaide Painter's to be told there's no possible reason why I shouldn't
+tell Mr. Darrow." Owen abruptly set down the little statuette between
+his fingers. "None whatever: I want every one to know."
+
+She smiled a little at his over-emphasis, and was about to meet it with
+a word of banter when he continued, facing her: "You haven't, as yet,
+said a word to him?"
+
+"I've told him nothing, except what the discussion of our own plans--his
+and mine--obliged me to: that you were thinking of marrying, and that
+I wasn't willing to leave France till I'd done what I could to see you
+through."
+
+At her first words the colour had rushed to his forehead; but as she
+continued she saw his face compose itself and his blood subside.
+
+"You're a brick, my dear!" he exclaimed.
+
+"You had my word, you know."
+
+"Yes; yes--I know." His face had clouded again. "And that's
+all--positively all--you've ever said to him?"
+
+"Positively all. But why do you ask?"
+
+He had a moment's embarrassed hesitation. "It was understood, wasn't it,
+that my grandmother was to be the first to know?"
+
+"Well--and so she has been, hasn't she, since you've told her?"
+
+He turned back to his restless shifting of the knick-knacks.
+
+"And you're sure that nothing you've said to Darrow could possibly have
+given him a hint----?"
+
+"Nothing I've said to him--certainly."
+
+He swung about on her. "Why do you put it in that way?"
+
+"In what way?"
+
+"Why--as if you thought some one else might have spoken..."
+
+"Some one else? Who else?" She rose to her feet. "What on earth, my dear
+boy, can you be driving at?"
+
+"I'm trying to find out whether you think he knows anything definite."
+
+"Why should I think so? Do YOU?"
+
+"I don't know. I want to find out."
+
+She laughed at his obstinate insistence. "To test my veracity, I
+suppose?" At the sound of a step in the gallery she added: "Here he
+is--you can ask him yourself."
+
+She met Darrow's knock with an invitation to enter, and he came into the
+room and paused between herself and Owen. She was struck, as he stood
+there, by the contrast between his happy careless good-looks and her
+step-son's frowning agitation.
+
+Darrow met her eyes with a smile. "Am I too soon? Or is our walk given
+up?"
+
+"No; I was just going to get ready." She continued to linger between
+the two, looking slowly from one to the other. "But there's something we
+want to tell you first: Owen is engaged to Miss Viner."
+
+The sense of an indefinable interrogation in Owen's mind made her, as
+she spoke, fix her eyes steadily on Darrow.
+
+He had paused just opposite the window, so that, even in the rainy
+afternoon light, his face was clearly open to her scrutiny. For a
+second, immense surprise was alone visible on it: so visible that
+she half turned to her step-son, with a faint smile for his refuted
+suspicions. Why, she wondered, should Owen have thought that Darrow had
+already guessed his secret, and what, after all, could be so disturbing
+to him in this not improbable contingency? At any rate, his doubt
+must have been dispelled: there was nothing feigned about Darrow's
+astonishment. When her eyes turned back to him he was already crossing
+to Owen with outstretched hand, and she had, through an unaccountable
+faint flutter of misgiving, a mere confused sense of their exchanging
+the customary phrases. Her next perception was of Owen's tranquillized
+look, and of his smiling return of Darrow's congratulatory grasp. She
+had the eerie feeling of having been overswept by a shadow which there
+had been no cloud to cast...
+
+A moment later Owen had left the room and she and Darrow were alone. He
+had turned away to the window and stood staring out into the down-pour.
+
+"You're surprised at Owen's news?" she asked.
+
+"Yes: I am surprised," he answered.
+
+"You hadn't thought of its being Miss Viner?"
+
+"Why should I have thought of Miss Viner?"
+
+"You see now why I wanted so much to find out what you knew about her."
+He made no comment, and she pursued: "Now that you DO know it's she, if
+there's anything----"
+
+He moved back into the room and went up to her. His face was serious,
+with a slight shade of annoyance. "What on earth should there be? As I
+told you, I've never in my life heard any one say two words about Miss
+Viner."
+
+Anna made no answer and they continued to face each other without
+moving. For the moment she had ceased to think about Sophy Viner and
+Owen: the only thought in her mind was that Darrow was alone with her,
+close to her, and that, for the first time, their hands and lips had not
+met.
+
+He glanced back doubtfully at the window. "It's pouring. Perhaps you'd
+rather not go out?"
+
+She hesitated, as if waiting for him to urge her. "I suppose I'd better
+not. I ought to go at once to my mother-in-law--Owen's just been telling
+her," she said.
+
+"Ah." Darrow hazarded a smile. "That accounts for my having, on my way
+up, heard some one telephoning for Miss Painter!"
+
+At the allusion they laughed together, vaguely, and Anna moved toward
+the door. He held it open for her and followed her out.
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+
+He left her at the door of Madame de Chantelle's sitting-room, and
+plunged out alone into the rain.
+
+The wind flung about the stripped tree-tops of the avenue and dashed the
+stinging streams into his face. He walked to the gate and then turned
+into the high-road and strode along in the open, buffeted by slanting
+gusts. The evenly ridged fields were a blurred waste of mud, and
+the russet coverts which he and Owen had shot through the day before
+shivered desolately against a driving sky.
+
+Darrow walked on and on, indifferent to the direction he was taking. His
+thoughts were tossing like the tree-tops. Anna's announcement had not
+come to him as a complete surprise: that morning, as he strolled back
+to the house with Owen Leath and Miss Viner, he had had a momentary
+intuition of the truth. But it had been no more than an intuition, the
+merest faint cloud-puff of surmise; and now it was an attested fact,
+darkening over the whole sky.
+
+In respect of his own attitude, he saw at once that the discovery made
+no appreciable change. If he had been bound to silence before, he was no
+less bound to it now; the only difference lay in the fact that what he
+had just learned had rendered his bondage more intolerable. Hitherto
+he had felt for Sophy Viner's defenseless state a sympathy profoundly
+tinged with compunction. But now he was half-conscious of an obscure
+indignation against her. Superior as he had fancied himself to
+ready-made judgments, he was aware of cherishing the common doubt as to
+the disinterestedness of the woman who tries to rise above her past. No
+wonder she had been sick with fear on meeting him! It was in his power
+to do her more harm than he had dreamed...
+
+Assuredly he did not want to harm her; but he did desperately want to
+prevent her marrying Owen Leath. He tried to get away from the feeling,
+to isolate and exteriorize it sufficiently to see what motives it
+was made of; but it remained a mere blind motion of his blood, the
+instinctive recoil from the thing that no amount of arguing can make
+"straight." His tramp, prolonged as it was, carried him no nearer
+to enlightenment; and after trudging through two or three sallow
+mud-stained villages he turned about and wearily made his way back to
+Givre. As he walked up the black avenue, making for the lights that
+twinkled through its pitching branches, he had a sudden realisation
+of his utter helplessness. He might think and combine as he would; but
+there was nothing, absolutely nothing, that he could do...
+
+He dropped his wet coat in the vestibule and began to mount the stairs
+to his room. But on the landing he was overtaken by a sober-faced maid
+who, in tones discreetly lowered, begged him to be so kind as to step,
+for a moment, into the Marquise's sitting-room. Somewhat disconcerted
+by the summons, he followed its bearer to the door at which, a couple of
+hours earlier, he had taken leave of Mrs. Leath. It opened to admit him
+to a large lamp-lit room which he immediately perceived to be empty; and
+the fact gave him time to note, even through his disturbance of mind,
+the interesting degree to which Madame de Chantelle's apartment "dated"
+and completed her. Its looped and corded curtains, its purple satin
+upholstery, the Sevres jardinieres, the rosewood fire-screen, the little
+velvet tables edged with lace and crowded with silver knick-knacks and
+simpering miniatures, reconstituted an almost perfect setting for the
+blonde beauty of the 'sixties. Darrow wondered that Fraser Leath's
+filial respect should have prevailed over his aesthetic scruples to the
+extent of permitting such an anachronism among the eighteenth century
+graces of Givre; but a moment's reflection made it clear that, to its
+late owner, the attitude would have seemed exactly in the traditions of
+the place.
+
+Madame de Chantelle's emergence from an inner room snatched Darrow from
+these irrelevant musings. She was already beaded and bugled for the
+evening, and, save for a slight pinkness of the eye-lids, her elaborate
+appearance revealed no mark of agitation; but Darrow noticed that,
+in recognition of the solemnity of the occasion, she pinched a lace
+handkerchief between her thumb and forefinger.
+
+She plunged at once into the centre of the difficulty, appealing to him,
+in the name of all the Everards, to descend there with her to the rescue
+of her darling. She wasn't, she was sure, addressing herself in vain to
+one whose person, whose "tone," whose traditions so brilliantly declared
+his indebtedness to the principles she besought him to defend. Her own
+reception of Darrow, the confidence she had at once accorded him,
+must have shown him that she had instinctively felt their unanimity of
+sentiment on these fundamental questions. She had in fact recognized in
+him the one person whom, without pain to her maternal piety, she could
+welcome as her son's successor; and it was almost as to Owen's father
+that she now appealed to Darrow to aid in rescuing the wretched boy.
+
+"Don't think, please, that I'm casting the least reflection on Anna,
+or showing any want of sympathy for her, when I say that I consider
+her partly responsible for what's happened. Anna is 'modern'--I believe
+that's what it's called when you read unsettling books and admire
+hideous pictures. Indeed," Madame de Chantelle continued, leaning
+confidentially forward, "I myself have always more or less lived in that
+atmosphere: my son, you know, was very revolutionary. Only he didn't, of
+course, apply his ideas: they were purely intellectual. That's what dear
+Anna has always failed to understand. And I'm afraid she's created the
+same kind of confusion in Owen's mind--led him to mix up things you read
+about with things you do...You know, of course, that she sides with him
+in this wretched business?"
+
+Developing at length upon this theme, she finally narrowed down to
+the point of Darrow's intervention. "My grandson, Mr. Darrow, calls me
+illogical and uncharitable because my feelings toward Miss Viner have
+changed since I've heard this news. Well! You've known her, it appears,
+for some years: Anna tells me you used to see her when she was a
+companion, or secretary or something, to a dreadfully vulgar Mrs.
+Murrett. And I ask you as a friend, I ask you as one of US, to tell me
+if you think a girl who has had to knock about the world in that kind
+of position, and at the orders of all kinds of people, is fitted to be
+Owen's wife I'm not implying anything against her! I LIKED the girl, Mr.
+Darrow...But what's that got to do with it? I don't want her to marry
+my grandson. If I'd been looking for a wife for Owen, I shouldn't
+have applied to the Farlows to find me one. That's what Anna won't
+understand; and what you must help me to make her see."
+
+Darrow, to this appeal, could oppose only the repeated assurance of his
+inability to interfere. He tried to make Madame de Chantelle see
+that the very position he hoped to take in the household made his
+intervention the more hazardous. He brought up the usual arguments, and
+sounded the expected note of sympathy; but Madame de Chantelle's alarm
+had dispelled her habitual imprecision, and, though she had not many
+reasons to advance, her argument clung to its point like a frightened
+sharp-clawed animal.
+
+"Well, then," she summed up, in response to his repeated assertions that
+he saw no way of helping her, "you can, at least, even if you won't
+say a word to the others, tell me frankly and fairly--and quite between
+ourselves--your personal opinion of Miss Viner, since you've known her
+so much longer than we have."
+
+He protested that, if he had known her longer, he had known her much
+less well, and that he had already, on this point, convinced Anna of his
+inability to pronounce an opinion.
+
+Madame de Chantelle drew a deep sigh of intelligence. "Your opinion of
+Mrs. Murrett is enough! I don't suppose you pretend to conceal THAT? And
+heaven knows what other unspeakable people she's been mixed up with. The
+only friends she can produce are called Hoke...Don't try to reason with
+me, Mr. Darrow. There are feelings that go deeper than facts...And
+I KNOW she thought of studying for the stage..." Madame de Chantelle
+raised the corner of her lace handkerchief to her eyes. "I'm
+old-fashioned--like my furniture," she murmured. "And I thought I could
+count on you, Mr. Darrow..."
+
+
+When Darrow, that night, regained his room, he reflected with a flash
+of irony that each time he entered it he brought a fresh troop of
+perplexities to trouble its serene seclusion. Since the day after his
+arrival, only forty-eight hours before, when he had set his window
+open to the night, and his hopes had seemed as many as its stars,
+each evening had brought its new problem and its renewed distress. But
+nothing, as yet, had approached the blank misery of mind with which he
+now set himself to face the fresh questions confronting him.
+
+Sophy Viner had not shown herself at dinner, so that he had had no
+glimpse of her in her new character, and no means of divining the real
+nature of the tie between herself and Owen Leath. One thing, however,
+was clear: whatever her real feelings were, and however much or little
+she had at stake, if she had made up her mind to marry Owen she had more
+than enough skill and tenacity to defeat any arts that poor Madame de
+Chantelle could oppose to her.
+
+Darrow himself was in fact the only person who might possibly turn her
+from her purpose: Madame de Chantelle, at haphazard, had hit on the
+surest means of saving Owen--if to prevent his marriage were to save
+him! Darrow, on this point, did not pretend to any fixed opinion; one
+feeling alone was clear and insistent in him: he did not mean, if he
+could help it, to let the marriage take place.
+
+How he was to prevent it he did not know: to his tormented imagination
+every issue seemed closed. For a fantastic instant he was moved to
+follow Madame de Chantelle's suggestion and urge Anna to withdraw her
+approval. If his reticence, his efforts to avoid the subject, had not
+escaped her, she had doubtless set them down to the fact of his knowing
+more, and thinking less, of Sophy Viner than he had been willing to
+admit; and he might take advantage of this to turn her mind gradually
+from the project. Yet how do so without betraying his insincerity? If
+he had had nothing to hide he could easily have said: "It's one thing to
+know nothing against the girl, it's another to pretend that I think her
+a good match for Owen." But could he say even so much without betraying
+more? It was not Anna's questions, or his answers to them, that he
+feared, but what might cry aloud in the intervals between them. He
+understood now that ever since Sophy Viner's arrival at Givre he had
+felt in Anna the lurking sense of something unexpressed, and perhaps
+inexpressible, between the girl and himself...When at last he fell
+asleep he had fatalistically committed his next step to the chances of
+the morrow.
+
+The first that offered itself was an encounter with Mrs. Leath as he
+descended the stairs the next morning. She had come down already hatted
+and shod for a dash to the park lodge, where one of the gatekeeper's
+children had had an accident. In her compact dark dress she looked more
+than usually straight and slim, and her face wore the pale glow it took
+on at any call on her energy: a kind of warrior brightness that made her
+small head, with its strong chin and close-bound hair, like that of an
+amazon in a frieze.
+
+It was their first moment alone since she had left him, the afternoon
+before, at her mother-in-law's door; and after a few words about the
+injured child their talk inevitably reverted to Owen.
+
+Anna spoke with a smile of her "scene" with Madame de Chantelle, who
+belonged, poor dear, to a generation when "scenes" (in the ladylike
+and lachrymal sense of the term) were the tribute which sensibility was
+expected to pay to the unusual. Their conversation had been, in every
+detail, so exactly what Anna had foreseen that it had clearly not made
+much impression on her; but she was eager to know the result of Darrow's
+encounter with her mother-in-law.
+
+"She told me she'd sent for you: she always 'sends for' people in
+emergencies. That again, I suppose, is de l'epoque. And failing Adelaide
+Painter, who can't get here till this afternoon, there was no one but
+poor you to turn to."
+
+She put it all lightly, with a lightness that seemed to his tight-strung
+nerves slightly, undefinably over-done. But he was so aware of his own
+tension that he wondered, the next moment, whether anything would ever
+again seem to him quite usual and insignificant and in the common order
+of things.
+
+As they hastened on through the drizzle in which the storm of the night
+was weeping itself out, Anna drew close under his umbrella, and at the
+pressure of her arm against his he recalled his walk up the Dover
+pier with Sophy Viner. The memory gave him a startled vision of the
+inevitable occasions of contact, confidence, familiarity, which his
+future relationship to the girl would entail, and the countless chances
+of betrayal that every one of them involved.
+
+"Do tell me just what you said," he heard Anna pleading; and with sudden
+resolution he affirmed: "I quite understand your mother-in-law's feeling
+as she does."
+
+The words, when uttered, seemed a good deal less significant than they
+had sounded to his inner ear; and Anna replied without surprise: "Of
+course. It's inevitable that she should. But we shall bring her round
+in time." Under the dripping dome she raised her face to his. "Don't you
+remember what you said the day before yesterday? 'Together we can't
+fail to pull it off for him!' I've told Owen that, so you're pledged and
+there's no going back."
+
+The day before yesterday! Was it possible that, no longer ago, life
+had seemed a sufficiently simple business for a sane man to hazard such
+assurances?
+
+"Anna," he questioned her abruptly, "why are you so anxious for this
+marriage?"
+
+She stopped short to face him. "Why? But surely I've explained to
+you--or rather I've hardly had to, you seemed so in sympathy with my
+reasons!"
+
+"I didn't know, then, who it was that Owen wanted to marry."
+
+The words were out with a spring and he felt a clearer air in his brain.
+But her logic hemmed him in.
+
+"You knew yesterday; and you assured me then that you hadn't a word to
+say----"
+
+"Against Miss Viner?" The name, once uttered, sounded on and on in his
+ears. "Of course not. But that doesn't necessarily imply that I think
+her a good match for Owen."
+
+Anna made no immediate answer. When she spoke it was to question: "Why
+don't you think her a good match for Owen?"
+
+"Well--Madame de Chantelle's reasons seem to me not quite as negligible
+as you think."
+
+"You mean the fact that she's been Mrs. Murrett's secretary, and that
+the people who employed her before were called Hoke? For, as far as Owen
+and I can make out, these are the gravest charges against her."
+
+"Still, one can understand that the match is not what Madame de
+Chantelle had dreamed of."
+
+"Oh, perfectly--if that's all you mean." The lodge was in sight, and she
+hastened her step. He strode on beside her in silence, but at the gate
+she checked him with the question: "Is it really all you mean?"
+
+"Of course," he heard himself declare.
+
+"Oh, then I think I shall convince you--even if I can't, like Madame
+de Chantelle, summon all the Everards to my aid!" She lifted to him
+the look of happy laughter that sometimes brushed her with a gleam of
+spring.
+
+Darrow watched her hasten along the path between the dripping
+chrysanthemums and enter the lodge. After she had gone in he paced up
+and down outside in the drizzle, waiting to learn if she had any message
+to send back to the house; and after the lapse of a few minutes she came
+out again.
+
+The child, she said, was badly, though not dangerously, hurt, and the
+village doctor, who was already on hand, had asked that the surgeon,
+already summoned from Francheuil, should be told to bring with him
+certain needful appliances. Owen had started by motor to fetch the
+surgeon, but there was still time to communicate with the latter by
+telephone. The doctor furthermore begged for an immediate provision of
+such bandages and disinfectants as Givre itself could furnish, and Anna
+bade Darrow address himself to Miss Viner, who would know where to find
+the necessary things, and would direct one of the servants to bicycle
+with them to the lodge.
+
+Darrow, as he hurried off on this errand, had at once perceived the
+opportunity it offered of a word with Sophy Viner. What that word was to
+be he did not know; but now, if ever, was the moment to make it urgent
+and conclusive. It was unlikely that he would again have such a chance
+of unobserved talk with her.
+
+He had supposed he should find her with her pupil in the school-room;
+but he learned from a servant that Effie had gone to Francheuil with her
+step-brother, and that Miss Viner was still in her room. Darrow sent her
+word that he was the bearer of a message from the lodge, and a moment
+later he heard her coming down the stairs.
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+
+For a second, as she approached him, the quick tremor of her glance
+showed her all intent on the same thought as himself. He transmitted
+his instructions with mechanical precision, and she answered in the same
+tone, repeating his words with the intensity of attention of a child not
+quite sure of understanding. Then she disappeared up the stairs.
+
+Darrow lingered on in the hall, not knowing if she meant to return, yet
+inwardly sure she would. At length he saw her coming down in her hat and
+jacket. The rain still streaked the window panes, and, in order to say
+something, he said: "You're not going to the lodge yourself?"
+
+"I've sent one of the men ahead with the things; but I thought Mrs.
+Leath might need me."
+
+"She didn't ask for you," he returned, wondering how he could detain
+her; but she answered decidedly: "I'd better go."
+
+He held open the door, picked up his umbrella and followed her out. As
+they went down the steps she glanced back at him. "You've forgotten your
+mackintosh."
+
+"I sha'n't need it."
+
+She had no umbrella, and he opened his and held it out to her. She
+rejected it with a murmur of thanks and walked on through the thin
+drizzle, and he kept the umbrella over his own head, without offering to
+shelter her.
+
+Rapidly and in silence they crossed the court and began to walk down
+the avenue. They had traversed a third of its length before Darrow
+said abruptly: "Wouldn't it have been fairer, when we talked together
+yesterday, to tell me what I've just heard from Mrs. Leath?"
+
+"Fairer----?" She stopped short with a startled look.
+
+"If I'd known that your future was already settled I should have spared
+you my gratuitous suggestions."
+
+She walked on, more slowly, for a yard or two. "I couldn't speak
+yesterday. I meant to have told you today."
+
+"Oh, I'm not reproaching you for your lack of confidence. Only, if you
+HAD told me, I should have been more sure of your really meaning what
+you said to me yesterday."
+
+She did not ask him to what he referred, and he saw that her parting
+words to him lived as vividly in her memory as in his.
+
+"Is it so important that you should be sure?" she finally questioned.
+
+"Not to you, naturally," he returned with involuntary asperity. It was
+incredible, yet it was a fact, that for the moment his immediate purpose
+in seeking to speak to her was lost under a rush of resentment at
+counting for so little in her fate. Of what stuff, then, was his feeling
+for her made? A few hours earlier she had touched his thoughts as little
+as his senses; but now he felt old sleeping instincts stir in him...
+A rush of rain dashed against his face, and, catching Sophy's hat,
+strained it back from her loosened hair. She put her hands to her head
+with a familiar gesture...He came closer and held his umbrella over
+her...
+
+At the lodge he waited while she went in. The rain continued to stream
+down on him and he shivered in the dampness and stamped his feet on the
+flags. It seemed to him that a long time elapsed before the door opened
+and she reappeared. He glanced into the house for a glimpse of Anna, but
+obtained none; yet the mere sense of her nearness had completely altered
+his mood.
+
+The child, Sophy told him, was doing well; but Mrs. Leath had decided to
+wait till the surgeon came. Darrow, as they turned away, looked through
+the gates, and saw the doctor's old-fashioned carriage by the roadside.
+
+"Let me tell the doctor's boy to drive you back," he suggested; but
+Sophy answered: "No; I'll walk," and he moved on toward the house at her
+side. She expressed no surprise at his not remaining at the lodge, and
+again they walked on in silence through the rain. She had accepted
+the shelter of his umbrella, but she kept herself at such a carefully
+measured distance that even the slight swaying movements produced by
+their quick pace did not once bring her arm in touch with his; and,
+noticing this, he perceived that every drop of her blood must be alive
+to his nearness.
+
+"What I meant just now," he began, "was that you ought to have been sure
+of my good wishes."
+
+She seemed to weigh the words. "Sure enough for what?"
+
+"To trust me a little farther than you did."
+
+"I've told you that yesterday I wasn't free to speak."
+
+"Well, since you are now, may I say a word to you?"
+
+She paused perceptibly, and when she spoke it was in so low a tone that
+he had to bend his head to catch her answer. "I can't think what you can
+have to say."
+
+"It's not easy to say here, at any rate. And indoors I sha'n't know
+where to say it." He glanced about him in the rain. "Let's walk over to
+the spring-house for a minute."
+
+To the right of the drive, under a clump of trees, a little stucco
+pavilion crowned by a balustrade rose on arches of mouldering brick over
+a flight of steps that led down to a spring. Other steps curved up to a
+door above. Darrow mounted these, and opening the door entered a
+small circular room hung with loosened strips of painted paper whereon
+spectrally faded Mandarins executed elongated gestures. Some black and
+gold chairs with straw seats and an unsteady table of cracked lacquer
+stood on the floor of red-glazed tile.
+
+Sophy had followed him without comment. He closed the door after her,
+and she stood motionless, as though waiting for him to speak.
+
+"Now we can talk quietly," he said, looking at her with a smile into
+which he tried to put an intention of the frankest friendliness.
+
+She merely repeated: "I can't think what you can have to say."
+
+Her voice had lost the note of half-wistful confidence on which their
+talk of the previous day had closed, and she looked at him with a kind
+of pale hostility. Her tone made it evident that his task would be
+difficult, but it did not shake his resolve to go on. He sat down, and
+mechanically she followed his example. The table was between them and
+she rested her arms on its cracked edge and her chin on her interlocked
+hands. He looked at her and she gave him back his look.
+
+"Have you nothing to say to ME?" he asked at length.
+
+A faint smile lifted, in the remembered way, the left corner of her
+narrowed lips.
+
+"About my marriage?"
+
+"About your marriage."
+
+She continued to consider him between half-drawn lids. "What can I say
+that Mrs. Leath has not already told you?"
+
+"Mrs. Leath has told me nothing whatever but the fact--and her pleasure
+in it."
+
+"Well; aren't those the two essential points?"
+
+"The essential points to YOU? I should have thought----"
+
+"Oh, to YOU, I meant," she put in keenly.
+
+He flushed at the retort, but steadied himself and rejoined: "The
+essential point to me is, of course, that you should be doing what's
+really best for you."
+
+She sat silent, with lowered lashes. At length she stretched out her arm
+and took up from the table a little threadbare Chinese hand-screen. She
+turned its ebony stem once or twice between her fingers, and as she did
+so Darrow was whimsically struck by the way in which their evanescent
+slight romance was symbolized by the fading lines on the frail silk.
+
+"Do you think my engagement to Mr. Leath not really best for me?" she
+asked at length.
+
+Darrow, before answering, waited long enough to get his words into the
+tersest shape--not without a sense, as he did so, of his likeness to the
+surgeon deliberately poising his lancet for a clean incision. "I'm not
+sure," he replied, "of its being the best thing for either of you."
+
+She took the stroke steadily, but a faint red swept her face like the
+reflection of a blush. She continued to keep her lowered eyes on the
+screen.
+
+"From whose point of view do you speak?"
+
+"Naturally, that of the persons most concerned."
+
+"From Owen's, then, of course? You don't think me a good match for him?"
+
+"From yours, first of all. I don't think him a good match for you."
+
+He brought the answer out abruptly, his eyes on her face. It had grown
+extremely pale, but as the meaning of his words shaped itself in her
+mind he saw a curious inner light dawn through her set look. She lifted
+her lids just far enough for a veiled glance at him, and a smile slipped
+through them to her trembling lips. For a moment the change merely
+bewildered him; then it pulled him up with a sharp jerk of apprehension.
+
+"I don't think him a good match for you," he stammered, groping for the
+lost thread of his words.
+
+She threw a vague look about the chilly rain-dimmed room. "And you've
+brought me here to tell me why?"
+
+The question roused him to the sense that their minutes were numbered,
+and that if he did not immediately get to his point there might be no
+other chance of making it.
+
+"My chief reason is that I believe he's too young and inexperienced to
+give you the kind of support you need."
+
+At his words her face changed again, freezing to a tragic coldness. She
+stared straight ahead of her, perceptibly struggling with the tremor of
+her muscles; and when she had controlled it she flung out a pale-lipped
+pleasantry. "But you see I've always had to support myself!"
+
+"He's a boy," Darrow pushed on, "a charming, wonderful boy; but with
+no more notion than a boy how to deal with the inevitable daily
+problems...the trivial stupid unimportant things that life is chiefly
+made up of." "I'll deal with them for him," she rejoined.
+
+"They'll be more than ordinarily difficult."
+
+She shot a challenging glance at him. "You must have some special reason
+for saying so."
+
+"Only my clear perception of the facts."
+
+"What facts do you mean?"
+
+Darrow hesitated. "You must know better than I," he returned at length,
+"that the way won't be made easy to you."
+
+"Mrs. Leath, at any rate, has made it so."
+
+"Madame de Chantelle will not."
+
+"How do YOU know that?" she flung back.
+
+He paused again, not sure how far it was prudent to reveal himself
+in the confidence of the household. Then, to avoid involving Anna, he
+answered: "Madame de Chantelle sent for me yesterday."
+
+"Sent for you--to talk to you about me?" The colour rose to her forehead
+and her eyes burned black under lowered brows. "By what right, I should
+like to know? What have you to do with me, or with anything in the world
+that concerns me?"
+
+Darrow instantly perceived what dread suspicion again possessed her, and
+the sense that it was not wholly unjustified caused him a passing pang
+of shame. But it did not turn him from his purpose.
+
+"I'm an old friend of Mrs. Leath's. It's not unnatural that Madame de
+Chantelle should talk to me."
+
+She dropped the screen on the table and stood up, turning on him the
+same small mask of wrath and scorn which had glared at him, in Paris,
+when he had confessed to his suppression of her letter. She walked away
+a step or two and then came back.
+
+"May I ask what Madame de Chantelle said to you?"
+
+"She made it clear that she should not encourage the marriage."
+
+"And what was her object in making that clear to YOU?"
+
+Darrow hesitated. "I suppose she thought----"
+
+"That she could persuade you to turn Mrs. Leath against me?"
+
+He was silent, and she pressed him: "Was that it?" "That was it."
+
+"But if you don't--if you keep your promise----"
+
+"My promise?"
+
+"To say nothing...nothing whatever..." Her strained look threw a haggard
+light along the pause.
+
+As she spoke, the whole odiousness of the scene rushed over him. "Of
+course I shall say nothing...you know that..." He leaned to her and laid
+his hand on hers. "You know I wouldn't for the world..."
+
+She drew back and hid her face with a sob. Then she sank again into her
+seat, stretched her arms across the table and laid her face upon them.
+He sat still, overwhelmed with compunction. After a long interval, in
+which he had painfully measured the seconds by her hard-drawn breathing,
+she looked up at him with a face washed clear of bitterness.
+
+"Don't suppose I don't know what you must have thought of me!"
+
+The cry struck him down to a lower depth of self-abasement. "My poor
+child," he felt like answering, "the shame of it is that I've never
+thought of you at all!" But he could only uselessly repeat: "I'll do
+anything I can to help you."
+
+She sat silent, drumming the table with her hand. He saw that her doubt
+of him was allayed, and the perception made him more ashamed, as if her
+trust had first revealed to him how near he had come to not deserving
+it. Suddenly she began to speak.
+
+"You think, then, I've no right to marry him?"
+
+"No right? God forbid! I only meant----"
+
+"That you'd rather I didn't marry any friend of yours." She brought
+it out deliberately, not as a question, but as a mere dispassionate
+statement of fact.
+
+Darrow in turn stood up and wandered away helplessly to the window. He
+stood staring out through its small discoloured panes at the dim brown
+distances; then he moved back to the table.
+
+"I'll tell you exactly what I meant. You'll be wretched if you marry a
+man you're not in love with."
+
+He knew the risk of misapprehension that he ran, but he estimated his
+chances of success as precisely in proportion to his peril. If certain
+signs meant what he thought they did, he might yet--at what cost he
+would not stop to think--make his past pay for his future.
+
+The girl, at his words, had lifted her head with a movement of surprise.
+Her eyes slowly reached his face and rested there in a gaze of deep
+interrogation. He held the look for a moment; then his own eyes dropped
+and he waited.
+
+At length she began to speak. "You're mistaken--you're quite mistaken."
+
+He waited a moment longer. "Mistaken----?"
+
+"In thinking what you think. I'm as happy as if I deserved it!" she
+suddenly proclaimed with a laugh.
+
+She stood up and moved toward the door. "NOW are you satisfied?" she
+asked, turning her vividest face to him from the threshold.
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+
+Down the avenue there came to them, with the opening of the door, the
+voice of Owen's motor. It was the signal which had interrupted their
+first talk, and again, instinctively, they drew apart at the sound.
+Without a word Darrow turned back into the room, while Sophy Viner went
+down the steps and walked back alone toward the court.
+
+At luncheon the presence of the surgeon, and the non-appearance
+of Madame de Chantelle--who had excused herself on the plea of a
+headache--combined to shift the conversational centre of gravity; and
+Darrow, under shelter of the necessarily impersonal talk, had time to
+adjust his disguise and to perceive that the others were engaged in the
+same re-arrangement. It was the first time that he had seen young Leath
+and Sophy Viner together since he had learned of their engagement; but
+neither revealed more emotion than befitted the occasion. It was evident
+that Owen was deeply under the girl's charm, and that at the least
+sign from her his bliss would have broken bounds; but her reticence
+was justified by the tacitly recognized fact of Madame de Chantelle's
+disapproval. This also visibly weighed on Anna's mind, making her manner
+to Sophy, if no less kind, yet a trifle more constrained than if the
+moment of final understanding had been reached. So Darrow interpreted
+the tension perceptible under the fluent exchange of commonplaces in
+which he was diligently sharing. But he was more and more aware of his
+inability to test the moral atmosphere about him: he was like a man in
+fever testing another's temperature by the touch.
+
+After luncheon Anna, who was to motor the surgeon home, suggested to
+Darrow that he should accompany them. Effie was also of the party; and
+Darrow inferred that Anna wished to give her step-son a chance to be
+alone with his betrothed. On the way back, after the surgeon had been
+left at his door, the little girl sat between her mother and Darrow, and
+her presence kept their talk from taking a personal turn. Darrow knew
+that Mrs. Leath had not yet told Effie of the relation in which he was
+to stand to her. The premature divulging of Owen's plans had thrown
+their own into the background, and by common consent they continued, in
+the little girl's presence, on terms of an informal friendliness.
+
+The sky had cleared after luncheon, and to prolong their excursion they
+returned by way of the ivy-mantled ruin which was to have been the scene
+of the projected picnic. This circuit brought them back to the park
+gates not long before sunset, and as Anna wished to stop at the lodge
+for news of the injured child Darrow left her there with Effie and
+walked on alone to the house. He had the impression that she
+was slightly surprised at his not waiting for her; but his inner
+restlessness vented itself in an intense desire for bodily movement. He
+would have liked to walk himself into a state of torpor; to tramp on
+for hours through the moist winds and the healing darkness and come
+back staggering with fatigue and sleep. But he had no pretext for such
+a flight, and he feared that, at such a moment, his prolonged absence
+might seem singular to Anna.
+
+As he approached the house, the thought of her nearness produced a swift
+reaction of mood. It was as if an intenser vision of her had scattered
+his perplexities like morning mists. At this moment, wherever she was,
+he knew he was safely shut away in her thoughts, and the knowledge made
+every other fact dwindle away to a shadow. He and she loved each other,
+and their love arched over them open and ample as the day: in all its
+sunlit spaces there was no cranny for a fear to lurk. In a few minutes
+he would be in her presence and would read his reassurance in her eyes.
+And presently, before dinner, she would contrive that they should have
+an hour by themselves in her sitting-room, and he would sit by the
+hearth and watch her quiet movements, and the way the bluish lustre on
+her hair purpled a little as she bent above the fire.
+
+A carriage drove out of the court as he entered it, and in the hall his
+vision was dispelled by the exceedingly substantial presence of a lady
+in a waterproof and a tweed hat, who stood firmly planted in the centre
+of a pile of luggage, as to which she was giving involved but lucid
+directions to the footman who had just admitted her. She went on with
+these directions regardless of Darrow's entrance, merely fixing her
+small pale eyes on him while she proceeded, in a deep contralto voice,
+and a fluent French pronounced with the purest Boston accent, to specify
+the destination of her bags; and this enabled Darrow to give her back a
+gaze protracted enough to take in all the details of her plain thick-set
+person, from the square sallow face beneath bands of grey hair to the
+blunt boot-toes protruding under her wide walking skirt.
+
+She submitted to this scrutiny with no more evidence of surprise than
+a monument examined by a tourist; but when the fate of her luggage had
+been settled she turned suddenly to Darrow and, dropping her eyes from
+his face to his feet, asked in trenchant accents: "What sort of boots
+have you got on?"
+
+Before he could summon his wits to the consideration of this question
+she continued in a tone of suppressed indignation: "Until Americans get
+used to the fact that France is under water for half the year they're
+perpetually risking their lives by not being properly protected. I
+suppose you've been tramping through all this nasty clammy mud as if
+you'd been taking a stroll on Boston Common."
+
+Darrow, with a laugh, affirmed his previous experience of French
+dampness, and the degree to which he was on his guard against it; but
+the lady, with a contemptuous snort, rejoined: "You young men are all
+alike----"; to which she appended, after another hard look at him:
+"I suppose you're George Darrow? I used to know one of your mother's
+cousins, who married a Tunstall of Mount Vernon Street. My name is
+Adelaide Painter. Have you been in Boston lately? No? I'm sorry for
+that. I hear there have been several new houses built at the lower
+end of Commonwealth Avenue and I hoped you could tell me about them. I
+haven't been there for thirty years myself."
+
+Miss Painter's arrival at Givre produced the same effect as the wind's
+hauling around to the north after days of languid weather. When Darrow
+joined the group about the tea-table she had already given a tingle to
+the air. Madame de Chantelle still remained invisible above stairs;
+but Darrow had the impression that even through her drawn curtains and
+bolted doors a stimulating whiff must have entered.
+
+Anna was in her usual seat behind the tea-tray, and Sophy Viner
+presently led in her pupil. Owen was also there, seated, as usual,
+a little apart from the others, and following Miss Painter's massive
+movements and equally substantial utterances with a smile of secret
+intelligence which gave Darrow the idea of his having been in
+clandestine parley with the enemy. Darrow further took note that the
+girl and her suitor perceptibly avoided each other; but this might be a
+natural result of the tension Miss Painter had been summoned to relieve.
+
+Sophy Viner would evidently permit no recognition of the situation save
+that which it lay with Madame de Chantelle to accord; but meanwhile Miss
+Painter had proclaimed her tacit sense of it by summoning the girl to a
+seat at her side.
+
+Darrow, as he continued to observe the newcomer, who was perched on her
+arm-chair like a granite image on the edge of a cliff, was aware
+that, in a more detached frame of mind, he would have found an extreme
+interest in studying and classifying Miss Painter. It was not that she
+said anything remarkable, or betrayed any of those unspoken perceptions
+which give significance to the most commonplace utterances. She talked
+of the lateness of her train, of an impending crisis in international
+politics, of the difficulty of buying English tea in Paris and of the
+enormities of which French servants were capable; and her views on these
+subjects were enunciated with a uniformity of emphasis implying complete
+unconsciousness of any difference in their interest and importance. She
+always applied to the French race the distant epithet of "those people",
+but she betrayed an intimate acquaintance with many of its members,
+and an encyclopaedic knowledge of the domestic habits, financial
+difficulties and private complications of various persons of social
+importance. Yet, as she evidently felt no incongruity in her
+attitude, so she revealed no desire to parade her familiarity with the
+fashionable, or indeed any sense of it as a fact to be paraded. It was
+evident that the titled ladies whom she spoke of as Mimi or Simone or
+Odette were as much "those people" to her as the bonne who tampered with
+her tea and steamed the stamps off her letters ("when, by a miracle,
+I don't put them in the box myself.") Her whole attitude was of a vast
+grim tolerance of things-as-they-came, as though she had been some
+wonderful automatic machine which recorded facts but had not yet been
+perfected to the point of sorting or labelling them.
+
+All this, as Darrow was aware, still fell short of accounting for the
+influence she obviously exerted on the persons in contact with her.
+It brought a slight relief to his state of tension to go on wondering,
+while he watched and listened, just where the mystery lurked.
+Perhaps, after all, it was in the fact of her blank insensibility,
+an insensibility so devoid of egotism that it had no hardness and no
+grimaces, but rather the freshness of a simpler mental state. After
+living, as he had, as they all had, for the last few days, in an
+atmosphere perpetually tremulous with echoes and implications, it was
+restful and fortifying merely to walk into the big blank area of Miss
+Painter's mind, so vacuous for all its accumulated items, so echoless
+for all its vacuity.
+
+His hope of a word with Anna before dinner was dispelled by her rising
+to take Miss Painter up to Madame de Chantelle; and he wandered away
+to his own room, leaving Owen and Miss Viner engaged in working out a
+picture-puzzle for Effie.
+
+Madame de Chantelle--possibly as the result of her friend's
+ministrations--was able to appear at the dinner-table, rather pale and
+pink-nosed, and casting tenderly reproachful glances at her grandson,
+who faced them with impervious serenity; and the situation was relieved
+by the fact that Miss Viner, as usual, had remained in the school-room
+with her pupil.
+
+Darrow conjectured that the real clash of arms would not take place till
+the morrow; and wishing to leave the field open to the contestants he
+set out early on a solitary walk. It was nearly luncheon-time when he
+returned from it and came upon Anna just emerging from the house. She
+had on her hat and jacket and was apparently coming forth to seek him,
+for she said at once: "Madame de Chantelle wants you to go up to her."
+
+"To go up to her? Now?"
+
+"That's the message she sent. She appears to rely on you to do
+something." She added with a smile: "Whatever it is, let's have it
+over!"
+
+Darrow, through his rising sense of apprehension, wondered why, instead
+of merely going for a walk, he had not jumped into the first train and
+got out of the way till Owen's affairs were finally settled.
+
+"But what in the name of goodness can I do?" he protested, following
+Anna back into the hall.
+
+"I don't know. But Owen seems so to rely on you, too----"
+
+"Owen! Is HE to be there?"
+
+"No. But you know I told him he could count on you."
+
+"But I've said to your mother-in-law all I could."
+
+"Well, then you can only repeat it."
+
+This did not seem to Darrow to simplify his case as much as she appeared
+to think; and once more he had a movement of recoil. "There's no
+possible reason for my being mixed up in this affair!"
+
+Anna gave him a reproachful glance. "Not the fact that I am?" she
+reminded him; but even this only stiffened his resistance.
+
+"Why should you be, either--to this extent?"
+
+The question made her pause. She glanced about the hall, as if to be
+sure they had it to themselves; and then, in a lowered voice: "I don't
+know," she suddenly confessed; "but, somehow, if THEY'RE not happy I
+feel as if we shouldn't be."
+
+"Oh, well--" Darrow acquiesced, in the tone of the man who perforce
+yields to so lovely an unreasonableness. Escape was, after all,
+impossible, and he could only resign himself to being led to Madame de
+Chantelle's door.
+
+Within, among the bric-a-brac and furbelows, he found Miss Painter
+seated in a redundant purple armchair with the incongruous air of a
+horseman bestriding a heavy mount. Madame de Chantelle sat opposite,
+still a little wan and disordered under her elaborate hair, and clasping
+the handkerchief whose visibility symbolized her distress. On the
+young man's entrance she sighed out a plaintive welcome, to which she
+immediately appended: "Mr. Darrow, I can't help feeling that at heart
+you're with me!"
+
+The directness of the challenge made it easier for Darrow to protest,
+and he reiterated his inability to give an opinion on either side.
+
+"But Anna declares you have--on hers!"
+
+He could not restrain a smile at this faint flaw in an impartiality so
+scrupulous. Every evidence of feminine inconsequence in Anna seemed to
+attest her deeper subjection to the most inconsequent of passions. He
+had certainly promised her his help--but before he knew what he was
+promising.
+
+He met Madame de Chantelle's appeal by replying: "If there were anything
+I could possibly say I should want it to be in Miss Viner's favour."
+
+"You'd want it to be--yes! But could you make it so?"
+
+"As far as facts go, I don't see how I can make it either for or against
+her. I've already said that I know nothing of her except that she's
+charming."
+
+"As if that weren't enough--weren't all there OUGHT to be!" Miss Painter
+put in impatiently. She seemed to address herself to Darrow, though her
+small eyes were fixed on her friend.
+
+"Madame de Chantelle seems to imagine," she pursued, "that a young
+American girl ought to have a dossier--a police-record, or whatever you
+call it: what those awful women in the streets have here. In our country
+it's enough to know that a young girl's pure and lovely: people don't
+immediately ask her to show her bank-account and her visiting-list."
+
+Madame de Chantelle looked plaintively at her sturdy monitress. "You
+don't expect me not to ask if she's got a family?"
+
+"No; nor to think the worse of her if she hasn't. The fact that she's an
+orphan ought, with your ideas, to be a merit. You won't have to invite
+her father and mother to Givre!"
+
+"Adelaide--Adelaide!" the mistress of Givre lamented.
+
+"Lucretia Mary," the other returned--and Darrow spared an instant's
+amusement to the quaint incongruity of the name--"you know you sent for
+Mr. Darrow to refute me; and how can he, till he knows what I think?"
+
+"You think it's perfectly simple to let Owen marry a girl we know
+nothing about?"
+
+"No; but I don't think it's perfectly simple to prevent him."
+
+The shrewdness of the answer increased Darrow's interest in Miss
+Painter. She had not hitherto struck him as being a person of much
+penetration, but he now felt sure that her gimlet gaze might bore to the
+heart of any practical problem.
+
+Madame de Chantelle sighed out her recognition of the difficulty.
+
+"I haven't a word to say against Miss Viner; but she's knocked about
+so, as it's called, that she must have been mixed up with some rather
+dreadful people. If only Owen could be made to see that--if one could
+get at a few facts, I mean. She says, for instance, that she has a
+sister; but it seems she doesn't even know her address!"
+
+"If she does, she may not want to give it to you. I daresay the sister's
+one of the dreadful people. I've no doubt that with a little time you
+could rake up dozens of them: have her 'traced', as they call it in
+detective stories. I don't think you'd frighten Owen, but you might:
+it's natural enough he should have been corrupted by those foreign
+ideas. You might even manage to part him from the girl; but you couldn't
+keep him from being in love with her. I saw that when I looked them
+over last evening. I said to myself: 'It's a real old-fashioned American
+case, as sweet and sound as home-made bread.' Well, if you take his loaf
+away from him, what are you going to feed him with instead? Which of
+your nasty Paris poisons do you think he'll turn to? Supposing you
+succeed in keeping him out of a really bad mess--and, knowing the young
+man as I do, I rather think that, at this crisis, the only way to do it
+would be to marry him slap off to somebody else--well, then, who, may I
+ask, would you pick out? One of your sweet French ingenues, I suppose?
+With as much mind as a minnow and as much snap as a soft-boiled egg. You
+might hustle him into that kind of marriage; I daresay you could--but
+if I know Owen, the natural thing would happen before the first baby was
+weaned."
+
+"I don't know why you insinuate such odious things against Owen!"
+
+"Do you think it would be odious of him to return to his real love when
+he'd been forcibly parted from her? At any rate, it's what your French
+friends do, every one of them! Only they don't generally have the grace
+to go back to an old love; and I believe, upon my word, Owen would!"
+
+Madame de Chantelle looked at her with a mixture of awe and exultation.
+"Of course you realize, Adelaide, that in suggesting this you're
+insinuating the most shocking things against Miss Viner?"
+
+"When I say that if you part two young things who are dying to be happy
+in the lawful way it's ten to one they'll come together in an unlawful
+one? I'm insinuating shocking things against YOU, Lucretia Mary, in
+suggesting for a moment that you'll care to assume such a responsibility
+before your Maker. And you wouldn't, if you talked things straight out
+with him, instead of merely sending him messages through a miserable
+sinner like yourself!"
+
+Darrow expected this assault on her adopted creed to provoke in Madame
+de Chantelle an explosion of pious indignation; but to his surprise she
+merely murmured: "I don't know what Mr. Darrow'll think of you!"
+
+"Mr. Darrow probably knows his Bible as well as I do," Miss Painter
+calmly rejoined; adding a moment later, without the least perceptible
+change of voice or expression: "I suppose you've heard that Gisele
+de Folembray's husband accuses her of being mixed up with the Duc
+d'Arcachon in that business of trying to sell a lot of imitation pearls
+to Mrs. Homer Pond, the Chicago woman the Duke's engaged to? It seems
+the jeweller says Gisele brought Mrs. Pond there, and got twenty-five
+per cent--which of course she passed on to d'Arcachon. The poor old
+Duchess is in a fearful state--so afraid her son'll lose Mrs. Pond!
+When I think that Gisele is old Bradford Wagstaff's grand-daughter, I'm
+thankful he's safe in Mount Auburn!"
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+
+It was not until late that afternoon that Darrow could claim his
+postponed hour with Anna. When at last he found her alone in her
+sitting-room it was with a sense of liberation so great that he sought
+no logical justification of it. He simply felt that all their destinies
+were in Miss Painter's grasp, and that, resistance being useless, he
+could only enjoy the sweets of surrender.
+
+Anna herself seemed as happy, and for more explicable reasons. She had
+assisted, after luncheon, at another debate between Madame de Chantelle
+and her confidant, and had surmised, when she withdrew from it, that
+victory was permanently perched on Miss Painter's banners.
+
+"I don't know how she does it, unless it's by the dead weight of her
+convictions. She detests the French so that she'd back up Owen even if
+she knew nothing--or knew too much--of Miss Viner. She somehow regards
+the match as a protest against the corruption of European morals. I told
+Owen that was his great chance, and he's made the most of it."
+
+"What a tactician you are! You make me feel that I hardly know the
+rudiments of diplomacy," Darrow smiled at her, abandoning himself to a
+perilous sense of well-being.
+
+She gave him back his smile. "I'm afraid I think nothing short of my own
+happiness is worth wasting any diplomacy on!"
+
+"That's why I mean to resign from the service of my country," he
+rejoined with a laugh of deep content.
+
+The feeling that both resistance and apprehension were vain was working
+like wine in his veins. He had done what he could to deflect the course
+of events: now he could only stand aside and take his chance of safety.
+Underneath this fatalistic feeling was the deep sense of relief that
+he had, after all, said and done nothing that could in the least degree
+affect the welfare of Sophy Viner. That fact took a millstone off his
+neck.
+
+Meanwhile he gave himself up once more to the joy of Anna's presence.
+They had not been alone together for two long days, and he had the
+lover's sense that he had forgotten, or at least underestimated, the
+strength of the spell she cast. Once more her eyes and her smile seemed
+to bound his world. He felt that their light would always move with him
+as the sunset moves before a ship at sea.
+
+
+The next day his sense of security was increased by a decisive incident.
+It became known to the expectant household that Madame de Chantelle had
+yielded to the tremendous impact of Miss Painter's determination and
+that Sophy Viner had been "sent for" to the purple satin sitting-room.
+
+At luncheon, Owen's radiant countenance proclaimed the happy sequel, and
+Darrow, when the party had moved back to the oak-room for coffee, deemed
+it discreet to wander out alone to the terrace with his cigar. The
+conclusion of Owen's romance brought his own plans once more to the
+front. Anna had promised that she would consider dates and settle
+details as soon as Madame de Chantelle and her grandson had been
+reconciled, and Darrow was eager to go into the question at once,
+since it was necessary that the preparations for his marriage should
+go forward as rapidly as possible. Anna, he knew, would not seek any
+farther pretext for delay; and he strolled up and down contentedly in
+the sunshine, certain that she would come out and reassure him as soon
+as the reunited family had claimed its due share of her attention.
+
+But when she finally joined him her first word was for the younger
+lovers.
+
+"I want to thank you for what you've done for Owen," she began, with her
+happiest smile.
+
+"Who--I?" he laughed. "Are you confusing me with Miss Painter?"
+
+"Perhaps I ought to say for ME," she corrected herself. "You've been
+even more of a help to us than Adelaide."
+
+"My dear child! What on earth have I done?"
+
+"You've managed to hide from Madame de Chantelle that you don't really
+like poor Sophy."
+
+Darrow felt the pallour in his cheek. "Not like her? What put such an
+idea into your head?"
+
+"Oh, it's more than an idea--it's a feeling. But what difference does
+it make, after all? You saw her in such a different setting that it's
+natural you should be a little doubtful. But when you know her better
+I'm sure you'll feel about her as I do."
+
+"It's going to be hard for me not to feel about everything as you do."
+
+"Well, then--please begin with my daughter-in-law!"
+
+He gave her back in the same tone of banter: "Agreed: if you ll agree to
+feel as I do about the pressing necessity of our getting married."
+
+"I want to talk to you about that too. You don't know what a weight is
+off my mind! With Sophy here for good, I shall feel so differently
+about leaving Effie. I've seen much more accomplished governesses--to
+my cost!--but I've never seen a young thing more gay and kind and human.
+You must have noticed, though you've seen them so little together, how
+Effie expands when she's with her. And that, you know, is what I want.
+Madame de Chantelle will provide the necessary restraint." She clasped
+her hands on his arm. "Yes, I'm ready to go with you now. But first of
+all--this very moment!--you must come with me to Effie. She knows, of
+course, nothing of what's been happening; and I want her to be told
+first about YOU."
+
+Effie, sought throughout the house, was presently traced to the
+school-room, and thither Darrow mounted with Anna. He had never seen
+her so alight with happiness, and he had caught her buoyancy of mood. He
+kept repeating to himself: "It's over--it's over," as if some monstrous
+midnight hallucination had been routed by the return of day.
+
+As they approached the school-room door the terrier's barks came to them
+through laughing remonstrances.
+
+"She's giving him his dinner," Anna whispered, her hand in Darrow's.
+
+"Don't forget the gold-fish!" they heard another voice call out.
+
+Darrow halted on the threshold. "Oh--not now!"
+
+"Not now?"
+
+"I mean--she'd rather have you tell her first. I'll wait for you both
+downstairs."
+
+He was aware that she glanced at him intently. "As you please. I'll
+bring her down at once."
+
+She opened the door, and as she went in he heard her say: "No, Sophy,
+don't go! I want you both."
+
+
+The rest of Darrow's day was a succession of empty and agitating
+scenes. On his way down to Givre, before he had seen Effie Leath, he
+had pictured somewhat sentimentally the joy of the moment when he should
+take her in his arms and receive her first filial kiss. Everything
+in him that egotistically craved for rest, stability, a comfortably
+organized middle-age, all the home-building instincts of the man who
+has sufficiently wooed and wandered, combined to throw a charm about the
+figure of the child who might--who should--have been his. Effie came to
+him trailing the cloud of glory of his first romance, giving him
+back the magic hour he had missed and mourned. And how different the
+realization of his dream had been! The child's radiant welcome, her
+unquestioning acceptance of, this new figure in the family group, had
+been all that he had hoped and fancied. If Mother was so awfully happy
+about it, and Owen and Granny, too, how nice and cosy and comfortable
+it was going to be for all of them, her beaming look seemed to say; and
+then, suddenly, the small pink fingers he had been kissing were laid
+on the one flaw in the circle, on the one point which must be settled
+before Effie could, with complete unqualified assurance, admit the
+new-comer to full equality with the other gods of her Olympus.
+
+"And is Sophy awfully happy about it too?" she had asked, loosening her
+hold on Darrow's neck to tilt back her head and include her mother in
+her questioning look.
+
+"Why, dearest, didn't you see she was?" Anna had exclaimed, leaning to
+the group with radiant eyes.
+
+"I think I should like to ask her," the child rejoined, after a minute's
+shy consideration; and as Darrow set her down her mother laughed: "Do,
+darling, do! Run off at once, and tell her we expect her to be awfully
+happy too."
+
+The scene had been succeeded by others less poignant but almost as
+trying. Darrow cursed his luck in having, at such a moment, to run
+the gauntlet of a houseful of interested observers. The state of being
+"engaged", in itself an absurd enough predicament, even to a man only
+intermittently exposed, became intolerable under the continuous scrutiny
+of a small circle quivering with participation. Darrow was furthermore
+aware that, though the case of the other couple ought to have made
+his own less conspicuous, it was rather they who found a refuge in the
+shadow of his prominence. Madame de Chantelle, though she had
+consented to Owen's engagement and formally welcomed his betrothed,
+was nevertheless not sorry to show, by her reception of Darrow, of
+what finely-shaded degrees of cordiality she was capable. Miss Painter,
+having won the day for Owen, was also free to turn her attention to the
+newer candidate for her sympathy; and Darrow and Anna found themselves
+immersed in a warm bath of sentimental curiosity.
+
+It was a relief to Darrow that he was under a positive obligation to end
+his visit within the next forty-eight hours. When he left London, his
+Ambassador had accorded him a ten days' leave. His fate being definitely
+settled and openly published he had no reason for asking to have the
+time prolonged, and when it was over he was to return to his post till
+the time fixed for taking up his new duties. Anna and he had therefore
+decided to be married, in Paris, a day or two before the departure of
+the steamer which was to take them to South America; and Anna, shortly
+after his return to England, was to go up to Paris and begin her own
+preparations.
+
+In honour of the double betrothal Effie and Miss Viner were to appear
+that evening at dinner; and Darrow, on leaving his room, met the little
+girl springing down the stairs, her white ruffles and coral-coloured
+bows making her look like a daisy with her yellow hair for its centre.
+Sophy Viner was behind her pupil, and as she came into the light Darrow
+noticed a change in her appearance and wondered vaguely why she looked
+suddenly younger, more vivid, more like the little luminous ghost of his
+Paris memories. Then it occurred to him that it was the first time she
+had appeared at dinner since his arrival at Givre, and the first time,
+consequently, that he had seen her in evening dress. She was still at
+the age when the least adornment embellishes; and no doubt the mere
+uncovering of her young throat and neck had given her back her former
+brightness. But a second glance showed a more precise reason for his
+impression. Vaguely though he retained such details, he felt sure she
+was wearing the dress he had seen her in every evening in Paris. It was
+a simple enough dress, black, and transparent on the arms and shoulders,
+and he would probably not have recognized it if she had not called his
+attention to it in Paris by confessing that she hadn't any other. "The
+same dress? That proves that she's forgotten!" was his first half-ironic
+thought; but the next moment, with a pang of compunction, he said to
+himself that she had probably put it on for the same reason as before:
+simply because she hadn't any other.
+
+He looked at her in silence, and for an instant, above Effie's bobbing
+head, she gave him back his look in a full bright gaze.
+
+"Oh, there's Owen!" Effie cried, and whirled away down the gallery to
+the door from which her step-brother was emerging. As Owen bent to catch
+her, Sophy Viner turned abruptly back to Darrow.
+
+"You, too?" she said with a quick laugh. "I didn't know----" And as Owen
+came up to them she added, in a tone that might have been meant to reach
+his ear: "I wish you all the luck that we can spare!"
+
+About the dinner-table, which Effie, with Miss Viner's aid, had lavishly
+garlanded, the little party had an air of somewhat self-conscious
+festivity. In spite of flowers, champagne and a unanimous attempt at
+ease, there were frequent lapses in the talk, and moments of nervous
+groping for new subjects. Miss Painter alone seemed not only
+unaffected by the general perturbation but as tightly sealed up in
+her unconsciousness of it as a diver in his bell. To Darrow's strained
+attention even Owen's gusts of gaiety seemed to betray an inward sense
+of insecurity. After dinner, however, at the piano, he broke into a mood
+of extravagant hilarity and flooded the room with the splash and ripple
+of his music.
+
+Darrow, sunk in a sofa corner in the lee of Miss Painter's granite
+bulk, smoked and listened in silence, his eyes moving from one figure to
+another. Madame de Chantelle, in her armchair near the fire, clasped her
+little granddaughter to her with the gesture of a drawing-room Niobe,
+and Anna, seated near them, had fallen into one of the attitudes of
+vivid calm which seemed to Darrow to express her inmost quality. Sophy
+Viner, after moving uncertainly about the room, had placed herself
+beyond Mrs. Leath, in a chair near the piano, where she sat with head
+thrown back and eyes attached to the musician, in the same rapt fixity
+of attention with which she had followed the players at the Francais.
+The accident of her having fallen into the same attitude, and of her
+wearing the same dress, gave Darrow, as he watched her, a strange sense
+of double consciousness. To escape from it, his glance turned back to
+Anna; but from the point at which he was placed his eyes could not
+take in the one face without the other, and that renewed the disturbing
+duality of the impression. Suddenly Owen broke off with a crash of
+chords and jumped to his feet.
+
+"What's the use of this, with such a moon to say it for us?"
+
+Behind the uncurtained window a low golden orb hung like a ripe fruit
+against the glass.
+
+"Yes--let's go out and listen," Anna answered. Owen threw open the
+window, and with his gesture a fold of the heavy star-sprinkled sky
+seemed to droop into the room like a drawn-in curtain. The air that
+entered with it had a frosty edge, and Anna bade Effie run to the hall
+for wraps.
+
+Darrow said: "You must have one too," and started toward the door;
+but Sophy, following her pupil, cried back: "We'll bring things for
+everybody."
+
+Owen had followed her, and in a moment the three reappeared, and the
+party went out on the terrace. The deep blue purity of the night was
+unveiled by mist, and the moonlight rimmed the edges of the trees with
+a silver blur and blanched to unnatural whiteness the statues against
+their walls of shade.
+
+Darrow and Anna, with Effie between them, strolled to the farther corner
+of the terrace. Below them, between the fringes of the park, the lawn
+sloped dimly to the fields above the river. For a few minutes they stood
+silently side by side, touched to peace beneath the trembling beauty of
+the sky. When they turned back, Darrow saw that Owen and Sophy Viner,
+who had gone down the steps to the garden, were also walking in the
+direction of the house. As they advanced, Sophy paused in a patch of
+moonlight, between the sharp shadows of the yews, and Darrow noticed
+that she had thrown over her shoulders a long cloak of some light
+colour, which suddenly evoked her image as she had entered the
+restaurant at his side on the night of their first dinner in Paris. A
+moment later they were all together again on the terrace, and when they
+re-entered the drawing-room the older ladies were on their way to bed.
+
+Effie, emboldened by the privileges of the evening, was for coaxing Owen
+to round it off with a game of forfeits or some such reckless climax;
+but Sophy, resuming her professional role, sounded the summons to bed.
+In her pupil's wake she made her round of good-nights; but when she
+proffered her hand to Anna, the latter ignoring the gesture held out
+both arms.
+
+"Good-night, dear child," she said impulsively, and drew the girl to her
+kiss.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK IV
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+
+The next day was Darrow's last at Givre and, foreseeing that the
+afternoon and evening would have to be given to the family, he had asked
+Anna to devote an early hour to the final consideration of their plans.
+He was to meet her in the brown sitting-room at ten, and they were to
+walk down to the river and talk over their future in the little pavilion
+abutting on the wall of the park.
+
+It was just a week since his arrival at Givre, and Anna wished, before
+he left, to return to the place where they had sat on their first
+afternoon together. Her sensitiveness to the appeal of inanimate things,
+to the colour and texture of whatever wove itself into the substance of
+her emotion, made her want to hear Darrow's voice, and to feel his eyes
+on her, in the spot where bliss had first flowed into her heart.
+
+That bliss, in the interval, had wound itself into every fold of her
+being. Passing, in the first days, from a high shy tenderness to the
+rush of a secret surrender, it had gradually widened and deepened, to
+flow on in redoubled beauty. She thought she now knew exactly how and
+why she loved Darrow, and she could see her whole sky reflected in the
+deep and tranquil current of her love.
+
+Early the next day, in her sitting-room, she was glancing through the
+letters which it was Effie's morning privilege to carry up to her. Effie
+meanwhile circled inquisitively about the room, where there was always
+something new to engage her infant fancy; and Anna, looking up, saw her
+suddenly arrested before a photograph of Darrow which, the day before,
+had taken its place on the writing-table.
+
+Anna held out her arms with a faint blush. "You do like him, don't you,
+dear?"
+
+"Oh, most awfully, dearest," Effie, against her breast, leaned back
+to assure her with a limpid look. "And so do Granny and Owen--and I DO
+think Sophy does too," she added, after a moment's earnest pondering.
+
+"I hope so," Anna laughed. She checked the impulse to continue: "Has she
+talked to you about him, that you're so sure?" She did not know what had
+made the question spring to her lips, but she was glad she had closed
+them before pronouncing it. Nothing could have been more distasteful to
+her than to clear up such obscurities by turning on them the tiny flame
+of her daughter's observation. And what, after all, now that Owen's
+happiness was secured, did it matter if there were certain reserves in
+Darrow's approval of his marriage?
+
+A knock on the door made Anna glance at the clock. "There's Nurse to
+carry you off."
+
+"It's Sophy's knock," the little girl answered, jumping down to open the
+door; and Miss Viner in fact stood on the threshold.
+
+"Come in," Anna said with a smile, instantly remarking how pale she
+looked.
+
+"May Effie go out for a turn with Nurse?" the girl asked. "I should like
+to speak to you a moment."
+
+"Of course. This ought to be YOUR holiday, as yesterday was Effie's. Run
+off, dear," she added, stooping to kiss the little girl.
+
+When the door had closed she turned back to Sophy Viner with a look that
+sought her confidence. "I'm so glad you came, my dear. We've got so many
+things to talk about, just you and I together."
+
+The confused intercourse of the last days had, in fact, left little time
+for any speech with Sophy but such as related to her marriage and the
+means of overcoming Madame de Chantelle's opposition to it. Anna had
+exacted of Owen that no one, not even Sophy Viner, should be given a
+hint of her own projects till all contingent questions had been disposed
+of. She had felt, from the outset, a secret reluctance to intrude her
+securer happiness on the doubts and fears of the young pair.
+
+From the sofa-corner to which she had dropped back she pointed to
+Darrow's chair. "Come and sit by me, dear. I wanted to see you alone.
+There's so much to say that I hardly know where to begin."
+
+She leaned forward, her hands clasped on the arms of the sofa, her eyes
+bent smilingly on Sophy's. As she did so, she noticed that the girl's
+unusual pallour was partly due to the slight veil of powder on her
+face. The discovery was distinctly disagreeable. Anna had never before
+noticed, on Sophy's part, any recourse to cosmetics, and, much as
+she wished to think herself exempt from old-fashioned prejudices, she
+suddenly became aware that she did not like her daughter's governess to
+have a powdered face. Then she reflected that the girl who sat opposite
+her was no longer Effie's governess, but her own future daughter-in-law;
+and she wondered whether Miss Viner had chosen this odd way of
+celebrating her independence, and whether, as Mrs. Owen Leath, she would
+present to the world a bedizened countenance. This idea was scarcely
+less distasteful than the other, and for a moment Anna continued to
+consider her without speaking. Then, in a flash, the truth came to her:
+Miss Viner had powdered her face because Miss Viner had been crying.
+
+Anna leaned forward impulsively. "My dear child, what's the matter?"
+She saw the girl's blood rush up under the white mask, and hastened on:
+"Please don't be afraid to tell me. I do so want you to feel that you
+can trust me as Owen does. And you know you mustn't mind if, just at
+first, Madame de Chantelle occasionally relapses."
+
+She spoke eagerly, persuasively, almost on a note of pleading. She had,
+in truth, so many reasons for wanting Sophy to like her: her love for
+Owen, her solicitude for Effie, and her own sense of the girl's fine
+mettle. She had always felt a romantic and almost humble admiration for
+those members of her sex who, from force of will, or the constraint
+of circumstances, had plunged into the conflict from which fate had
+so persistently excluded her. There were even moments when she fancied
+herself vaguely to blame for her immunity, and felt that she ought
+somehow to have affronted the perils and hardships which refused to come
+to her. And now, as she sat looking at Sophy Viner, so small, so slight,
+so visibly defenceless and undone, she still felt, through all the
+superiority of her worldly advantages and her seeming maturity, the same
+odd sense of ignorance and inexperience. She could not have said what
+there was in the girl's manner and expression to give her this feeling,
+but she was reminded, as she looked at Sophy Viner, of the other girls
+she had known in her youth, the girls who seemed possessed of a secret
+she had missed. Yes, Sophy Viner had their look--almost the obscurely
+menacing look of Kitty Mayne...Anna, with an inward smile, brushed aside
+the image of this forgotten rival. But she had felt, deep down, a
+twinge of the old pain, and she was sorry that, even for the flash of
+a thought, Owen's betrothed should have reminded her of so different a
+woman...
+
+She laid her hand on the girl's. "When his grandmother sees how happy
+Owen is she'll be quite happy herself. If it's only that, don't be
+distressed. Just trust to Owen--and the future."
+
+Sophy Viner, with an almost imperceptible recoil of her whole slight
+person, had drawn her hand from under the palm enclosing it.
+
+"That's what I wanted to talk to you about--the future."
+
+"Of course! We've all so many plans to make--and to fit into each
+other's. Please let's begin with yours."
+
+The girl paused a moment, her hands clasped on the arms of her chair,
+her lids dropped under Anna's gaze; then she said: "I should like to
+make no plans at all...just yet..."
+
+"No plans?"
+
+"No--I should like to go away...my friends the Farlows would let me go
+to them..." Her voice grew firmer and she lifted her eyes to add: "I
+should like to leave today, if you don't mind."
+
+Anna listened with a rising wonder.
+
+"You want to leave Givre at once?" She gave the idea a moment's swift
+consideration. "You prefer to be with your friends till your marriage?
+I understand that--but surely you needn't rush off today? There are so
+many details to discuss; and before long, you know, I shall be going
+away too."
+
+"Yes, I know." The girl was evidently trying to steady her voice. "But I
+should like to wait a few days--to have a little more time to myself."
+
+Anna continued to consider her kindly. It was evident that she did not
+care to say why she wished to leave Givre so suddenly, but her disturbed
+face and shaken voice betrayed a more pressing motive than the natural
+desire to spend the weeks before her marriage under her old friends'
+roof. Since she had made no response to the allusion to Madame de
+Chantelle, Anna could but conjecture that she had had a passing
+disagreement with Owen; and if this were so, random interference might
+do more harm than good.
+
+"My dear child, if you really want to go at once I sha'n't, of course,
+urge you to stay. I suppose you have spoken to Owen?"
+
+"No. Not yet..."
+
+Anna threw an astonished glance at her. "You mean to say you haven't
+told him?"
+
+"I wanted to tell you first. I thought I ought to, on account of Effie."
+Her look cleared as she put forth this reason.
+
+"Oh, Effie!--" Anna's smile brushed away the scruple. "Owen has a right
+to ask that you should consider him before you think of his sister...Of
+course you shall do just as you wish," she went on, after another
+thoughtful interval.
+
+"Oh, thank you," Sophy Viner murmured and rose to her feet.
+
+Anna rose also, vaguely seeking for some word that should break down the
+girl's resistance. "You'll tell Owen at once?" she finally asked.
+
+Miss Viner, instead of replying, stood before her in manifest
+uncertainty, and as she did so there was a light tap on the door, and
+Owen Leath walked into the room.
+
+Anna's first glance told her that his face was unclouded. He met her
+greeting with his happiest smile and turned to lift Sophy's hand to his
+lips. The perception that he was utterly unconscious of any cause for
+Miss Viner's agitation came to his step-mother with a sharp thrill of
+surprise.
+
+"Darrow's looking for you," he said to her. "He asked me to remind you
+that you'd promised to go for a walk with him."
+
+Anna glanced at the clock. "I'll go down presently." She waited and
+looked again at Sophy Viner, whose troubled eyes seemed to commit their
+message to her. "You'd better tell Owen, my dear."
+
+Owen's look also turned on the girl. "Tell me what? Why, what's
+happened?"
+
+Anna summoned a laugh to ease the vague tension of the moment. "Don't
+look so startled! Nothing, except that Sophy proposes to desert us for a
+while for the Farlows."
+
+Owen's brow cleared. "I was afraid she'd run off before long." He
+glanced at Anna. "Do please keep her here as long as you can!"
+
+Sophy intervened: "Mrs. Leath's already given me leave to go."
+
+"Already? To go when?"
+
+"Today," said Sophy in a low tone, her eyes on Anna's.
+
+"Today? Why on earth should you go today?" Owen dropped back a step or
+two, flushing and paling under his bewildered frown. His eyes seemed to
+search the girl more closely. "Something's happened." He too looked at
+his step-mother. "I suppose she must have told you what it is?"
+
+Anna was struck by the suddenness and vehemence of his appeal. It was as
+though some smouldering apprehension had lain close under the surface of
+his security.
+
+"She's told me nothing except that she wishes to be with her friends.
+It's quite natural that she should want to go to them."
+
+Owen visibly controlled himself. "Of course--quite natural." He spoke
+to Sophy. "But why didn't you tell me so? Why did you come first to my
+step-mother?"
+
+Anna intervened with her calm smile. "That seems to me quite natural,
+too. Sophy was considerate enough to tell me first because of Effie."
+
+He weighed it. "Very well, then: that's quite natural, as you say. And
+of course she must do exactly as she pleases." He still kept his eyes on
+the girl. "Tomorrow," he abruptly announced, "I shall go up to Paris to
+see you."
+
+"Oh, no--no!" she protested.
+
+Owen turned back to Anna. "NOW do you say that nothing's happened?"
+
+Under the influence of his agitation Anna felt a vague tightening of
+the heart. She seemed to herself like some one in a dark room about whom
+unseen presences are groping.
+
+"If it's anything that Sophy wishes to tell you, no doubt she'll do
+so. I'm going down now, and I'll leave you here to talk it over by
+yourselves."
+
+As she moved to the door the girl caught up with her. "But there's
+nothing to tell: why should there be? I've explained that I simply want
+to be quiet." Her look seemed to detain Mrs. Leath.
+
+Owen broke in: "Is that why I mayn't go up tomorrow?"
+
+"Not tomorrow!"
+
+"Then when may I?"
+
+"Later...in a little while...a few days..."
+
+"In how many days?" "Owen!" his step-mother interposed; but he seemed
+no longer aware of her. "If you go away today, the day that our
+engagement's made known, it's only fair," he persisted, "that you should
+tell me when I am to see you."
+
+Sophy's eyes wavered between the two and dropped down wearily. "It's you
+who are not fair--when I've said I wanted to be quiet."
+
+"But why should my coming disturb you? I'm not asking now to come
+tomorrow. I only ask you not to leave without telling me when I'm to see
+you."
+
+"Owen, I don't understand you!" his step-mother exclaimed.
+
+"You don't understand my asking for some explanation, some assurance,
+when I'm left in this way, without a word, without a sign? All I ask her
+to tell me is when she'll see me."
+
+Anna turned back to Sophy Viner, who stood straight and tremulous
+between the two.
+
+"After all, my dear, he's not unreasonable!"
+
+"I'll write--I'll write," the girl repeated.
+
+"WHAT will you write?" he pressed her vehemently.
+
+"Owen," Anna exclaimed, "you are unreasonable!"
+
+He turned from Sophy to his step-mother. "I only want her to say what
+she means: that she's going to write to break off our engagement. Isn't
+that what you're going away for?"
+
+Anna felt the contagion of his excitement. She looked at Sophy, who
+stood motionless, her lips set, her whole face drawn to a silent fixity
+of resistance.
+
+"You ought to speak, my dear--you ought to answer him."
+
+"I only ask him to wait----"
+
+"Yes," Owen, broke in, "and you won't say how long!"
+
+Both instinctively addressed themselves to Anna, who stood, nearly as
+shaken as themselves, between the double shock of their struggle. She
+looked again from Sophy's inscrutable eyes to Owen's stormy features;
+then she said: "What can I do, when there's clearly something between
+you that I don't know about?"
+
+"Oh, if it WERE between us! Can't you see it's outside of us--outside
+of her, dragging at her, dragging her away from me?" Owen wheeled round
+again upon his step-mother.
+
+Anna turned from him to the girl. "Is it true that you want to break
+your engagement? If you do, you ought to tell him now."
+
+Owen burst into a laugh. "She doesn't dare to--she's afraid I'll guess
+the reason!"
+
+A faint sound escaped from Sophy's lips, but she kept them close on
+whatever answer she had ready.
+
+"If she doesn't wish to marry you, why should she be afraid to have you
+know the reason?"
+
+"She's afraid to have YOU know it--not me!"
+
+"To have ME know it?"
+
+He laughed again, and Anna, at his laugh, felt a sudden rush of
+indignation.
+
+"Owen, you must explain what you mean!"
+
+He looked at her hard before answering; then: "Ask Darrow!" he said.
+
+"Owen--Owen!" Sophy Viner murmured.
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+
+Anna stood looking from one to the other. It had become apparent to her
+in a flash that Owen's retort, though it startled Sophy, did not take
+her by surprise; and the discovery shot its light along dark distances
+of fear.
+
+The immediate inference was that Owen had guessed the reason of Darrow's
+disapproval of his marriage, or that, at least, he suspected Sophy Viner
+of knowing and dreading it. This confirmation of her own obscure
+doubt sent a tremor of alarm through Anna. For a moment she felt like
+exclaiming: "All this is really no business of mine, and I refuse to
+have you mix me up in it--" but her secret fear held her fast.
+
+Sophy Viner was the first to speak.
+
+"I should like to go now," she said in a low voice, taking a few steps
+toward the door.
+
+Her tone woke Anna to the sense of her own share in the situation.
+"I quite agree with you, my dear, that it's useless to carry on this
+discussion. But since Mr. Darrow's name has been brought into it, for
+reasons which I fail to guess, I want to tell you that you're both
+mistaken if you think he's not in sympathy with your marriage. If that's
+what Owen means to imply, the idea's a complete delusion."
+
+She spoke the words deliberately and incisively, as if hoping that the
+sound of their utterance would stifle the whisper in her bosom.
+
+Sophy's only answer was a vague murmur, and a movement that brought
+her nearer to the door; but before she could reach it Owen had placed
+himself in her way.
+
+"I don't mean to imply what you think," he said, addressing his
+step-mother but keeping his eyes on the girl. "I don't say Darrow
+doesn't like our marriage; I say it's Sophy who's hated it since
+Darrow's been here!"
+
+He brought out the charge in a tone of forced composure, but his lips
+were white and he grasped the doorknob to hide the tremor of his hand.
+
+Anna's anger surged up with her fears. "You're absurd, Owen! I don't
+know why I listen to you. Why should Sophy dislike Mr. Darrow, and if
+she does, why should that have anything to do with her wishing to break
+her engagement?"
+
+"I don't say she dislikes him! I don't say she likes him; I don't know
+what it is they say to each other when they're shut up together alone."
+
+"Shut up together alone?" Anna stared. Owen seemed like a man in
+delirium; such an exhibition was degrading to them all. But he pushed on
+without seeing her look.
+
+"Yes--the first evening she came, in the study; the next morning, early,
+in the park; yesterday, again, in the spring-house, when you were at the
+lodge with the doctor...I don't know what they say to each other, but
+they've taken every chance they could to say it...and to say it when
+they thought that no one saw them."
+
+Anna longed to silence him, but no words came to her. It was as though
+all her confused apprehensions had suddenly taken definite shape. There
+was "something"--yes, there was "something"...Darrow's reticences and
+evasions had been more than a figment of her doubts.
+
+The next instant brought a recoil of pride. She turned indignantly on
+her step-son.
+
+"I don't half understand what you've been saying; but what you seem to
+hint is so preposterous, and so insulting both to Sophy and to me, that
+I see no reason why we should listen to you any longer."
+
+Though her tone steadied Owen, she perceived at once that it would not
+deflect him from his purpose. He spoke less vehemently, but with all the
+more precision.
+
+"How can it be preposterous, since it's true? Or insulting, since I
+don't know, any more than YOU, the meaning of what I've been seeing?
+If you'll be patient with me I'll try to put it quietly. What I mean is
+that Sophy has completely changed since she met Darrow here, and that,
+having noticed the change, I'm hardly to blame for having tried to find
+out its cause."
+
+Anna made an effort to answer him with the same composure. "You're to
+blame, at any rate, for so recklessly assuming that you HAVE found it
+out. You seem to forget that, till they met here, Sophy and Mr. Darrow
+hardly knew each other."
+
+"If so, it's all the stranger that they've been so often closeted
+together!"
+
+"Owen, Owen--" the girl sighed out.
+
+He turned his haggard face to her. "Can I help it, if I've seen and
+known what I wasn't meant to? For God's sake give me a reason--any
+reason I can decently make out with! Is it my fault if, the day after
+you arrived, when I came back late through the garden, the curtains of
+the study hadn't been drawn, and I saw you there alone with Darrow?"
+
+Anna laughed impatiently. "Really, Owen, if you make it a grievance
+that two people who are staying in the same house should be seen talking
+together----!"
+
+"They were not talking. That's the point----"
+
+"Not talking? How do you know? You could hardly hear them from the
+garden!"
+
+"No; but I could see. HE was sitting at my desk, with his face in his
+hands. SHE was standing in the window, looking away from him..."
+
+He waited, as if for Sophy Viner's answer; but still she neither stirred
+nor spoke.
+
+"That was the first time," he went on; "and the second was the next
+morning in the park. It was natural enough, their meeting there. Sophy
+had gone out with Effie, and Effie ran back to look for me. She told
+me she'd left Sophy and Darrow in the path that leads to the river, and
+presently we saw them ahead of us. They didn't see us at first, because
+they were standing looking at each other; and this time they were not
+speaking either. We came up close before they heard us, and all that
+time they never spoke, or stopped looking at each other. After that I
+began to wonder; and so I watched them."
+
+"Oh, Owen!" "Oh, I only had to wait. Yesterday, when I motored you
+and the doctor back from the lodge, I saw Sophy coming out of the
+spring-house. I supposed she'd taken shelter from the rain, and when you
+got out of the motor I strolled back down the avenue to meet her. But
+she'd disappeared--she must have taken a short cut and come into the
+house by the side door. I don't know why I went on to the spring-house;
+I suppose it was what you'd call spying. I went up the steps and found
+the room empty; but two chairs had been moved out from the wall and were
+standing near the table; and one of the Chinese screens that lie on it
+had dropped to the floor."
+
+Anna sounded a faint note of irony. "Really? Sophy'd gone there for
+shelter, and she dropped a screen and moved a chair?"
+
+"I said two chairs----"
+
+"Two? What damning evidence--of I don't know what!"
+
+"Simply of the fact that Darrow'd been there with her. As I looked out
+of the window I saw him close by, walking away. He must have turned the
+corner of the spring-house just as I got to the door."
+
+There was another silence, during which Anna paused, not only to collect
+her own words but to wait for Sophy Viner's; then, as the girl made no
+sign, she turned to her.
+
+"I've absolutely nothing to say to all this; but perhaps you'd like me
+to wait and hear your answer?"
+
+Sophy raised her head with a quick flash of colour. "I've no answer
+either--except that Owen must be mad."
+
+In the interval since she had last spoken she seemed to have regained
+her self-control, and her voice rang clear, with a cold edge of anger.
+
+Anna looked at her step-son. He had grown extremely pale, and his hand
+fell from the door with a discouraged gesture. "That's all then? You
+won't give me any reason?"
+
+"I didn't suppose it was necessary to give you or any one else a reason
+for talking with a friend of Mrs. Leath's under Mrs. Leath's own roof."
+
+Owen hardly seemed to feel the retort: he kept his dogged stare on her
+face.
+
+"I won't ask for one, then. I'll only ask you to give me your assurance
+that your talks with Darrow have had nothing to do with your suddenly
+deciding to leave Givre."
+
+She hesitated, not so much with the air of weighing her answer as of
+questioning his right to exact any. "I give you my assurance; and now I
+should like to go," she said.
+
+As she turned away, Anna intervened. "My dear, I think you ought to
+speak."
+
+The girl drew herself up with a faint laugh. "To him--or to YOU?"
+
+"To him."
+
+She stiffened. "I've said all there is to say."
+
+Anna drew back, her eyes on her step-son. He had left the threshold and
+was advancing toward Sophy Viner with a motion of desperate appeal; but
+as he did so there was a knock on the door. A moment's silence fell on
+the three; then Anna said: "Come in!"
+
+Darrow came into the room. Seeing the three together, he looked rapidly
+from one to the other; then he turned to Anna with a smile.
+
+"I came up to see if you were ready; but please send me off if I'm not
+wanted."
+
+His look, his voice, the simple sense of his presence, restored Anna's
+shaken balance. By Owen's side he looked so strong, so urbane, so
+experienced, that the lad's passionate charges dwindled to mere boyish
+vapourings. A moment ago she had dreaded Darrow's coming; now she was
+glad that he was there.
+
+She turned to him with sudden decision. "Come in, please; I want you to
+hear what Owen has been saying."
+
+She caught a murmur from Sophy Viner, but disregarded it. An
+illuminating impulse urged her on. She, habitually so aware of her
+own lack of penetration, her small skill in reading hidden motives and
+detecting secret signals, now felt herself mysteriously inspired. She
+addressed herself to Sophy Viner. "It's much better for you both that
+this absurd question should be cleared up now." Then, turning to Darrow,
+she continued: "For some reason that I don't pretend to guess, Owen has
+taken it into his head that you've influenced Miss Viner to break her
+engagement."
+
+She spoke slowly and deliberately, because she wished to give time and
+to gain it; time for Darrow and Sophy to receive the full impact of what
+she was saying, and time to observe its full effect on them. She had
+said to herself: "If there's nothing between them, they'll look at each
+other; if there IS something, they won't;" and as she ceased to speak
+she felt as if all her life were in her eyes.
+
+Sophy, after a start of protest, remained motionless, her gaze on the
+ground. Darrow, his face grown grave, glanced slowly from Owen Leath to
+Anna. With his eyes on the latter he asked: "Has Miss Viner broken her
+engagement?"
+
+A moment's silence followed his question; then the girl looked up and
+said: "Yes!"
+
+Owen, as she spoke, uttered a smothered exclamation and walked out of
+the room. She continued to stand in the same place, without appearing
+to notice his departure, and without vouchsafing an additional word of
+explanation; then, before Anna could find a cry to detain her, she too
+turned and went out.
+
+"For God's sake, what's happened?" Darrow asked; but Anna, with a drop
+of the heart, was saying to herself that he and Sophy Viner had not
+looked at each other.
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+
+Anna stood in the middle of the room, her eyes on the door. Darrow's
+questioning gaze was still on her, and she said to herself with a
+quick-drawn breath: "If only he doesn't come near me!"
+
+It seemed to her that she had been suddenly endowed with the fatal gift
+of reading the secret sense of every seemingly spontaneous look and
+movement, and that in his least gesture of affection she would detect a
+cold design.
+
+For a moment longer he continued to look at her enquiringly; then he
+turned away and took up his habitual stand by the mantel-piece. She drew
+a deep breath of relief.
+
+"Won't you please explain?" he said.
+
+"I can't explain: I don't know. I didn't even know--till she told
+you--that she really meant to break her engagement. All I know is that
+she came to me just now and said she wished to leave Givre today; and
+that Owen, when he heard of it--for she hadn't told him--at once accused
+her of going away with the secret intention of throwing him over."
+
+"And you think it's a definite break?" She perceived, as she spoke, that
+his brow had cleared.
+
+"How should I know? Perhaps you can tell me."
+
+"I?" She fancied his face clouded again, but he did not move from his
+tranquil attitude.
+
+"As I told you," she went on, "Owen has worked himself up to imagining
+that for some mysterious reason you've influenced Sophy against him."
+
+Darrow still visibly wondered. "It must indeed be a mysterious reason!
+He knows how slightly I know Miss Viner. Why should he imagine anything
+so wildly improbable?"
+
+"I don't know that either."
+
+"But he must have hinted at some reason."
+
+"No: he admits he doesn't know your reason. He simply says that Sophy's
+manner to him has changed since she came back to Givre and that he's
+seen you together several times--in the park, the spring-house, I don't
+know where--talking alone in a way that seemed confidential--almost
+secret; and he draws the preposterous conclusion that you've used your
+influence to turn her against him."
+
+"My influence? What kind of influence?"
+
+"He doesn't say."
+
+Darrow again seemed to turn over the facts she gave him. His face
+remained grave, but without the least trace of discomposure. "And what
+does Miss Viner say?"
+
+"She says it's perfectly natural that she should occasionally talk to
+my friends when she's under my roof--and refuses to give him any other
+explanation."
+
+"That at least is perfectly natural!"
+
+Anna felt her cheeks flush as she answered: "Yes--but there is
+something----"
+
+"Something----?"
+
+"Some reason for her sudden decision to break her engagement. I can
+understand Owen's feeling, sorry as I am for his way of showing it. The
+girl owes him some sort of explanation, and as long as she refuses to
+give it his imagination is sure to run wild."
+
+"She would have given it, no doubt, if he'd asked it in a different
+tone."
+
+"I don't defend Owen's tone--but she knew what it was before she
+accepted him. She knows he's excitable and undisciplined."
+
+"Well, she's been disciplining him a little--probably the best thing
+that could happen. Why not let the matter rest there?"
+
+"Leave Owen with the idea that you HAVE been the cause of the break?"
+
+He met the question with his easy smile. "Oh, as to that--leave him with
+any idea of me he chooses! But leave him, at any rate, free."
+
+"Free?" she echoed in surprise.
+
+"Simply let things be. You've surely done all you could for him and Miss
+Viner. If they don't hit it off it's their own affair. What possible
+motive can you have for trying to interfere now?"
+
+Her gaze widened to a deeper wonder. "Why--naturally, what he says of
+you!"
+
+"I don't care a straw what he says of me! In such a situation a boy in
+love will snatch at the most far-fetched reason rather than face the
+mortifying fact that the lady may simply be tired of him."
+
+"You don t quite understand Owen. Things go deep with him, and last
+long. It took him a long time to recover from his other unlucky love
+affair. He's romantic and extravagant: he can't live on the interest
+of his feelings. He worships Sophy and she seemed to be fond of him. If
+she's changed it's been very sudden. And if they part like this, angrily
+and inarticulately, it will hurt him horribly--hurt his very soul.
+But that, as you say, is between the two. What concerns me is his
+associating you with their quarrel. Owen's like my own son--if you'd
+seen him when I first came here you'd know why. We were like two
+prisoners who talk to each other by tapping on the wall. He's never
+forgotten it, nor I. Whether he breaks with Sophy, or whether they make
+it up, I can't let him think you had anything to do with it."
+
+She raised her eyes entreatingly to Darrow's, and read in them the
+forbearance of the man resigned to the discussion of non-existent
+problems.
+
+"I'll do whatever you want me to," he said; "but I don't yet know what
+it is."
+
+His smile seemed to charge her with inconsequence, and the prick to her
+pride made her continue: "After all, it's not so unnatural that Owen,
+knowing you and Sophy to be almost strangers, should wonder what you
+were saying to each other when he saw you talking together."
+
+She felt a warning tremor as she spoke, as though some instinct deeper
+than reason surged up in defense of its treasure. But Darrow's face was
+unstirred save by the flit of his half-amused smile.
+
+"Well, my dear--and couldn't you have told him?" "I?" she faltered out
+through her blush.
+
+"You seem to forget, one and all of you, the position you put me in when
+I came down here: your appeal to me to see Owen through, your assurance
+to him that I would, Madame de Chantelle's attempt to win me over; and
+most of all, my own sense of the fact you've just recalled to me: the
+importance, for both of us, that Owen should like me. It seemed to me
+that the first thing to do was to get as much light as I could on the
+whole situation; and the obvious way of doing it was to try to know Miss
+Viner better. Of course I've talked with her alone--I've talked with her
+as often as I could. I've tried my best to find out if you were right in
+encouraging Owen to marry her."
+
+She listened with a growing sense of reassurance, struggling to separate
+the abstract sense of his words from the persuasion in which his eyes
+and voice enveloped them.
+
+"I see--I do see," she murmured.
+
+"You must see, also, that I could hardly say this to Owen without
+offending him still more, and perhaps increasing the breach between Miss
+Viner and himself. What sort of figure should I cut if I told him I'd
+been trying to find out if he'd made a proper choice? In any case, it's
+none of my business to offer an explanation of what she justly says
+doesn't need one. If she declines to speak, it's obviously on the ground
+that Owen's insinuations are absurd; and that surely pledges me to
+silence."
+
+"Yes, yes! I see," Anna repeated. "But I don't want you to explain
+anything to Owen."
+
+"You haven't yet told me what you do want."
+
+She hesitated, conscious of the difficulty of justifying her request;
+then: "I want you to speak to Sophy," she said.
+
+Darrow broke into an incredulous laugh. "Considering what my previous
+attempts have resulted in----!"
+
+She raised her eyes quickly. "They haven't, at least, resulted in your
+liking her less, in your thinking less well of her than you've told me?"
+
+She fancied he frowned a little. "I wonder why you go back to that?"
+
+"I want to be sure--I owe it to Owen. Won't you tell me the exact
+impression she's produced on you?"
+
+"I have told you--I like Miss Viner."
+
+"Do you still believe she's in love with Owen?"
+
+"There was nothing in our short talks to throw any particular light on
+that."
+
+"You still believe, though, that there's no reason why he shouldn't
+marry her?"
+
+Again he betrayed a restrained impatience. "How can I answer that
+without knowing her reasons for breaking with him?"
+
+"That's just what I want you to find out from her."
+
+"And why in the world should she tell me?"
+
+"Because, whatever grievance she has against Owen, she can certainly
+have none against me. She can't want to have Owen connect me in his mind
+with this wretched quarrel; and she must see that he will until he's
+convinced you've had no share in it."
+
+Darrow's elbow dropped from the mantel-piece and he took a restless step
+or two across the room. Then he halted before her.
+
+"Why can't you tell her this yourself?"
+
+"Don't you see?"
+
+He eyed her intently, and she pressed on: "You must have guessed that
+Owen's jealous of you."
+
+"Jealous of me?" The blood flew up under his brown skin.
+
+"Blind with it--what else would drive him to this folly? And I can't
+have her think me jealous too! I've said all I could, short of making
+her think so; and she's refused a word more to either of us. Our only
+chance now is that she should listen to you--that you should make her
+see the harm her silence may do."
+
+Darrow uttered a protesting exclamation. "It's all too
+preposterous--what you suggest! I can't, at any rate, appeal to her on
+such a ground as that!"
+
+Anna laid her hand on his arm. "Appeal to her on the ground that I'm
+almost Owen's mother, and that any estrangement between you and him
+would kill me. She knows what he is--she'll understand. Tell her to say
+anything, do anything, she wishes; but not to go away without speaking,
+not to leave THAT between us when she goes!"
+
+She drew back a step and lifted her face to his, trying to look into his
+eyes more deeply than she had ever looked; but before she could discern
+what they expressed he had taken hold of her hands and bent his head to
+kiss them.
+
+"You'll see her? You'll see her?" she entreated; and he answered: "I'll
+do anything in the world you want me to."
+
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+
+Darrow waited alone in the sitting-room.
+
+No place could have been more distasteful as the scene of the talk that
+lay before him; but he had acceded to Anna's suggestion that it would
+seem more natural for her to summon Sophy Viner than for him to go in
+search of her. As his troubled pacings carried him back and forth a
+relentless hand seemed to be tearing away all the tender fibres of
+association that bound him to the peaceful room. Here, in this very
+place, he had drunk his deepest draughts of happiness, had had his lips
+at the fountain-head of its overflowing rivers; but now that source was
+poisoned and he would taste no more of an untainted cup.
+
+For a moment he felt an actual physical anguish; then his nerves
+hardened for the coming struggle. He had no notion of what awaited him;
+but after the first instinctive recoil he had seen in a flash the urgent
+need of another word with Sophy Viner. He had been insincere in letting
+Anna think that he had consented to speak because she asked it. In
+reality he had been feverishly casting about for the pretext she had
+given him; and for some reason this trivial hypocrisy weighed on him
+more than all his heavy burden of deceit.
+
+At length he heard a step behind him and Sophy Viner entered. When she
+saw him she paused on the threshold and half drew back.
+
+"I was told that Mrs. Leath had sent for me."
+
+"Mrs. Leath DID send for you. She'll be here presently; but I asked her
+to let me see you first."
+
+He spoke very gently, and there was no insincerity in his gentleness. He
+was profoundly moved by the change in the girl's appearance. At sight
+of him she had forced a smile; but it lit up her wretchedness like a
+candle-flame held to a dead face.
+
+She made no reply, and Darrow went on: "You must understand my wanting
+to speak to you, after what I was told just now."
+
+She interposed, with a gesture of protest: "I'm not responsible for
+Owen's ravings!"
+
+"Of course----". He broke off and they stood facing each other. She
+lifted a hand and pushed back her loose lock with the gesture that was
+burnt into his memory; then she looked about her and dropped into the
+nearest chair.
+
+"Well, you've got what you wanted," she said.
+
+"What do you mean by what I wanted?"
+
+"My engagement's broken--you heard me say so."
+
+"Why do you say that's what I wanted? All I wished, from the beginning,
+was to advise you, to help you as best I could----"
+
+"That's what you've done," she rejoined. "You've convinced me that it's
+best I shouldn't marry him."
+
+Darrow broke into a despairing laugh. "At the very moment when you'd
+convinced me to the contrary!"
+
+"Had I?" Her smile flickered up. "Well, I really believed it till you
+showed me...warned me..."
+
+"Warned you?"
+
+"That I'd be miserable if I married a man I didn't love."
+
+"Don't you love him?"
+
+She made no answer, and Darrow started up and walked away to the
+other end of the room. He stopped before the writing-table, where his
+photograph, well-dressed, handsome, self-sufficient--the portrait of a
+man of the world, confident of his ability to deal adequately with
+the most delicate situations--offered its huge fatuity to his gaze. He
+turned back to her. "It's rather hard on Owen, isn't it, that you should
+have waited until now to tell him?"
+
+She reflected a moment before answering. "I told him as soon as I knew."
+
+"Knew that you couldn't marry him?"
+
+"Knew that I could never live here with him." She looked about the room,
+as though the very walls must speak for her.
+
+For a moment Darrow continued to search her face perplexedly; then their
+eyes met in a long disastrous gaze.
+
+"Yes----" she said, and stood up.
+
+Below the window they heard Effie whistling for her dogs, and then, from
+the terrace, her mother calling her.
+
+"There--THAT for instance," Sophy Viner said.
+
+Darrow broke out: "It's I who ought to go!"
+
+She kept her small pale smile. "What good would that do any of us--now?"
+
+He covered his face with his hands. "Good God!" he groaned. "How could I
+tell?"
+
+"You couldn't tell. We neither of us could." She seemed to turn the
+problem over critically. "After all, it might have been YOU instead of
+me!"
+
+He took another distracted turn about the room and coming back to her
+sat down in a chair at her side. A mocking hand seemed to dash the words
+from his lips. There was nothing on earth that he could say to her that
+wasn't foolish or cruel or contemptible...
+
+"My dear," he began at last, "oughtn't you, at any rate, to try?"
+
+Her gaze grew grave. "Try to forget you?"
+
+He flushed to the forehead. "I meant, try to give Owen more time; to
+give him a chance. He's madly in love with you; all the good that's in
+him is in your hands. His step-mother felt that from the first. And she
+thought--she believed----"
+
+"She thought I could make him happy. Would she think so now?"
+
+"Now...? I don't say now. But later? Time modifies...rubs out...more
+quickly than you think...Go away, but let him hope...I'm going
+too--WE'RE going--" he stumbled on the plural--"in a very few weeks:
+going for a long time, probably. What you're thinking of now may never
+happen. We may not all be here together again for years."
+
+She heard him out in silence, her hands clasped on her knee, her eyes
+bent on them. "For me," she said, "you'll always be here."
+
+"Don't say that--oh, don't! Things change...people change...You'll see!"
+
+"You don't understand. I don't want anything to change. I don't want to
+forget--to rub out. At first I imagined I did; but that was a foolish
+mistake. As soon as I saw you again I knew it...It's not being here
+with you that I'm afraid of--in the sense you think. It's being here, or
+anywhere, with Owen." She stood up and bent her tragic smile on him. "I
+want to keep you all to myself."
+
+The only words that came to him were futile denunciations of his
+folly; but the sense of their futility checked them on his lips. "Poor
+child--you poor child!" he heard himself vainly repeating.
+
+Suddenly he felt the strong reaction of reality and its impetus brought
+him to his feet. "Whatever happens, I intend to go--to go for good,"
+he exclaimed. "I want you to understand that. Oh, don't be afraid--I'll
+find a reason. But it's perfectly clear that I must go."
+
+She uttered a protesting cry. "Go away? You? Don't you see that that
+would tell everything--drag everybody into the horror?"
+
+He found no answer, and her voice dropped back to its calmer note. "What
+good would your going do? Do you suppose it would change anything for
+me?" She looked at him with a musing wistfulness. "I wonder what your
+feeling for me was? It seems queer that I've never really known--I
+suppose we DON'T know much about that kind of feeling. Is it like taking
+a drink when you're thirsty?...I used to feel as if all of me was in the
+palm of your hand..."
+
+He bowed his humbled head, but she went on almost exultantly: "Don't for
+a minute think I'm sorry! It was worth every penny it cost. My mistake
+was in being ashamed, just at first, of its having cost such a lot.
+I tried to carry it off as a joke--to talk of it to myself as an
+'adventure'. I'd always wanted adventures, and you'd given me one, and
+I tried to take your attitude about it, to 'play the game' and convince
+myself that I hadn't risked any more on it than you. Then, when I met
+you again, I suddenly saw that I HAD risked more, but that I'd won more,
+too--such worlds! I'd been trying all the while to put everything I
+could between us; now I want to sweep everything away. I'd been trying
+to forget how you looked; now I want to remember you always. I'd been
+trying not to hear your voice; now I never want to hear any other. I've
+made my choice--that's all: I've had you and I mean to keep you." Her
+face was shining like her eyes. "To keep you hidden away here," she
+ended, and put her hand upon her breast.
+
+After she had left him, Darrow continued to sit motionless, staring back
+into their past. Hitherto it had lingered on the edge of his mind in a
+vague pink blur, like one of the little rose-leaf clouds that a setting
+sun drops from its disk. Now it was a huge looming darkness, through
+which his eyes vainly strained. The whole episode was still obscure to
+him, save where here and there, as they talked, some phrase or gesture
+or intonation of the girl's had lit up a little spot in the night.
+
+She had said: "I wonder what your feeling for me was?" and he found
+himself wondering too...He remembered distinctly enough that he had not
+meant the perilous passion--even in its most transient form--to play
+a part in their relation. In that respect his attitude had been above
+reproach. She was an unusually original and attractive creature, to whom
+he had wanted to give a few days of harmless pleasuring, and who was
+alert and expert enough to understand his intention and spare him the
+boredom of hesitations and misinterpretations. That had been his first
+impression, and her subsequent demeanour had justified it. She had been,
+from the outset, just the frank and easy comrade he had expected to find
+her. Was it he, then, who, in the sequel, had grown impatient of the
+bounds he had set himself? Was it his wounded vanity that, seeking
+balm for its hurt, yearned to dip deeper into the healing pool of her
+compassion? In his confused memory of the situation he seemed not to
+have been guiltless of such yearnings...Yet for the first few days
+the experiment had been perfectly successful. Her enjoyment had been
+unclouded and his pleasure in it undisturbed. It was very gradually--he
+seemed to see--that a shade of lassitude had crept over their
+intercourse. Perhaps it was because, when her light chatter about people
+failed, he found she had no other fund to draw on, or perhaps simply
+because of the sweetness of her laugh, or of the charm of the gesture
+with which, one day in the woods of Marly, she had tossed off her hat
+and tilted back her head at the call of a cuckoo; or because, whenever
+he looked at her unexpectedly, he found that she was looking at him and
+did not want him to know it; or perhaps, in varying degrees, because of
+all these things, that there had come a moment when no word seemed to
+fly high enough or dive deep enough to utter the sense of well-being
+each gave to the other, and the natural substitute for speech had been a
+kiss.
+
+The kiss, at all events, had come at the precise moment to save their
+venture from disaster. They had reached the point when her amazing
+reminiscences had begun to flag, when her future had been exhaustively
+discussed, her theatrical prospects minutely studied, her quarrel with
+Mrs. Murrett retold with the last amplification of detail, and when,
+perhaps conscious of her exhausted resources and his dwindling interest,
+she had committed the fatal error of saying that she could see he was
+unhappy, and entreating him to tell her why...
+
+From the brink of estranging confidences, and from the risk of
+unfavourable comparisons, his gesture had snatched her back to safety;
+and as soon as he had kissed her he felt that she would never bore him
+again. She was one of the elemental creatures whose emotion is all in
+their pulses, and who become inexpressive or sentimental when they
+try to turn sensation into speech. His caress had restored her to her
+natural place in the scheme of things, and Darrow felt as if he had
+clasped a tree and a nymph had bloomed from it...
+
+The mere fact of not having to listen to her any longer added immensely
+to her charm. She continued, of course, to talk to him, but it didn't
+matter, because he no longer made any effort to follow her words, but
+let her voice run on as a musical undercurrent to his thoughts.
+
+She hadn't a drop of poetry in her, but she had some of the qualities
+that create it in others; and in moments of heat the imagination does
+not always feel the difference...
+
+Lying beside her in the shade, Darrow felt her presence as a part of
+the charmed stillness of the summer woods, as the element of vague
+well-being that suffused his senses and lulled to sleep the ache of
+wounded pride. All he asked of her, as yet, was a touch on the hand or
+on the lips--and that she should let him go on lying there through the
+long warm hours, while a black-bird's song throbbed like a fountain, and
+the summer wind stirred in the trees, and close by, between the nearest
+branches and the brim of his tilted hat, a slight white figure gathered
+up all the floating threads of joy...
+
+He recalled, too, having noticed, as he lay staring at a break in the
+tree-tops, a stream of mares'-tails coming up the sky. He had said to
+himself: "It will rain to-morrow," and the thought had made the air seem
+warmer and the sun more vivid on her hair...Perhaps if the mares'-tails
+had not come up the sky their adventure might have had no sequel. But
+the cloud brought rain, and next morning he looked out of his window
+into a cold grey blur. They had planned an all-day excursion down the
+Seine, to the two Andelys and Rouen, and now, with the long hours on
+their hands, they were both a little at a loss...There was the Louvre,
+of course, and the Luxembourg; but he had tried looking at pictures with
+her, she had first so persistently admired the worst things, and then
+so frankly lapsed into indifference, that he had no wish to repeat
+the experiment. So they went out, aimlessly, and took a cold wet walk,
+turning at length into the deserted arcades of the Palais Royal, and
+finally drifting into one of its equally deserted restaurants, where
+they lunched alone and somewhat dolefully, served by a wan old waiter
+with the look of a castaway who has given up watching for a sail...It
+was odd how the waiter's face came back to him...
+
+Perhaps but for the rain it might never have happened; but what was
+the use of thinking of that now? He tried to turn his thoughts to more
+urgent issues; but, by a strange perversity of association, every detail
+of the day was forcing itself on his mind with an insistence from which
+there was no escape. Reluctantly he relived the long wet walk back
+to the hotel, after a tedious hour at a cinematograph show on the
+Boulevard. It was still raining when they withdrew from this stale
+spectacle, but she had obstinately refused to take a cab, had even,
+on the way, insisted on loitering under the dripping awnings of
+shop-windows and poking into draughty passages, and finally, when they
+had nearly reached their destination, had gone so far as to suggest that
+they should turn back to hunt up some show she had heard of in a theatre
+at the Batignolles. But at that he had somewhat irritably protested: he
+remembered that, for the first time, they were both rather irritable,
+and vaguely disposed to resist one another's suggestions. His feet
+were wet, and he was tired of walking, and sick of the smell of stuffy
+unaired theatres, and he had said he must really get back to write some
+letters--and so they had kept on to the hotel...
+
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+
+Darrow had no idea how long he had sat there when he heard Anna's hand
+on the door. The effort of rising, and of composing his face to meet
+her, gave him a factitious sense of self-control. He said to himself: "I
+must decide on something----" and that lifted him a hair's breadth above
+the whirling waters.
+
+She came in with a lighter step, and he instantly perceived that
+something unforeseen and reassuring had happened.
+
+"She's been with me. She came and found me on the terrace. We've had a
+long talk and she's explained everything. I feel as if I'd never known
+her before!"
+
+Her voice was so moved and tender that it checked his start of
+apprehension.
+
+"She's explained----?"
+
+"It's natural, isn't it, that she should have felt a little sore at the
+kind of inspection she's been subjected to? Oh, not from you--I don't
+mean that! But Madame de Chantelle's opposition--and her sending for
+Adelaide Painter! She told me frankly she didn't care to owe her husband
+to Adelaide Painter...She thinks now that her annoyance at feeling
+herself so talked over and scrutinized may have shown itself in her
+manner to Owen, and set him imagining the insane things he did...I
+understand all she must have felt, and I agree with her that it's best
+she should go away for a while. She's made me," Anna summed up, "feel as
+if I'd been dreadfully thick-skinned and obtuse!"
+
+"YOU?"
+
+"Yes. As if I'd treated her like the bric-a-brac that used to be sent
+down here 'on approval,' to see if it would look well with the other
+pieces." She added, with a sudden flush of enthusiasm: "I'm glad she's
+got it in her to make one feel like that!"
+
+She seemed to wait for Darrow to agree with her, or to put some other
+question, and he finally found voice to ask: "Then you think it's not a
+final break?"
+
+"I hope not--I've never hoped it more! I had a word with Owen, too,
+after I left her, and I think he understands that he must let her go
+without insisting on any positive promise. She's excited...he must let
+her calm down..."
+
+Again she waited, and Darrow said: "Surely you can make him see that."
+
+"She'll help me to--she's to see him, of course, before she goes. She
+starts immediately, by the way, with Adelaide Painter, who is motoring
+over to Francheuil to catch the one o'clock express--and who, of course,
+knows nothing of all this, and is simply to be told that Sophy has been
+sent for by the Farlows."
+
+Darrow mutely signed his comprehension, and she went on: "Owen is
+particularly anxious that neither Adelaide nor his grandmother should
+have the least inkling of what's happened. The need of shielding Sophy
+will help him to control himself. He's coming to his senses, poor boy;
+he's ashamed of his wild talk already. He asked me to tell you so; no
+doubt he'll tell you so himself."
+
+Darrow made a movement of protest. "Oh, as to that--the thing's not
+worth another word."
+
+"Or another thought, either?" She brightened. "Promise me you won't even
+think of it--promise me you won't be hard on him!"
+
+He was finding it easier to smile back at her. "Why should you think it
+necessary to ask my indulgence for Owen?"
+
+She hesitated a moment, her eyes wandering from him. Then they came back
+with a smile. "Perhaps because I need it for myself."
+
+"For yourself?"
+
+"I mean, because I understand better how one can torture one's self over
+unrealities."
+
+As Darrow listened, the tension of his nerves began to relax. Her gaze,
+so grave and yet so sweet, was like a deep pool into which he could
+plunge and hide himself from the hard glare of his misery. As this
+ecstatic sense enveloped him he found it more and more difficult to
+follow her words and to frame an answer; but what did anything matter,
+except that her voice should go on, and the syllables fall like soft
+touches on his tortured brain?
+
+"Don't you know," she continued, "the bliss of waking from a bad dream
+in one's own quiet room, and going slowly over all the horror without
+being afraid of it any more? That's what I'm doing now. And that's why
+I understand Owen..." She broke off, and he felt her touch on his arm.
+"BECAUSE I'D DREAMED THE HORROR TOO!"
+
+He understood her then, and stammered: "You?"
+
+"Forgive me! And let me tell you!...It will help you to understand
+Owen...There WERE little things...little signs...once I had begun to
+watch for them: your reluctance to speak about her...her reserve with
+you...a sort of constraint we'd never seen in her before..."
+
+She laughed up at him, and with her hands in his he contrived to say:
+"NOW you understand why?"
+
+"Oh, I understand; of course I understand; and I want you to laugh
+at me--with me! Because there were other things too...crazier things
+still...There was even--last night on the terrace--her pink cloak..."
+
+"Her pink cloak?" Now he honestly wondered, and as she saw it she
+blushed.
+
+"You've forgotten about the cloak? The pink cloak that Owen saw you with
+at the play in Paris? Yes...yes...I was mad enough for that!...It does
+me good to laugh about it now! But you ought to know that I'm going
+to be a jealous woman...a ridiculously jealous woman...you ought to be
+warned of it in time..."
+
+He had dropped her hands, and she leaned close and lifted her arms to
+his neck with one of her rare gestures of surrender.
+
+"I don't know why it is; but it makes me happier now to have been so
+foolish!"
+
+Her lips were parted in a noiseless laugh and the tremor of her lashes
+made their shadow move on her cheek. He looked at her through a mist of
+pain and saw all her offered beauty held up like a cup to his lips; but
+as he stooped to it a darkness seemed to fall between them, her arms
+slipped from his shoulders and she drew away from him abruptly.
+
+"But she WAS with you, then?" she exclaimed; and then, as he stared at
+her: "Oh, don't say no! Only go and look at your eyes!"
+
+He stood speechless, and she pressed on: "Don't deny it--oh, don't deny
+it! What will be left for me to imagine if you do? Don't you see how
+every single thing cries it out? Owen sees it--he saw it again just now!
+When I told him she'd relented, and would see him, he said: 'Is that
+Darrow's doing too?'"
+
+Darrow took the onslaught in silence. He might have spoken, have
+summoned up the usual phrases of banter and denial; he was not even
+certain that they might not, for the moment, have served their purpose
+if he could have uttered them without being seen. But he was as
+conscious of what had happened to his face as if he had obeyed Anna's
+bidding and looked at himself in the glass. He knew he could no more
+hide from her what was written there than he could efface from his soul
+the fiery record of what he had just lived through. There before him,
+staring him in the eyes, and reflecting itself in all his lineaments,
+was the overwhelming fact of Sophy Viner's passion and of the act by
+which she had attested it.
+
+Anna was talking again, hurriedly, feverishly, and his soul was wrung
+by the anguish in her voice. "Do speak at last--you must speak! I don't
+want to ask you to harm the girl; but you must see that your silence
+is doing her more harm than your answering my questions could. You're
+leaving me only the worst things to think of her...she'd see that
+herself if she were here. What worse injury can you do her than to make
+me hate her--to make me feel she's plotted with you to deceive us?"
+
+"Oh, not that!" Darrow heard his own voice before he was aware that he
+meant to speak. "Yes; I did see her in Paris," he went on after a pause;
+"but I was bound to respect her reason for not wanting it known."
+
+Anna paled. "It was she at the theatre that night?"
+
+"I was with her at the theatre one night."
+
+"Why should she have asked you not to say so?"
+
+"She didn't wish it known that I'd met her."
+
+"Why shouldn't she have wished it known?"
+
+"She had quarrelled with Mrs. Murrett and come over suddenly to Paris,
+and she didn't want the Farlows to hear of it. I came across her by
+accident, and she asked me not to speak of having seen her."
+
+"Because of her quarrel? Because she was ashamed of her part in it?"
+
+"Oh, no. There was nothing for her to be ashamed of. But the Farlows had
+found the place for her, and she didn't want them to know how suddenly
+she'd had to leave, and how badly Mrs. Murrett had behaved. She was in
+a terrible plight--the woman had even kept back her month's salary. She
+knew the Farlows would be awfully upset, and she wanted more time to
+prepare them."
+
+Darrow heard himself speak as though the words had proceeded from other
+lips. His explanation sounded plausible enough, and he half-fancied
+Anna's look grew lighter. She waited a moment, as though to be sure he
+had no more to add; then she said: "But the Farlows DID know; they told
+me all about it when they sent her to me."
+
+He flushed as if she had laid a deliberate trap for him. "They may know
+NOW; they didn't then----"
+
+"That's no reason for her continuing now to make a mystery of having met
+you."
+
+"It's the only reason I can give you."
+
+"Then I'll go and ask her for one myself." She turned and took a few
+steps toward the door.
+
+"Anna!" He started to follow her, and then checked himself. "Don't do
+that!"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"It's not like you...not generous..."
+
+She stood before him straight and pale, but under her rigid face he saw
+the tumult of her doubt and misery.
+
+"I don't want to be ungenerous; I don't want to pry into her secrets.
+But things can't be left like this. Wouldn't it be better for me to go
+to her? Surely she'll understand--she'll explain...It may be some mere
+trifle she's concealing: something that would horrify the Farlows, but
+that I shouldn't see any harm in..." She paused, her eyes searching his
+face. "A love affair, I suppose...that's it? You met her with some man
+at the theatre--and she was frightened and begged you to fib about
+it? Those poor young things that have to go about among us like
+machines--oh, if you knew how I pity them!"
+
+"If you pity her, why not let her go?"
+
+She stared. "Let her go--go for good, you mean? Is that the best you can
+say for her?"
+
+"Let things take their course. After all, it's between herself and
+Owen."
+
+"And you and me--and Effie, if Owen marries her, and I leave my child
+with them! Don't you see the impossibility of what you're asking? We're
+all bound together in this coil."
+
+Darrow turned away with a groan. "Oh, let her go--let her go."
+
+"Then there IS something--something really bad? She WAS with some one
+when you met her? Some one with whom she was----" She broke off, and
+he saw her struggling with new thoughts. "If it's THAT, of course...Oh,
+don't you see," she desperately appealed to him, "that I must find out,
+and that it's too late now for you not to speak? Don't be afraid that
+I'll betray you...I'll never, never let a soul suspect. But I must know
+the truth, and surely it's best for her that I should find it out from
+you."
+
+Darrow waited a moment; then he said slowly: "What you imagine's mere
+madness. She was at the theatre with me."
+
+"With you?" He saw a tremor pass through her, but she controlled it
+instantly and faced him straight and motionless as a wounded creature in
+the moment before it feels its wound. "Why should you both have made a
+mystery of that?"
+
+"I've told you the idea was not mine." He cast about. "She may have been
+afraid that Owen----"
+
+"But that was not a reason for her asking you to tell me that you hardly
+knew her--that you hadn't even seen her for years." She broke off and
+the blood rose to her face and forehead. "Even if SHE had other reasons,
+there could be only one reason for your obeying her----" Silence fell
+between them, a silence in which the room seemed to become suddenly
+resonant with voices. Darrow's gaze wandered to the window and he
+noticed that the gale of two days before had nearly stripped the tops
+of the lime-trees in the court. Anna had moved away and was resting her
+elbows against the mantel-piece, her head in her hands. As she stood
+there he took in with a new intensity of vision little details of her
+appearance that his eyes had often cherished: the branching blue veins
+in the backs of her hands, the warm shadow that her hair cast on
+her ear, and the colour of the hair itself, dull black with a tawny
+under-surface, like the wings of certain birds. He felt it to be useless
+to speak.
+
+After a while she lifted her head and said: "I shall not see her again
+before she goes."
+
+He made no answer, and turning to him she added: "That is why she's
+going, I suppose? Because she loves you and won't give you up?"
+
+Darrow waited. The paltriness of conventional denial was so apparent to
+him that even if it could have delayed discovery he could no longer have
+resorted to it. Under all his other fears was the dread of dishonouring
+the hour.
+
+"She HAS given me up," he said at last.
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+
+When he had gone out of the room Anna stood where he had left her. "I
+must believe him! I must believe him!" she said.
+
+A moment before, at the moment when she had lifted her arms to his neck,
+she had been wrapped in a sense of complete security. All the spirits
+of doubt had been exorcised, and her love was once more the clear
+habitation in which every thought and feeling could move in blissful
+freedom. And then, as she raised her face to Darrow's and met his eyes,
+she had seemed to look into the very ruins of his soul. That was the
+only way she could express it. It was as though he and she had been
+looking at two sides of the same thing, and the side she had seen had
+been all light and life, and his a place of graves...
+
+She didn't now recall who had spoken first, or even, very clearly, what
+had been said. It seemed to her only a moment later that she had found
+herself standing at the other end of the room--the room which had
+suddenly grown so small that, even with its length between them, she
+felt as if he touched her--crying out to him "It IS because of you she's
+going!" and reading the avowal in his face.
+
+That was his secret, then, THEIR secret: he had met the girl in
+Paris and helped her in her straits--lent her money, Anna vaguely
+conjectured--and she had fallen in love with him, and on meeting him
+again had been suddenly overmastered by her passion. Anna, dropping back
+into her sofa-corner, sat staring these facts in the face.
+
+The girl had been in a desperate plight--frightened, penniless, outraged
+by what had happened, and not knowing (with a woman like Mrs. Murrett)
+what fresh injury might impend; and Darrow, meeting her in this
+distracted hour, had pitied, counselled, been kind to her, with the
+fatal, the inevitable result. There were the facts as Anna made them
+out: that, at least, was their external aspect, was as much of them as
+she had been suffered to see; and into the secret intricacies they might
+cover she dared not yet project her thoughts.
+
+"I must believe him...I must believe him..." She kept on repeating the
+words like a talisman. It was natural, after all, that he should have
+behaved as he had: defended the girl's piteous secret to the last. She
+too began to feel the contagion of his pity--the stir, in her breast, of
+feelings deeper and more native to her than the pains of jealousy.
+From the security of her blessedness she longed to lean over with
+compassionate hands...But Owen? What was Owen's part to be? She owed
+herself first to him--she was bound to protect him not only from all
+knowledge of the secret she had surprised, but also--and chiefly!--from
+its consequences. Yes: the girl must go--there could be no doubt of
+it--Darrow himself had seen it from the first; and at the thought she
+had a wild revulsion of relief, as though she had been trying to create
+in her heart the delusion of a generosity she could not feel...
+
+The one fact on which she could stay her mind was that Sophy was leaving
+immediately; would be out of the house within an hour. Once she was
+gone, it would be easier to bring Owen to the point of understanding
+that the break was final; if necessary, to work upon the girl to make
+him see it. But that, Anna was sure, would not be necessary. It was
+clear that Sophy Viner was leaving Givre with no thought of ever seeing
+it again...
+
+Suddenly, as she tried to put some order in her thoughts, she heard
+Owen's call at the door: "Mother!----" a name he seldom gave her. There
+was a new note in his voice: the note of a joyous impatience. It made
+her turn hastily to the glass to see what face she was about to show
+him; but before she had had time to compose it he was in the room and
+she was caught in a school-boy hug.
+
+"It's all right! It's all right! And it's all your doing! I want to
+do the worst kind of penance--bell and candle and the rest. I've been
+through it with HER, and now she hands me on to you, and you're to call
+me any names you please." He freed her with his happy laugh. "I'm to be
+stood in the corner till next week, and then I'm to go up to see her.
+And she says I owe it all to you!"
+
+"To me?" It was the first phrase she found to clutch at as she tried to
+steady herself in the eddies of his joy.
+
+"Yes: you were so patient, and so dear to her; and you saw at once what
+a damned ass I'd been!" She tried a smile, and it seemed to pass muster
+with him, for he sent it back in a broad beam. "That's not so difficult
+to see? No, I admit it doesn't take a microscope. But you were so wise
+and wonderful--you always are. I've been mad these last days, simply
+mad--you and she might well have washed your hands of me! And instead,
+it's all right--all right!"
+
+She drew back a little, trying to keep the smile on her lips and not
+let him get the least glimpse of what it hid. Now if ever, indeed, it
+behoved her to be wise and wonderful!
+
+"I'm so glad, dear; so glad. If only you'll always feel like that about
+me..." She stopped, hardly knowing what she said, and aghast at the
+idea that her own hands should have retied the knot she imagined to be
+broken. But she saw he had something more to say; something hard to get
+out, but absolutely necessary to express. He caught her hands, pulled
+her close, and, with his forehead drawn into its whimsical smiling
+wrinkles, "Look here," he cried, "if Darrow wants to call me a damned
+ass too you're not to stop him!"
+
+It brought her back to a sharper sense of her central peril: of the
+secret to be kept from him at whatever cost to her racked nerves.
+
+"Oh, you know, he doesn't always wait for orders!" On the whole it
+sounded better than she'd feared.
+
+"You mean he's called me one already?" He accepted the fact with his
+gayest laugh. "Well, that saves a lot of trouble; now we can pass to the
+order of the day----" he broke off and glanced at the clock--"which is,
+you know, dear, that she's starting in about an hour; she and Adelaide
+must already be snatching a hasty sandwich. You'll come down to bid them
+good-bye?"
+
+"Yes--of course."
+
+There had, in fact, grown upon her while he spoke the urgency of seeing
+Sophy Viner again before she left. The thought was deeply distasteful:
+Anna shrank from encountering the girl till she had cleared a way
+through her own perplexities. But it was obvious that since they had
+separated, barely an hour earlier, the situation had taken a new shape.
+Sophy Viner had apparently reconsidered her decision to break amicably
+but definitely with Owen, and stood again in their path, a menace and a
+mystery; and confused impulses of resistance stirred in Anna's mind. She
+felt Owen's touch on her arm. "Are you coming?"
+
+"Yes...yes...presently."
+
+"What's the matter? You look so strange."
+
+"What do you mean by strange?"
+
+"I don't know: startled--surprised." She read what her look must be by
+its sudden reflection in his face.
+
+"Do I? No wonder! You've given us all an exciting morning."
+
+He held to his point. "You're more excited now that there's no cause for
+it. What on earth has happened since I saw you?"
+
+He looked about the room, as if seeking the clue to her agitation, and
+in her dread of what he might guess she answered: "What has happened is
+simply that I'm rather tired. Will you ask Sophy to come up and see me
+here?"
+
+
+While she waited she tried to think what she should say when the girl
+appeared; but she had never been more conscious of her inability to deal
+with the oblique and the tortuous. She had lacked the hard teachings of
+experience, and an instinctive disdain for whatever was less clear and
+open than her own conscience had kept her from learning anything of the
+intricacies and contradictions of other hearts. She said to herself:
+"I must find out----" yet everything in her recoiled from the means by
+which she felt it must be done...
+
+Sophy Viner appeared almost immediately, dressed for departure, her
+little bag on her arm. She was still pale to the point of haggardness,
+but with a light upon her that struck Anna with surprise. Or was it,
+perhaps, that she was looking at the girl with new eyes: seeing her, for
+the first time, not as Effie's governess, not as Owen's bride, but as
+the embodiment of that unknown peril lurking in the background of every
+woman's thoughts about her lover? Anna, at any rate, with a sudden sense
+of estrangement, noted in her graces and snares never before perceived.
+It was only the flash of a primitive instinct, but it lasted long enough
+to make her ashamed of the darknesses it lit up in her heart...
+
+She signed to Sophy to sit down on the sofa beside her. "I asked you to
+come up to me because I wanted to say good-bye quietly," she explained,
+feeling her lips tremble, but trying to speak in a tone of friendly
+naturalness.
+
+The girl's only answer was a faint smile of acquiescence, and Anna,
+disconcerted by her silence, went on: "You've decided, then, not to
+break your engagement?"
+
+Sophy Viner raised her head with a look of surprise. Evidently the
+question, thus abruptly put, must have sounded strangely on the lips
+of so ardent a partisan as Mrs. Leath! "I thought that was what you
+wished," she said.
+
+"What I wished?" Anna's heart shook against her side. "I wish,
+of course, whatever seems best for Owen...It's natural, you must
+understand, that that consideration should come first with me..."
+
+Sophy was looking at her steadily. "I supposed it was the only one that
+counted with you."
+
+The curtness of retort roused Anna's latent antagonism. "It is," she
+said, in a hard voice that startled her as she heard it. Had she ever
+spoken so to any one before? She felt frightened, as though her
+very nature had changed without her knowing it...Feeling the girl's
+astonished gaze still on her, she continued: "The suddenness of the
+change has naturally surprised me. When I left you it was understood
+that you were to reserve your decision----"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And now----?" Anna waited for a reply that did not come. She did
+not understand the girl's attitude, the edge of irony in her short
+syllables, the plainly premeditated determination to lay the burden
+of proof on her interlocutor. Anna felt the sudden need to lift their
+intercourse above this mean level of defiance and distrust. She looked
+appealingly at Sophy.
+
+"Isn't it best that we should speak quite frankly? It's this change on
+your part that perplexes me. You can hardly be surprised at that. It's
+true, I asked you not to break with Owen too abruptly--and I asked it,
+believe me, as much for your sake as for his: I wanted you to take time
+to think over the difficulty that seems to have arisen between you. The
+fact that you felt it required thinking over seemed to show you wouldn't
+take the final step lightly--wouldn't, I mean, accept of Owen more
+than you could give him. But your change of mind obliges me to ask the
+question I thought you would have asked yourself. Is there any reason
+why you shouldn't marry Owen?"
+
+She stopped a little breathlessly, her eyes on Sophy Viner's burning
+face. "Any reason----? What do you mean by a reason?"
+
+Anna continued to look at her gravely. "Do you love some one else?" she
+asked.
+
+Sophy's first look was one of wonder and a faint relief; then she gave
+back the other's scrutiny in a glance of indescribable reproach. "Ah,
+you might have waited!" she exclaimed.
+
+"Waited?"
+
+"Till I'd gone: till I was out of the house. You might have known...you
+might have guessed..." She turned her eyes again on Anna. "I only meant
+to let him hope a little longer, so that he shouldn't suspect anything;
+of course I can't marry him," she said.
+
+Anna stood motionless, silenced by the shock of the avowal. She too
+was trembling, less with anger than with a confused compassion. But the
+feeling was so blent with others, less generous and more obscure, that
+she found no words to express it, and the two women faced each other
+without speaking.
+
+"I'd better go," Sophy murmured at length with lowered head.
+
+The words roused in Anna a latent impulse of compunction. The girl
+looked so young, so exposed and desolate! And what thoughts must she be
+hiding in her heart! It was impossible that they should part in such a
+spirit.
+
+"I want you to know that no one said anything...It was I who..."
+
+Sophy looked at her. "You mean that Mr. Darrow didn't tell you? Of
+course not: do you suppose I thought he did? You found it out, that's
+all--I knew you would. In your place I should have guessed it sooner."
+
+The words were spoken simply, without irony or emphasis; but they went
+through Anna like a sword. Yes, the girl would have had divinations,
+promptings that she had not had! She felt half envious of such a sad
+precocity of wisdom.
+
+"I'm so sorry...so sorry..." she murmured.
+
+"Things happen that way. Now I'd better go. I'd like to say good-bye to
+Effie."
+
+"Oh----" it broke in a cry from Effie's mother. "Not like this--you
+mustn't! I feel--you make me feel too horribly: as if I were driving you
+away..." The words had rushed up from the depths of her bewildered pity.
+
+"No one is driving me away: I had to go," she heard the girl reply.
+
+There was another silence, during which passionate impulses of
+magnanimity warred in Anna with her doubts and dreads. At length, her
+eyes on Sophy's face: "Yes, you must go now," she began; "but later
+on...after a while, when all this is over...if there's no reason why
+you shouldn't marry Owen----" she paused a moment on the words-- "I
+shouldn't want you to think I stood between you..."
+
+"You?" Sophy flushed again, and then grew pale. She seemed to try to
+speak, but no words came. "Yes! It was not true when I said just now
+that I was thinking only of Owen. I'm sorry--oh, so sorry!--for you too.
+Your life--I know how hard it's been; and mine...mine's so full...Happy
+women understand best!" Anna drew near and touched the girl's hand; then
+she began again, pouring all her soul into the broken phrases: "It's
+terrible now...you see no future; but if, by and bye...you know
+best...but you're so young...and at your age things DO pass. If there's
+no reason, no real reason, why you shouldn't marry Owen, I WANT him to
+hope, I'll help him to hope...if you say so..."
+
+With the urgency of her pleading her clasp tightened on Sophy's hand,
+but it warmed to no responsive tremor: the girl seemed numb, and Anna
+was frightened by the stony silence of her look. "I suppose I'm not more
+than half a woman," she mused, "for I don't want my happiness to
+hurt her;" and aloud she repeated: "If only you'll tell me there's no
+reason----"
+
+The girl did not speak; but suddenly, like a snapped branch, she bent,
+stooped down to the hand that clasped her, and laid her lips upon it in
+a stream of weeping. She cried silently, continuously, abundantly, as
+though Anna's touch had released the waters of some deep spring of pain;
+then, as Anna, moved and half afraid, leaned over her with a sound of
+pity, she stood up and turned away.
+
+"You're going, then--for good--like this?" Anna moved toward her and
+stopped. Sophy stopped too, with eyes that shrank from her.
+
+"Oh----" Anna cried, and hid her face.
+
+The girl walked across the room and paused again in the doorway. From
+there she flung back: "I wanted it--I chose it. He was good to me--no
+one ever was so good!"
+
+The door-handle turned, and Anna heard her go.
+
+
+
+
+XXIX
+
+
+Her first thought was: "He's going too in a few hours--I needn't see him
+again before he leaves..." At that moment the possibility of having to
+look in Darrow's face and hear him speak seemed to her more unendurable
+than anything else she could imagine. Then, on the next wave of feeling,
+came the desire to confront him at once and wring from him she knew
+not what: avowal, denial, justification, anything that should open some
+channel of escape to the flood of her pent-up anguish.
+
+She had told Owen she was tired, and this seemed a sufficient reason for
+remaining upstairs when the motor came to the door and Miss Painter and
+Sophy Viner were borne off in it; sufficient also for sending word to
+Madame de Chantelle that she would not come down till after luncheon.
+Having despatched her maid with this message, she lay down on her sofa
+and stared before her into darkness...
+
+She had been unhappy before, and the vision of old miseries flocked
+like hungry ghosts about her fresh pain: she recalled her youthful
+disappointment, the failure of her marriage, the wasted years that
+followed; but those were negative sorrows, denials and postponements of
+life. She seemed in no way related to their shadowy victim, she who
+was stretched on this fiery rack of the irreparable. She had suffered
+before--yes, but lucidly, reflectively, elegiacally: now she was
+suffering as a hurt animal must, blindly, furiously, with the single
+fierce animal longing that the awful pain should stop...
+
+She heard her maid knock, and she hid her face and made no answer. The
+knocking continued, and the discipline of habit at length made her lift
+her head, compose her face and hold out her hand to the note the woman
+brought her. It was a word from Darrow--"May I see you?"--and she said
+at once, in a voice that sounded thin and empty: "Ask Mr. Darrow to come
+up."
+
+The maid enquired if she wished to have her hair smoothed first, and
+she answered that it didn't matter; but when the door had closed, the
+instinct of pride drew her to her feet and she looked at herself in the
+glass above the mantelpiece and passed her hands over her hair. Her eyes
+were burning and her face looked tired and thinner; otherwise she could
+see no change in her appearance, and she wondered that at such a moment
+her body should seem as unrelated to the self that writhed within her as
+if it had been a statue or a picture.
+
+The maid reopened the door to show in Darrow, and he paused a moment on
+the threshold, as if waiting for Anna to speak. He was extremely pale,
+but he looked neither ashamed nor uncertain, and she said to herself,
+with a perverse thrill of appreciation: "He's as proud as I am."
+
+Aloud she asked: "You wanted to see me?"
+
+"Naturally," he replied in a grave voice.
+
+"Don't! It's useless. I know everything. Nothing you can say will help."
+
+At the direct affirmation he turned even paler, and his eyes, which he
+kept resolutely fixed on her, confessed his misery.
+
+"You allow me no voice in deciding that?"
+
+"Deciding what?"
+
+"That there's nothing more to be said?" He waited for her to answer, and
+then went on: "I don't even know what you mean by 'everything'."
+
+"Oh, I don't know what more there is! I know enough. I implored her
+to deny it, and she couldn't...What can you and I have to say to each
+other?" Her voice broke into a sob. The animal anguish was upon her
+again--just a blind cry against her pain!
+
+Darrow kept his head high and his eyes steady. "It must be as you wish;
+and yet it's not like you to be afraid."
+
+"Afraid?"
+
+"To talk things out--to face them."
+
+"It's for YOU to face this--not me!"
+
+"All I ask is to face it--but with you." Once more he paused. "Won't you
+tell me what Miss Viner told you?"
+
+"Oh, she's generous--to the utmost!" The pain caught her like a physical
+throe. It suddenly came to her how the girl must have loved him to be so
+generous--what memories there must be between them!
+
+"Oh, go, please go. It's too horrible. Why should I have to see you?"
+she stammered, lifting her hands to her eyes.
+
+With her face hidden she waited to hear him move away, to hear the door
+open and close again, as, a few hours earlier, it had opened and
+closed on Sophy Viner. But Darrow made no sound or movement: he too was
+waiting. Anna felt a thrill of resentment: his presence was an outrage
+on her sorrow, a humiliation to her pride. It was strange that he should
+wait for her to tell him so!
+
+"You want me to leave Givre?" he asked at length. She made no answer,
+and he went on: "Of course I'll do as you wish; but if I go now am I not
+to see you again?"
+
+His voice was firm: his pride was answering her pride!
+
+She faltered: "You must see it's useless----"
+
+"I might remind you that you're dismissing me without a hearing----"
+
+"Without a hearing? I've heard you both!"
+
+----"but I won't," he continued, "remind you of that, or of anything or
+any one but Owen."
+
+"Owen?"
+
+"Yes; if we could somehow spare him----"
+
+She had dropped her hands and turned her startled eyes on him. It seemed
+to her an age since she had thought of Owen!
+
+"You see, don't you," Darrow continued, "that if you send me away
+now----"
+
+She interrupted: "Yes, I see----" and there was a long silence between
+them. At length she said, very low: "I don't want any one else to suffer
+as I'm suffering..."
+
+"Owen knows I meant to leave tomorrow," Darrow went on. "Any sudden
+change of plan may make him think..."
+
+Oh, she saw his inevitable logic: the horror of it was on every side of
+her! It had seemed possible to control her grief and face Darrow
+calmly while she was upheld by the belief that this was their last hour
+together, that after he had passed out of the room there would be no
+fear of seeing him again, no fear that his nearness, his look, his
+voice, and all the unseen influences that flowed from him, would
+dissolve her soul to weakness. But her courage failed at the idea of
+having to conspire with him to shield Owen, of keeping up with him, for
+Owen's sake, a feint of union and felicity. To live at Darrow's side in
+seeming intimacy and harmony for another twenty-four hours seemed harder
+than to live without him for all the rest of her days. Her strength
+failed her, and she threw herself down and buried her sobs in the
+cushions where she had so often hidden a face aglow with happiness.
+
+"Anna----" His voice was close to her. "Let me talk to you quietly. It's
+not worthy of either of us to be afraid."
+
+Words of endearment would have offended her; but her heart rose at the
+call to her courage.
+
+"I've no defense to make," he went on. "The facts are miserable enough;
+but at least I want you to see them as they are. Above all, I want you
+to know the truth about Miss Viner----"
+
+The name sent the blood to Anna's forehead. She raised her head and
+faced him. "Why should I know more of her than what she's told me? I
+never wish to hear her name again!"
+
+"It's because you feel about her in that way that I ask you--in the name
+of common charity--to let me give you the facts as they are, and not as
+you've probably imagined them."
+
+"I've told you I don't think uncharitably of her. I don't want to think
+of her at all!"
+
+"That's why I tell you you're afraid."
+
+"Afraid?"
+
+"Yes. You've always said you wanted, above all, to look at life, at the
+human problem, as it is, without fear and without hypocrisy; and it's
+not always a pleasant thing to look at." He broke off, and then began
+again: "Don't think this a plea for myself! I don't want to say a word
+to lessen my offense. I don't want to talk of myself at all. Even if I
+did, I probably couldn't make you understand--I don't, myself, as I look
+back. Be just to me--it's your right; all I ask you is to be generous to
+Miss Viner..."
+
+She stood up trembling. "You're free to be as generous to her as you
+please!"
+
+"Yes: you've made it clear to me that I'm free. But there's nothing I
+can do for her that will help her half as much as your understanding her
+would."
+
+"Nothing you can do for her? You can marry her!"
+
+His face hardened. "You certainly couldn't wish her a worse fate!"
+
+"It must have been what she expected...relied on..." He was silent, and
+she broke out: "Or what is she? What are you? It's too horrible! On your
+way here...to ME..." She felt the tears in her throat and stopped.
+
+"That was it," he said bluntly. She stared at him.
+
+"I was on my way to you--after repeated delays and postponements of your
+own making. At the very last you turned me back with a mere word--and
+without explanation. I waited for a letter; and none came. I'm not
+saying this to justify myself. I'm simply trying to make you understand.
+I felt hurt and bitter and bewildered. I thought you meant to give me
+up. And suddenly, in my way, I found some one to be sorry for, to be
+of use to. That, I swear to you, was the way it began. The rest was a
+moment's folly...a flash of madness...as such things are. We've never
+seen each other since..."
+
+Anna was looking at him coldly. "You sufficiently describe her in saying
+that!"
+
+"Yes, if you measure her by conventional standards--which is what you
+always declare you never do."
+
+"Conventional standards? A girl who----" She was checked by a sudden
+rush of almost physical repugnance. Suddenly she broke out: "I always
+thought her an adventuress!"
+
+"Always?"
+
+"I don't mean always...but after you came..."
+
+"She's not an adventuress."
+
+"You mean that she professes to act on the new theories? The stuff that
+awful women rave about on platforms?"
+
+"Oh, I don't think she pretended to have a theory----"
+
+"She hadn't even that excuse?"
+
+"She had the excuse of her loneliness, her unhappiness--of miseries and
+humiliations that a woman like you can't even guess. She had nothing to
+look back to but indifference or unkindness--nothing to look forward to
+but anxiety. She saw I was sorry for her and it touched her. She made
+too much of it--she exaggerated it. I ought to have seen the danger, but
+I didn't. There's no possible excuse for what I did."
+
+Anna listened to him in speechless misery. Every word he spoke threw
+back a disintegrating light on their own past. He had come to her with
+an open face and a clear conscience--come to her from this! If his
+security was the security of falsehood it was horrible; if it meant that
+he had forgotten, it was worse. She would have liked to stop her ears,
+to close her eyes, to shut out every sight and sound and suggestion of
+a world in which such things could be; and at the same time she was
+tormented by the desire to know more, to understand better, to feel
+herself less ignorant and inexpert in matters which made so much of
+the stuff of human experience. What did he mean by "a moment's folly, a
+flash of madness"? How did people enter on such adventures, how pass
+out of them without more visible traces of their havoc? Her imagination
+recoiled from the vision of a sudden debasing familiarity: it seemed to
+her that her thoughts would never again be pure...
+
+"I swear to you," she heard Darrow saying, "it was simply that, and
+nothing more."
+
+She wondered at his composure, his competence, at his knowing so exactly
+what to say. No doubt men often had to make such explanations: they had
+the formulas by heart...A leaden lassitude descended on her. She passed
+from flame and torment into a colourless cold world where everything
+surrounding her seemed equally indifferent and remote. For a moment she
+simply ceased to feel.
+
+She became aware that Darrow was waiting for her to speak, and she made
+an effort to represent to herself the meaning of what he had just said;
+but her mind was as blank as a blurred mirror. Finally she brought out:
+"I don't think I understand what you've told me."
+
+"No; you don't understand," he returned with sudden bitterness; and on
+his lips the charge of incomprehension seemed an offense to her.
+
+"I don't want to--about such things!"
+
+He answered almost harshly: "Don't be afraid...you never will..."
+and for an instant they faced each other like enemies. Then the tears
+swelled in her throat at his reproach.
+
+"You mean I don't feel things--I'm too hard?"
+
+"No: you're too high...too fine...such things are too far from you."
+
+He paused, as if conscious of the futility of going on with whatever
+he had meant to say, and again, for a short space, they confronted
+each other, no longer as enemies--so it seemed to her--but as beings of
+different language who had forgotten the few words they had learned of
+each other's speech.
+
+Darrow broke the silence. "It's best, on all accounts, that I should
+stay till tomorrow; but I needn't intrude on you; we needn't meet again
+alone. I only want to be sure I know your wishes." He spoke the short
+sentences in a level voice, as though he were summing up the results of
+a business conference.
+
+Anna looked at him vaguely. "My wishes?"
+
+"As to Owen----"
+
+At that she started. "They must never meet again!"
+
+"It's not likely they will. What I meant was, that it depends on you to
+spare him..."
+
+She answered steadily: "He shall never know," and after another interval
+Darrow said: "This is good-bye, then."
+
+At the word she seemed to understand for the first time whither the
+flying moments had been leading them. Resentment and indignation died
+down, and all her consciousness resolved itself into the mere visual
+sense that he was there before her, near enough for her to lift her
+hand and touch him, and that in another instant the place where he stood
+would be empty.
+
+She felt a mortal weakness, a craven impulse to cry out to him to stay,
+a longing to throw herself into his arms, and take refuge there from the
+unendurable anguish he had caused her. Then the vision called up another
+thought: "I shall never know what that girl has known..." and the recoil
+of pride flung her back on the sharp edges of her anguish.
+
+"Good-bye," she said, in dread lest he should read her face; and she
+stood motionless, her head high, while he walked to the door and went
+out.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK V
+
+
+
+
+XXX
+
+
+Anna Leath, three days later, sat in Miss Painter's drawing-room in the
+rue de Matignon.
+
+Coming up precipitately that morning from the country, she had reached
+Paris at one o'clock and Miss Painter's landing some ten minutes later.
+Miss Painter's mouldy little man-servant, dissembling a napkin under his
+arm, had mildly attempted to oppose her entrance; but Anna, insisting,
+had gone straight to the dining-room and surprised her friend--who ate
+as furtively as certain animals--over a strange meal of cold mutton and
+lemonade. Ignoring the embarrassment she caused, she had set forth the
+object of her journey, and Miss Painter, always hatted and booted for
+action, had immediately hastened out, leaving her to the solitude of
+the bare fireless drawing-room with its eternal slip-covers and "bowed"
+shutters.
+
+In this inhospitable obscurity Anna had sat alone for close upon two
+hours. Both obscurity and solitude were acceptable to her, and impatient
+as she was to hear the result of the errand on which she had despatched
+her hostess, she desired still more to be alone. During her long
+meditation in a white-swathed chair before the muffled hearth she had
+been able for the first time to clear a way through the darkness and
+confusion of her thoughts. The way did not go far, and her attempt to
+trace it was as weak and spasmodic as a convalescent's first efforts
+to pick up the thread of living. She seemed to herself like some one
+struggling to rise from a long sickness of which it would have been so
+much easier to die. At Givre she had fallen into a kind of torpor, a
+deadness of soul traversed by wild flashes of pain; but whether she
+suffered or whether she was numb, she seemed equally remote from her
+real living and doing self.
+
+It was only the discovery--that very morning--of Owen's unannounced
+departure for Paris that had caught her out of her dream and forced her
+back to action. The dread of what this flight might imply, and of the
+consequences that might result from it, had roused her to the sense of
+her responsibility, and from the moment when she had resolved to follow
+her step-son, and had made her rapid preparations for pursuit, her mind
+had begun to work again, feverishly, fitfully, but still with something
+of its normal order. In the train she had been too agitated, too
+preoccupied with what might next await her, to give her thoughts to
+anything but the turning over of dread alternatives; but Miss Painter's
+imperviousness had steadied her, and while she waited for the sound of
+the latch-key she resolutely returned upon herself.
+
+With respect to her outward course she could at least tell herself that
+she had held to her purpose. She had, as people said, "kept up" during
+the twenty-four hours preceding George Darrow's departure; had gone
+with a calm face about her usual business, and even contrived not too
+obviously to avoid him. Then, the next day before dawn, from behind
+the closed shutters where she had kept for half the night her dry-eyed
+vigil, she had heard him drive off to the train which brought its
+passengers to Paris in time for the Calais express.
+
+The fact of his taking that train, of his travelling so straight and
+far away from her, gave to what had happened the implacable outline of
+reality. He was gone; he would not come back; and her life had ended
+just as she had dreamed it was beginning. She had no doubt, at first, as
+to the absolute inevitability of this conclusion. The man who had driven
+away from her house in the autumn dawn was not the man she had loved; he
+was a stranger with whom she had not a single thought in common. It was
+terrible, indeed, that he wore the face and spoke in the voice of her
+friend, and that, as long as he was under one roof with her, the mere
+way in which he moved and looked could bridge at a stroke the gulf
+between them. That, no doubt, was the fault of her exaggerated
+sensibility to outward things: she was frightened to see how it enslaved
+her. A day or two before she had supposed the sense of honour was her
+deepest sentiment: if she had smiled at the conventions of others it was
+because they were too trivial, not because they were too grave. There
+were certain dishonours with which she had never dreamed that any pact
+could be made: she had had an incorruptible passion for good faith and
+fairness.
+
+She had supposed that, once Darrow was gone, once she was safe from the
+danger of seeing and hearing him, this high devotion would sustain her.
+She had believed it would be possible to separate the image of the man
+she had thought him from that of the man he was. She had even foreseen
+the hour when she might raise a mournful shrine to the memory of the
+Darrow she had loved, without fear that his double's shadow would
+desecrate it. But now she had begun to understand that the two men were
+really one. The Darrow she worshipped was inseparable from the Darrow
+she abhorred; and the inevitable conclusion was that both must go, and
+she be left in the desert of a sorrow without memories...
+
+But if the future was thus void, the present was all too full. Never had
+blow more complex repercussions; and to remember Owen was to cease to
+think of herself. What impulse, what apprehension, had sent him suddenly
+to Paris? And why had he thought it needful to conceal his going from
+her? When Sophy Viner had left, it had been with the understanding that
+he was to await her summons; and it seemed improbable that he would
+break his pledge, and seek her without leave, unless his lover's
+intuition had warned him of some fresh danger. Anna recalled how
+quickly he had read the alarm in her face when he had rushed back to her
+sitting-room with the news that Miss Viner had promised to see him again
+in Paris. To be so promptly roused, his suspicions must have been but
+half-asleep; and since then, no doubt, if she and Darrow had dissembled,
+so had he. To her proud directness it was degrading to think that
+they had been living together like enemies who spy upon each other's
+movements: she felt a desperate longing for the days which had seemed so
+dull and narrow, but in which she had walked with her head high and her
+eyes unguarded.
+
+She had come up to Paris hardly knowing what peril she feared, and still
+less how she could avert it. If Owen meant to see Miss Viner--and what
+other object could he have?--they must already be together, and it was
+too late to interfere. It had indeed occurred to Anna that Paris might
+not be his objective point: that his real purpose in leaving Givre
+without her knowledge had been to follow Darrow to London and exact
+the truth of him. But even to her alarmed imagination this seemed
+improbable. She and Darrow, to the last, had kept up so complete a feint
+of harmony that, whatever Owen had surmised, he could scarcely have
+risked acting on his suspicions. If he still felt the need of an
+explanation, it was almost certainly of Sophy Viner that he would ask
+it; and it was in quest of Sophy Viner that Anna had despatched Miss
+Painter.
+
+She had found a blessed refuge from her perplexities in the stolid
+Adelaide's unawareness. One could so absolutely count on Miss Painter's
+guessing no more than one chose, and yet acting astutely on such hints
+as one vouchsafed her! She was like a well-trained retriever whose
+interest in his prey ceases when he lays it at his master's feet. Anna,
+on arriving, had explained that Owen's unannounced flight had made her
+fear some fresh misunderstanding between himself and Miss Viner. In
+the interests of peace she had thought it best to follow him; but she
+hastily added that she did not wish to see Sophy, but only, if possible,
+to learn from her where Owen was. With these brief instructions Miss
+Painter had started out; but she was a woman of many occupations, and
+had given her visitor to understand that before returning she should
+have to call on a friend who had just arrived from Boston, and afterward
+despatch to another exiled compatriot a supply of cranberries and
+brandied peaches from the American grocery in the Champs Elysees.
+
+Gradually, as the moments passed, Anna began to feel the reaction which,
+in moments of extreme nervous tension, follows on any effort of the
+will. She seemed to have gone as far as her courage would carry her,
+and she shrank more and more from the thought of Miss Painter's return,
+since whatever information the latter brought would necessitate some
+fresh decision. What should she say to Owen if she found him? What could
+she say that should not betray the one thing she would give her life
+to hide from him? "Give her life"--how the phrase derided her! It was a
+gift she would not have bestowed on her worst enemy. She would not have
+had Sophy Viner live the hours she was living now... She tried again
+to look steadily and calmly at the picture that the image of the girl
+evoked. She had an idea that she ought to accustom herself to its
+contemplation. If life was like that, why the sooner one got used to it
+the better...But no! Life was not like that. Her adventure was a hideous
+accident. She dreaded above all the temptation to generalise from her
+own case, to doubt the high things she had lived by and seek a cheap
+solace in belittling what fate had refused her. There was such love as
+she had dreamed, and she meant to go on believing in it, and cherishing
+the thought that she was worthy of it. What had happened to her was
+grotesque and mean and miserable; but she herself was none of these
+things, and never, never would she make of herself the mock that fate
+had made of her...
+
+She could not, as yet, bear to think deliberately of Darrow; but she
+kept on repeating to herself "By and bye that will come too." Even now
+she was determined not to let his image be distorted by her suffering.
+As soon as she could, she would try to single out for remembrance
+the individual things she had liked in him before she had loved him
+altogether. No "spiritual exercise" devised by the discipline of piety
+could have been more torturing; but its very cruelty attracted her. She
+wanted to wear herself out with new pains...
+
+
+
+
+XXXI
+
+
+The sound of Miss Painter's latch-key made her start. She was still a
+bundle of quivering fears to whom each coming moment seemed a menace.
+
+There was a slight interval, and a sound of voices in the hall; then
+Miss Painter's vigorous hand was on the door.
+
+Anna stood up as she came in. "You've found him?"
+
+"I've found Sophy."
+
+"And Owen?--has she seen him? Is he here?"
+
+"SHE'S here: in the hall. She wants to speak to you."
+
+"Here--NOW?" Anna found no voice for more.
+
+"She drove back with me," Miss Painter continued in the tone of
+impartial narrative. "The cabman was impertinent. I've got his number."
+She fumbled in a stout black reticule.
+
+"Oh, I can't--" broke from Anna; but she collected herself, remembering
+that to betray her unwillingness to see the girl was to risk revealing
+much more.
+
+"She thought you might be too tired to see her: she wouldn't come in
+till I'd found out."
+
+Anna drew a quick breath. An instant's thought had told her that
+Sophy Viner would hardly have taken such a step unless something more
+important had happened. "Ask her to come, please," she said.
+
+Miss Painter, from the threshold, turned back to announce her intention
+of going immediately to the police station to report the cabman's
+delinquency; then she passed out, and Sophy Viner entered.
+
+The look in the girl's face showed that she had indeed come unwillingly;
+yet she seemed animated by an eager resoluteness that made Anna ashamed
+of her tremors. For a moment they looked at each other in silence, as
+if the thoughts between them were packed too thick for speech; then Anna
+said, in a voice from which she strove to take the edge of hardness:
+"You know where Owen is, Miss Painter tells me."
+
+"Yes; that was my reason for asking you to see me." Sophy spoke simply,
+without constraint or hesitation.
+
+"I thought he'd promised you--" Anna interposed.
+
+"He did; but he broke his promise. That's what I thought I ought to tell
+you."
+
+"Thank you." Anna went on tentatively: "He left Givre this morning
+without a word. I followed him because I was afraid..."
+
+She broke off again and the girl took up her phrase. "You were afraid
+he'd guessed? He HAS..."
+
+"What do you mean--guessed what?"
+
+"That you know something he doesn't...something that made you glad to
+have me go."
+
+"Oh--" Anna moaned. If she had wanted more pain she had it now. "He's
+told you this?" she faltered.
+
+"He hasn't told me, because I haven't seen him. I kept him off--I made
+Mrs. Farlow get rid of him. But he's written me what he came to say; and
+that was it."
+
+"Oh, poor Owen!" broke from Anna. Through all the intricacies of her
+suffering she felt the separate pang of his.
+
+"And I want to ask you," the girl continued, "to let me see him; for
+of course," she added in the same strange voice of energy, "I wouldn't
+unless you consented."
+
+"To see him?" Anna tried to gather together her startled thoughts. "What
+use would it be? What could you tell him?"
+
+"I want to tell him the truth," said Sophy Viner.
+
+The two women looked at each other, and a burning blush rose to Anna's
+forehead. "I don't understand," she faltered.
+
+Sophy waited a moment; then she lowered her voice to say: "I don't want
+him to think worse of me than he need..."
+
+"Worse?"
+
+"Yes--to think such things as you're thinking now...I want him to know
+exactly what happened...then I want to bid him good-bye."
+
+Anna tried to clear a way through her own wonder and confusion. She felt
+herself obscurely moved.
+
+"Wouldn't it be worse for him?"
+
+"To hear the truth? It would be better, at any rate, for you and Mr.
+Darrow."
+
+At the sound of the name Anna lifted her head quickly. "I've only my
+step-son to consider!"
+
+The girl threw a startled look at her. "You don't mean--you're not going
+to give him up?"
+
+Anna felt her lips harden. "I don't think it's of any use to talk of
+that."
+
+"Oh, I know! It's my fault for not knowing how to say what I want you to
+hear. Your words are different; you know how to choose them. Mine offend
+you...and the dread of it makes me blunder. That's why, the other day, I
+couldn't say anything...couldn't make things clear to you. But now MUST,
+even if you hate it!" She drew a step nearer, her slender figure swayed
+forward in a passion of entreaty. "Do listen to me! What you've said is
+dreadful. How can you speak of him in that voice? Don't you see that I
+went away so that he shouldn't have to lose you?"
+
+Anna looked at her coldly. "Are you speaking of Mr. Darrow? I don't
+know why you think your going or staying can in any way affect our
+relations."
+
+"You mean that you HAVE given him up--because of me? Oh, how could you?
+You can't really love him!--And yet," the girl suddenly added, "you
+must, or you'd be more sorry for me!"
+
+"I'm very sorry for you," Anna said, feeling as if the iron band about
+her heart pressed on it a little less inexorably.
+
+"Then why won't you hear me? Why won't you try to understand? It's all
+so different from what you imagine!"
+
+"I've never judged you."
+
+"I'm not thinking of myself. He loves you!"
+
+"I thought you'd come to speak of Owen."
+
+Sophy Viner seemed not to hear her. "He's never loved any one else. Even
+those few days...I knew it all the while...he never cared for me."
+
+"Please don't say any more!" Anna said.
+
+"I know it must seem strange to you that I should say so much. I shock
+you, I offend you: you think me a creature without shame. So I am--but
+not in the sense you think! I'm not ashamed of having loved him; no; and
+I'm not ashamed of telling you so. It's that that justifies me--and him
+too...Oh, let me tell you how it happened! He was sorry for me: he saw I
+cared. I KNEW that was all he ever felt. I could see he was thinking of
+some one else. I knew it was only for a week...He never said a word to
+mislead me...I wanted to be happy just once--and I didn't dream of the
+harm I might be doing him!"
+
+Anna could not speak. She hardly knew, as yet, what the girl's words
+conveyed to her, save the sense of their tragic fervour; but she was
+conscious of being in the presence of an intenser passion than she had
+ever felt.
+
+"I am sorry for you." She paused. "But why do you say this to me?" After
+another interval she exclaimed: "You'd no right to let Owen love you."
+
+"No; that was wrong. At least what's happened since has made it so. If
+things had been different I think I could have made Owen happy. You were
+all so good to me--I wanted so to stay with you! I suppose you'll say
+that makes it worse: my daring to dream I had the right...But all that
+doesn't matter now. I won't see Owen unless you're willing. I should
+have liked to tell him what I've tried to tell you; but you must know
+better; you feel things in a finer way. Only you'll have to help him if
+I can't. He cares a great deal...it's going to hurt him..."
+
+Anna trembled. "Oh, I know! What can I do?"
+
+"You can go straight back to Givre--now, at once! So that Owen shall
+never know you've followed him." Sophy's clasped hands reached out
+urgently. "And you can send for Mr. Darrow--bring him back. Owen must
+be convinced that he's mistaken, and nothing else will convince him.
+Afterward I'll find a pretext--oh, I promise you! But first he must see
+for himself that nothing's changed for you."
+
+Anna stood motionless, subdued and dominated. The girl's ardour swept
+her like a wind.
+
+"Oh, can't I move you? Some day you'll know!" Sophy pleaded, her eyes
+full of tears.
+
+Anna saw them, and felt a fullness in her throat. Again the band about
+her heart seemed loosened. She wanted to find a word, but could not:
+all within her was too dark and violent. She gave the girl a speechless
+look.
+
+"I do believe you," she said suddenly; then she turned and walked out of
+the room.
+
+
+
+
+XXXII
+
+
+She drove from Miss Painter's to her own apartment. The maid-servant who
+had it in charge had been apprised of her coming, and had opened one or
+two of the rooms, and prepared a fire in her bedroom. Anna shut herself
+in, refusing the woman's ministrations. She felt cold and faint, and
+after she had taken off her hat and cloak she knelt down by the fire and
+stretched her hands to it.
+
+In one respect, at least, it was clear to her that she would do well
+to follow Sophy Viner's counsel. It had been an act of folly to follow
+Owen, and her first business was to get back to Givre before him. But
+the only train leaving that evening was a slow one, which did not reach
+Francheuil till midnight, and she knew that her taking it would excite
+Madame de Chantelle's wonder and lead to interminable talk. She had come
+up to Paris on the pretext of finding a new governess for Effie, and the
+natural thing was to defer her return till the next morning. She knew
+Owen well enough to be sure that he would make another attempt to see
+Miss Viner, and failing that, would write again and await her answer:
+so that there was no likelihood of his reaching Givre till the following
+evening.
+
+Her sense of relief at not having to start out at once showed her for
+the first time how tired she was. The bonne had suggested a cup of tea,
+but the dread of having any one about her had made Anna refuse, and she
+had eaten nothing since morning but a sandwich bought at a buffet. She
+was too tired to get up, but stretching out her arm she drew toward her
+the arm-chair which stood beside the hearth and rested her head against
+its cushions. Gradually the warmth of the fire stole into her veins and
+her heaviness of soul was replaced by a dreamy buoyancy. She seemed to
+be seated on the hearth in her sitting-room at Givre, and Darrow was
+beside her, in the chair against which she leaned. He put his arms about
+her shoulders and drawing her head back looked into her eyes. "Of all
+the ways you do your hair, that's the way I like best," he said...
+
+A log dropped, and she sat up with a start. There was a warmth in her
+heart, and she was smiling. Then she looked about her, and saw where she
+was, and the glory fell. She hid her face and sobbed.
+
+Presently she perceived that it was growing dark, and getting up
+stiffly she began to undo the things in her bag and spread them on the
+dressing-table. She shrank from lighting the lights, and groped her way
+about, trying to find what she needed. She seemed immeasurably far
+off from every one, and most of all from herself. It was as if her
+consciousness had been transmitted to some stranger whose thoughts and
+gestures were indifferent to her...
+
+Suddenly she heard a shrill tinkle, and with a beating heart she
+stood still in the middle of the room. It was the telephone in her
+dressing-room--a call, no doubt, from Adelaide Painter. Or could Owen
+have learned she was in town? The thought alarmed her and she opened the
+door and stumbled across the unlit room to the instrument. She held it
+to her ear, and heard Darrow's voice pronounce her name.
+
+"Will you let me see you? I've come back--I had to come. Miss Painter
+told me you were here."
+
+She began to tremble, and feared that he would guess it from her voice.
+She did not know what she answered: she heard him say: "I can't
+hear." She called "Yes!" and laid the telephone down, and caught it up
+again--but he was gone. She wondered if her "Yes" had reached him.
+
+She sat in her chair and listened. Why had she said that she would see
+him? What did she mean to say to him when he came? Now and then, as she
+sat there, the sense of his presence enveloped her as in her dream, and
+she shut her eyes and felt his arms about her. Then she woke to reality
+and shivered. A long time elapsed, and at length she said to herself:
+"He isn't coming."
+
+The door-bell rang as she said it, and she stood up, cold and trembling.
+She thought: "Can he imagine there's any use in coming?" and moved
+forward to bid the servant say she could not see him.
+
+The door opened and she saw him standing in the drawing-room. The room
+was cold and fireless, and a hard glare fell from the wall-lights on the
+shrouded furniture and the white slips covering the curtains. He looked
+pale and stern, with a frown of fatigue between his eyes; and she
+remembered that in three days he had travelled from Givre to London and
+back. It seemed incredible that all that had befallen her should have
+been compressed within the space of three days!
+
+"Thank you," he said as she came in.
+
+She answered: "It's better, I suppose----"
+
+He came toward her and took her in his arms. She struggled a little,
+afraid of yielding, but he pressed her to him, not bending to her but
+holding her fast, as though he had found her after a long search: she
+heard his hurried breathing. It seemed to come from her own breast, so
+close he held her; and it was she who, at last, lifted up her face and
+drew down his.
+
+She freed herself and went and sat on a sofa at the other end of the
+room. A mirror between the shrouded window-curtains showed her crumpled
+travelling dress and the white face under her disordered hair.
+
+She found her voice, and asked him how he had been able to leave London.
+He answered that he had managed--he'd arranged it; and she saw he hardly
+heard what she was saying.
+
+"I had to see you," he went on, and moved nearer, sitting down at her
+side.
+
+"Yes; we must think of Owen----"
+
+"Oh, Owen--!"
+
+Her mind had flown back to Sophy Viner's plea that she should let Darrow
+return to Givre in order that Owen might be persuaded of the folly of
+his suspicions. The suggestion was absurd, of course. She could not ask
+Darrow to lend himself to such a fraud, even had she had the inhuman
+courage to play her part in it. She was suddenly overwhelmed by the
+futility of every attempt to reconstruct her ruined world. No, it was
+useless; and since it was useless, every moment with Darrow was pure
+pain...
+
+"I've come to talk of myself, not of Owen," she heard him saying.
+"When you sent me away the other day I understood that it couldn't be
+otherwise--then. But it's not possible that you and I should part like
+that. If I'm to lose you, it must be for a better reason."
+
+"A better reason?"
+
+"Yes: a deeper one. One that means a fundamental disaccord between us.
+This one doesn't--in spite of everything it doesn't. That's what I want
+you to see, and have the courage to acknowledge."
+
+"If I saw it I should have the courage!"
+
+"Yes: courage was the wrong word. You have that. That's why I'm here."
+
+"But I don't see it," she continued sadly. "So it's useless, isn't
+it?--and so cruel..." He was about to speak, but she went on: "I shall
+never understand it--never!"
+
+He looked at her. "You will some day: you were made to feel everything"
+
+"I should have thought this was a case of not feeling----"
+
+"On my part, you mean?" He faced her resolutely. "Yes, it was: to my
+shame...What I meant was that when you've lived a little longer
+you'll see what complex blunderers we all are: how we're struck blind
+sometimes, and mad sometimes--and then, when our sight and our senses
+come back, how we have to set to work, and build up, little by little,
+bit by bit, the precious things we'd smashed to atoms without knowing
+it. Life's just a perpetual piecing together of broken bits."
+
+She looked up quickly. "That's what I feel: that you ought to----"
+
+He stood up, interrupting her with a gesture. "Oh, don't--don't say what
+you're going to! Men don't give their lives away like that. If you won't
+have mine, it's at least my own, to do the best I can with."
+
+"The best you can--that's what I mean! How can there be a 'best' for you
+that's made of some one else's worst?"
+
+He sat down again with a groan. "I don't know! It seemed such a slight
+thing--all on the surface--and I've gone aground on it because it was on
+the surface. I see the horror of it just as you do. But I see, a little
+more clearly, the extent, and the limits, of my wrong. It's not as black
+as you imagine."
+
+She lowered her voice to say: "I suppose I shall never understand; but
+she seems to love you..."
+
+"There's my shame! That I didn't guess it, didn't fly from it. You say
+you'll never understand: but why shouldn't you? Is it anything to be
+proud of, to know so little of the strings that pull us? If you knew a
+little more, I could tell you how such things happen without offending
+you; and perhaps you'd listen without condemning me."
+
+"I don't condemn you." She was dizzy with struggling impulses. She
+longed to cry out: "I DO understand! I've understood ever since you've
+been here!" For she was aware, in her own bosom, of sensations so
+separate from her romantic thoughts of him that she saw her body and
+soul divided against themselves. She recalled having read somewhere that
+in ancient Rome the slaves were not allowed to wear a distinctive dress
+lest they should recognize each other and learn their numbers and their
+power. So, in herself, she discerned for the first time instincts
+and desires, which, mute and unmarked, had gone to and fro in the dim
+passages of her mind, and now hailed each other with a cry of mutiny.
+
+"Oh, I don't know what to think!" she broke out. "You say you didn't
+know she loved you. But you know it now. Doesn't that show you how you
+can put the broken bits together?"
+
+"Can you seriously think it would be doing so to marry one woman while I
+care for another?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know...I don't know..." The sense of her weakness made her
+try to harden herself against his arguments.
+
+"You do know! We've often talked of such things: of the monstrousness of
+useless sacrifices. If I'm to expiate, it's not in that way." He added
+abruptly: "It's in having to say this to you now..."
+
+She found no answer.
+
+Through the silent apartment they heard the sudden peal of the
+door-bell, and she rose to her feet. "Owen!" she instantly exclaimed.
+
+"Is Owen in Paris?"
+
+She explained in a rapid undertone what she had learned from Sophy
+Viner.
+
+"Shall I leave you?" Darrow asked.
+
+"Yes...no..." She moved to the dining-room door, with the half-formed
+purpose of making him pass out, and then turned back. "It may be
+Adelaide."
+
+They heard the outer door open, and a moment later Owen walked into the
+room. He was pale, with excited eyes: as they fell on Darrow, Anna saw
+his start of wonder. He made a slight sign of recognition, and then went
+up to his step-mother with an air of exaggerated gaiety.
+
+"You furtive person! I ran across the omniscient Adelaide and heard from
+her that you'd rushed up suddenly and secretly." He stood between Anna
+and Darrow, strained, questioning, dangerously on edge.
+
+"I came up to meet Mr. Darrow," Anna answered. "His leave's been
+prolonged--he's going back with me."
+
+The words seemed to have uttered themselves without her will, yet she
+felt a great sense of freedom as she spoke them.
+
+The hard tension of Owen's face changed to incredulous surprise. He
+looked at Darrow. "The merest luck...a colleague whose wife was ill...I
+came straight back," she heard the latter tranquilly explaining. His
+self-command helped to steady her, and she smiled at Owen.
+
+"We'll all go back together tomorrow morning," she said as she slipped
+her arm through his.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIII
+
+
+Owen Leath did not go back with his step-mother to Givre. In reply to
+her suggestion he announced his intention of staying on a day or two
+longer in Paris.
+
+Anna left alone by the first train the next morning. Darrow was to
+follow in the afternoon. When Owen had left them the evening before,
+Darrow waited a moment for her to speak; then, as she said nothing, he
+asked her if she really wished him to return to Givre. She made a mute
+sign of assent, and he added: "For you know that, much as I'm ready to
+do for Owen, I can't do that for him--I can't go back to be sent away
+again."
+
+"No--no!"
+
+He came nearer, and looked at her, and she went to him. All her fears
+seemed to fall from her as he held her. It was a different feeling from
+any she had known before: confused and turbid, as if secret shames and
+rancours stirred in it, yet richer, deeper, more enslaving. She leaned
+her head back and shut her eyes beneath his kisses. She knew now that
+she could never give him up.
+
+Nevertheless she asked him, the next morning, to let her go back alone
+to Givre. She wanted time to think. She was convinced that what had
+happened was inevitable, that she and Darrow belonged to each other, and
+that he was right in saying no past folly could ever put them asunder.
+If there was a shade of difference in her feeling for him it was that
+of an added intensity. She felt restless, insecure out of his sight:
+she had a sense of incompleteness, of passionate dependence, that was
+somehow at variance with her own conception of her character.
+
+It was partly the consciousness of this change in herself that made her
+want to be alone. The solitude of her inner life had given her the habit
+of these hours of self-examination, and she needed them as she needed
+her morning plunge into cold water.
+
+During the journey she tried to review what had happened in the light
+of her new decision and of her sudden relief from pain. She seemed to
+herself to have passed through some fiery initiation from which she
+had emerged seared and quivering, but clutching to her breast a magic
+talisman. Sophy Viner had cried out to her: "Some day you'll know!" and
+Darrow had used the same words. They meant, she supposed, that when
+she had explored the intricacies and darknesses of her own heart her
+judgment of others would be less absolute. Well, she knew now--knew
+weaknesses and strengths she had not dreamed of, and the deep discord
+and still deeper complicities between what thought in her and what
+blindly wanted...
+
+Her mind turned anxiously to Owen. At least the blow that was to fall on
+him would not seem to have been inflicted by her hand. He would be left
+with the impression that his breach with Sophy Viner was due to one of
+the ordinary causes of such disruptions: though he must lose her, his
+memory of her would not be poisoned. Anna never for a moment permitted
+herself the delusion that she had renewed her promise to Darrow in order
+to spare her step-son this last refinement of misery. She knew she had
+been prompted by the irresistible impulse to hold fast to what was
+most precious to her, and that Owen's arrival on the scene had been
+the pretext for her decision, and not its cause; yet she felt herself
+fortified by the thought of what she had spared him. It was as though
+a star she had been used to follow had shed its familiar ray on ways
+unknown to her.
+
+All through these meditations ran the undercurrent of an absolute trust
+in Sophy Viner. She thought of the girl with a mingling of antipathy
+and confidence. It was humiliating to her pride to recognize kindred
+impulses in a character which she would have liked to feel completely
+alien to her. But what indeed was the girl really like? She seemed to
+have no scruples and a thousand delicacies. She had given herself to
+Darrow, and concealed the episode from Owen Leath, with no more apparent
+sense of debasement than the vulgarest of adventuresses; yet she had
+instantly obeyed the voice of her heart when it bade her part from the
+one and serve the other.
+
+Anna tried to picture what the girl's life must have been: what
+experiences, what initiations, had formed her. But her own training had
+been too different: there were veils she could not lift. She looked back
+at her married life, and its colourless uniformity took on an air of
+high restraint and order. Was it because she had been so incurious that
+it had worn that look to her? It struck her with amazement that she had
+never given a thought to her husband's past, or wondered what he did and
+where he went when he was away from her. If she had been asked what she
+supposed he thought about when they were apart, she would instantly have
+answered: his snuff-boxes. It had never occurred to her that he might
+have passions, interests, preoccupations of which she was absolutely
+ignorant. Yet he went up to Paris rather regularly: ostensibly to attend
+sales and exhibitions, or to confer with dealers and collectors. She
+tried to picture him, straight, trim, beautifully brushed and varnished,
+walking furtively down a quiet street, and looking about him before he
+slipped into a doorway. She understood now that she had been cold to
+him: what more likely than that he had sought compensations? All men
+were like that, she supposed--no doubt her simplicity had amused him.
+
+In the act of transposing Fraser Leath into a Don Juan she was pulled up
+by the ironic perception that she was simply trying to justify Darrow.
+She wanted to think that all men were "like that" because Darrow
+was "like that": she wanted to justify her acceptance of the fact by
+persuading herself that only through such concessions could women like
+herself hope to keep what they could not give up. And suddenly she was
+filled with anger at her blindness, and then at her disastrous attempt
+to see. Why had she forced the truth out of Darrow? If only she had held
+her tongue nothing need ever have been known. Sophy Viner would have
+broken her engagement, Owen would have been sent around the world, and
+her own dream would have been unshattered. But she had probed, insisted,
+cross-examined, not rested till she had dragged the secret to the light.
+She was one of the luckless women who always have the wrong audacities,
+and who always know it...
+
+Was it she, Anna Leath, who was picturing herself to herself in that
+way? She recoiled from her thoughts as if with a sense of demoniac
+possession, and there flashed through her the longing to return to her
+old state of fearless ignorance. If at that moment she could have kept
+Darrow from following her to Givre she would have done so...
+
+But he came; and with the sight of him the turmoil fell and she felt
+herself reassured, rehabilitated. He arrived toward dusk, and she
+motored to Francheuil to meet him. She wanted to see him as soon as
+possible, for she had divined, through the new insight that was in her,
+that only his presence could restore her to a normal view of things.
+In the motor, as they left the town and turned into the high-road, he
+lifted her hand and kissed it, and she leaned against him, and felt
+the currents flow between them. She was grateful to him for not saying
+anything, and for not expecting her to speak. She said to herself: "He
+never makes a mistake--he always knows what to do"; and then she thought
+with a start that it was doubtless because he had so often been in such
+situations. The idea that his tact was a kind of professional expertness
+filled her with repugnance, and insensibly she drew away from him. He
+made no motion to bring her nearer, and she instantly thought that
+that was calculated too. She sat beside him in frozen misery, wondering
+whether, henceforth, she would measure in this way his every look and
+gesture. Neither of them spoke again till the motor turned under the
+dark arch of the avenue, and they saw the lights of Givre twinkling at
+its end. Then Darrow laid his hand on hers and said: "I know, dear--"
+and the hardness in her melted. "He's suffering as I am," she thought;
+and for a moment the baleful fact between them seemed to draw them
+closer instead of walling them up in their separate wretchedness.
+
+It was wonderful to be once more re-entering the doors of Givre with
+him, and as the old house received them into its mellow silence she had
+again the sense of passing out of a dreadful dream into the reassurance
+of kindly and familiar things. It did not seem possible that these quiet
+rooms, so full of the slowly-distilled accumulations of a fastidious
+taste, should have been the scene of tragic dissensions. The memory of
+them seemed to be shut out into the night with the closing and barring
+of its doors.
+
+At the tea-table in the oak-room they found Madame de Chantelle and
+Effie. The little girl, catching sight of Darrow, raced down the
+drawing-rooms to meet him, and returned in triumph on his shoulder. Anna
+looked at them with a smile. Effie, for all her graces, was chary of
+such favours, and her mother knew that in according them to Darrow she
+had admitted him to the circle where Owen had hitherto ruled.
+
+Over the tea-table Darrow gave Madame de Chantelle the explanation of
+his sudden return from England. On reaching London, he told her, he had
+found that the secretary he was to have replaced was detained there by
+the illness of his wife. The Ambassador, knowing Darrow's urgent reasons
+for wishing to be in France, had immediately proposed his going back,
+and awaiting at Givre the summons to relieve his colleague; and he had
+jumped into the first train, without even waiting to telegraph the news
+of his release. He spoke naturally, easily, in his usual quiet voice,
+taking his tea from Effie, helping himself to the toast she handed, and
+stooping now and then to stroke the dozing terrier. And suddenly, as
+Anna listened to his explanation, she asked herself if it were true.
+
+The question, of course, was absurd. There was no possible reason why he
+should invent a false account of his return, and every probability that
+the version he gave was the real one. But he had looked and spoken in
+the same way when he had answered her probing questions about Sophy
+Viner, and she reflected with a chill of fear that she would never again
+know if he were speaking the truth or not. She was sure he loved her,
+and she did not fear his insincerity as much as her own distrust of him.
+For a moment it seemed to her that this must corrupt the very source of
+love; then she said to herself: "By and bye, when I am altogether his,
+we shall be so near each other that there will be no room for any
+doubts between us." But the doubts were there now, one moment lulled to
+quiescence, the next more torturingly alert. When the nurse appeared to
+summon Effie, the little girl, after kissing her grandmother, entrenched
+herself on Darrow's knee with the imperious demand to be carried up to
+bed; and Anna, while she laughingly protested, said to herself with a
+pang: "Can I give her a father about whom I think such things?"
+
+The thought of Effie, and of what she owed to Effie, had been the
+fundamental reason for her delays and hesitations when she and Darrow
+had come together again in England. Her own feeling was so clear that
+but for that scruple she would have put her hand in his at once. But
+till she had seen him again she had never considered the possibility
+of re-marriage, and when it suddenly confronted her it seemed, for the
+moment, to disorganize the life she had planned for herself and her
+child. She had not spoken of this to Darrow because it appeared to her a
+subject to be debated within her own conscience. The question, then, was
+not as to his fitness to become the guide and guardian of her child;
+nor did she fear that her love for him would deprive Effie of the least
+fraction of her tenderness, since she did not think of love as something
+measured and exhaustible but as a treasure perpetually renewed. What she
+questioned was her right to introduce into her life any interests
+and duties which might rob Effie of a part of her time, or lessen the
+closeness of their daily intercourse.
+
+She had decided this question as it was inevitable that she should; but
+now another was before her. Assuredly, at her age, there was no possible
+reason why she should cloister herself to bring up her daughter; but
+there was every reason for not marrying a man in whom her own faith was
+not complete...
+
+
+
+
+XXXIV
+
+
+When she woke the next morning she felt a great lightness of heart. She
+recalled her last awakening at Givre, three days before, when it had
+seemed as though all her life had gone down in darkness. Now Darrow
+was once more under the same roof with her, and once more his nearness
+sufficed to make the looming horror drop away. She could almost have
+smiled at her scruples of the night before: as she looked back on them
+they seemed to belong to the old ignorant timorous time when she had
+feared to look life in the face, and had been blind to the mysteries and
+contradictions of the human heart because her own had not been revealed
+to her. Darrow had said: "You were made to feel everything"; and to feel
+was surely better than to judge.
+
+When she came downstairs he was already in the oak-room with Effie and
+Madame de Chantelle, and the sense of reassurance which his presence
+gave her was merged in the relief of not being able to speak of what was
+between them. But there it was, inevitably, and whenever they looked at
+each other they saw it. In her dread of giving it a more tangible shape
+she tried to devise means of keeping the little girl with her, and,
+when the latter had been called away by the nurse, found an excuse for
+following Madame de Chantelle upstairs to the purple sitting-room. But
+a confidential talk with Madame de Chantelle implied the detailed
+discussion of plans of which Anna could hardly yet bear to consider the
+vaguest outline: the date of her marriage, the relative advantages of
+sailing from London or Lisbon, the possibility of hiring a habitable
+house at their new post; and, when these problems were exhausted, the
+application of the same method to the subject of Owen's future.
+
+His grandmother, having no suspicion of the real reason of Sophy Viner's
+departure, had thought it "extremely suitable" of the young girl to
+withdraw to the shelter of her old friends' roof in the hour of bridal
+preparation. This maidenly retreat had in fact impressed Madame de
+Chantelle so favourably that she was disposed for the first time to talk
+over Owen's projects; and as every human event translated itself for her
+into terms of social and domestic detail, Anna had perforce to travel
+the same round again. She felt a momentary relief when Darrow presently
+joined them; but his coming served only to draw the conversation back to
+the question of their own future, and Anna felt a new pang as she heard
+him calmly and lucidly discussing it. Did such self-possession imply
+indifference or insincerity? In that problem her mind perpetually
+revolved; and she dreaded the one answer as much as the other.
+
+She was resolved to keep on her course as though nothing had happened:
+to marry Darrow and never let the consciousness of the past intrude
+itself between them; but she was beginning to feel that the only way of
+attaining to this state of detachment from the irreparable was once for
+all to turn back with him to its contemplation. As soon as this desire
+had germinated it became so strong in her that she regretted having
+promised Effie to take her out for the afternoon. But she could think
+of no pretext for disappointing the little girl, and soon after luncheon
+the three set forth in the motor to show Darrow a chateau famous in the
+annals of the region. During their excursion Anna found it impossible to
+guess from his demeanour if Effie's presence between them was as much
+of a strain to his composure as to hers. He remained imperturbably
+good-humoured and appreciative while they went the round of the
+monument, and she remarked only that when he thought himself unnoticed
+his face grew grave and his answers came less promptly.
+
+On the way back, two or three miles from Givre, she suddenly proposed
+that they should walk home through the forest which skirted that side of
+the park. Darrow acquiesced, and they got out and sent Effie on in the
+motor. Their way led through a bit of sober French woodland, flat as a
+faded tapestry, but with gleams of live emerald lingering here and there
+among its browns and ochres. The luminous grey air gave vividness to its
+dying colours, and veiled the distant glimpses of the landscape in soft
+uncertainty. In such a solitude Anna had fancied it would be easier to
+speak; but as she walked beside Darrow over the deep soundless flooring
+of brown moss the words on her lips took flight again. It seemed
+impossible to break the spell of quiet joy which his presence laid on
+her, and when he began to talk of the place they had just visited she
+answered his questions and then waited for what he should say next...No,
+decidedly she could not speak; she no longer even knew what she had
+meant to say...
+
+The same experience repeated itself several times that day and the
+next. When she and Darrow were apart she exhausted herself in appeal and
+interrogation, she formulated with a fervent lucidity every point in
+her imaginary argument. But as soon as she was alone with him something
+deeper than reason and subtler than shyness laid its benumbing touch
+upon her, and the desire to speak became merely a dim disquietude,
+through which his looks, his words, his touch, reached her as through
+a mist of bodily pain. Yet this inertia was torn by wild flashes of
+resistance, and when they were apart she began to prepare again what she
+meant to say to him.
+
+She knew he could not be with her without being aware of this inner
+turmoil, and she hoped he would break the spell by some releasing word.
+But she presently understood that he recognized the futility of words,
+and was resolutely bent on holding her to her own purpose of behaving
+as if nothing had happened. Once more she inwardly accused him of
+insensibility, and her imagination was beset by tormenting visions of
+his past...Had such things happened to him before? If the episode had
+been an isolated accident--"a moment of folly and madness", as he had
+called it--she could understand, or at least begin to understand (for
+at a certain point her imagination always turned back); but if it were
+a mere link in a chain of similar experiments, the thought of it
+dishonoured her whole past...
+
+Effie, in the interregnum between governesses, had been given leave to
+dine downstairs; and Anna, on the evening of Darrow's return, kept the
+little girl with her till long after the nurse had signalled from
+the drawing-room door. When at length she had been carried off, Anna
+proposed a game of cards, and after this diversion had drawn to its
+languid close she said good-night to Darrow and followed Madame de
+Chantelle upstairs. But Madame de Chantelle never sat up late, and the
+second evening, with the amiably implied intention of leaving Anna and
+Darrow to themselves, she took an earlier leave of them than usual.
+
+Anna sat silent, listening to her small stiff steps as they minced down
+the hall and died out in the distance. Madame de Chantelle had broken
+her wooden embroidery frame, and Darrow, having offered to repair it,
+had drawn his chair up to a table that held a lamp. Anna watched him
+as he sat with bent head and knitted brows, trying to fit together
+the disjoined pieces. The sight of him, so tranquilly absorbed in
+this trifling business, seemed to give to the quiet room a perfume of
+intimacy, to fill it with a sense of sweet familiar habit; and it came
+over her again that she knew nothing of the inner thoughts of this man
+who was sitting by her as a husband might. The lamplight fell on his
+white forehead, on the healthy brown of his cheek, the backs of his thin
+sunburnt hands. As she watched the hands her sense of them became as
+vivid as a touch, and she said to herself: "That other woman has sat
+and watched him as I am doing. She has known him as I have never known
+him...Perhaps he is thinking of that now. Or perhaps he has forgotten
+it all as completely as I have forgotten everything that happened to me
+before he came..."
+
+He looked young, active, stored with strength and energy; not the man
+for vain repinings or long memories. She wondered what she had to hold
+or satisfy him. He loved her now; she had no doubt of that; but how
+could she hope to keep him? They were so nearly of an age that already
+she felt herself his senior. As yet the difference was not visible;
+outwardly at least they were matched; but ill-health or unhappiness
+would soon do away with this equality. She thought with a pang of
+bitterness: "He won't grow any older because he doesn't feel things; and
+because he doesn't, I SHALL..."
+
+And when she ceased to please him, what then? Had he the tradition of
+faith to the spoken vow, or the deeper piety of the unspoken dedication?
+What was his theory, what his inner conviction in such matters? But what
+did she care for his convictions or his theories? No doubt he loved her
+now, and believed he would always go on loving her, and was persuaded
+that, if he ceased to, his loyalty would be proof against the change.
+What she wanted to know was not what he thought about it in advance, but
+what would impel or restrain him at the crucial hour. She put no faith
+in her own arts: she was too sure of having none! And if some beneficent
+enchanter had bestowed them on her, she knew now that she would have
+rejected the gift. She could hardly conceive of wanting the kind of love
+that was a state one could be cozened into...
+
+Darrow, putting away the frame, walked across the room and sat down
+beside her; and she felt he had something special to say.
+
+"They're sure to send for me in a day or two now," he began.
+
+She made no answer, and he continued: "You'll tell me before I go what
+day I'm to come back and get you?"
+
+It was the first time since his return to Givre that he had made any
+direct allusion to the date of their marriage; and instead of answering
+him she broke out: "There's something I've been wanting you to know. The
+other day in Paris I saw Miss Viner."
+
+She saw him flush with the intensity of his surprise.
+
+"You sent for her?"
+
+"No; she heard from Adelaide that I was in Paris and she came. She came
+because she wanted to urge me to marry you. I thought you ought to know
+what she had done."
+
+Darrow stood up. "I'm glad you've told me." He spoke with a visible
+effort at composure. Her eyes followed him as he moved away.
+
+"Is that all?" he asked after an interval.
+
+"It seems to me a great deal."
+
+"It's what she'd already asked me." His voice showed her how deeply he
+was moved, and a throb of jealousy shot through her.
+
+"Oh, it was for your sake, I know!" He made no answer, and she added:
+"She's been exceedingly generous...Why shouldn't we speak of it?"
+
+She had lowered her head, but through her dropped lids she seemed to be
+watching the crowded scene of his face.
+
+"I've not shrunk from speaking of it."
+
+"Speaking of her, then, I mean. It seems to me that if I could talk to
+you about her I should know better----"
+
+She broke off, confused, and he questioned: "What is it you want to know
+better?"
+
+The colour rose to her forehead. How could she tell him what she
+scarcely dared own to herself? There was nothing she did not want to
+know, no fold or cranny of his secret that her awakened imagination did
+not strain to penetrate; but she could not expose Sophy Viner to
+the base fingerings of a retrospective jealousy, nor Darrow to the
+temptation of belittling her in the effort to better his own case. The
+girl had been magnificent, and the only worthy return that Anna could
+make was to take Darrow from her without a question if she took him at
+all...
+
+She lifted her eyes to his face. "I think I only wanted to speak her
+name. It's not right that we should seem so afraid of it. If I were
+really afraid of it I should have to give you up," she said.
+
+He bent over her and caught her to him. "Ah, you can't give me up now!"
+he exclaimed.
+
+She suffered him to hold her fast without speaking; but the old dread
+was between them again, and it was on her lips to cry out: "How can I
+help it, when I AM so afraid?"
+
+
+
+
+XXXV
+
+
+The next morning the dread was still there, and she understood that she
+must snatch herself out of the torpor of the will into which she had
+been gradually sinking, and tell Darrow that she could not be his wife.
+
+The knowledge came to her in the watches of a sleepless night, when,
+through the tears of disenchanted passion, she stared back upon her
+past. There it lay before her, her sole romance, in all its paltry
+poverty, the cheapest of cheap adventures, the most pitiful of
+sentimental blunders. She looked about her room, the room where, for so
+many years, if her heart had been quiescent her thoughts had been
+alive, and pictured herself henceforth cowering before a throng of mean
+suspicions, of unavowed compromises and concessions. In that moment of
+self-searching she saw that Sophy Viner had chosen the better part, and
+that certain renunciations might enrich where possession would have left
+a desert.
+
+Passionate reactions of instinct fought against these efforts of her
+will. Why should past or future coerce her, when the present was so
+securely hers? Why insanely surrender what the other would after all
+never have? Her sense of irony whispered that if she sent away Darrow
+it would not be to Sophy Viner, but to the first woman who crossed his
+path--as, in a similar hour, Sophy Viner herself had crossed it...But
+the mere fact that she could think such things of him sent her
+shuddering back to the opposite pole. She pictured herself gradually
+subdued to such a conception of life and love, she pictured
+Effie growing up under the influence of the woman she saw herself
+becoming--and she hid her eyes from the humiliation of the picture...
+
+
+They were at luncheon when the summons that Darrow expected was brought
+to him. He handed the telegram to Anna, and she learned that his
+Ambassador, on the way to a German cure, was to be in Paris the next
+evening and wished to confer with him there before he went back to
+London. The idea that the decisive moment was at hand was so agitating
+to her that when luncheon was over she slipped away to the terrace and
+thence went down alone to the garden. The day was grey but mild, with
+the heaviness of decay in the air. She rambled on aimlessly, following
+under the denuded boughs the path she and Darrow had taken on their
+first walk to the river. She was sure he would not try to overtake her:
+sure he would guess why she wished to be alone. There were moments when
+it seemed to double her loneliness to be so certain of his reading her
+heart while she was so desperately ignorant of his...
+
+She wandered on for more than an hour, and when she returned to the
+house she saw, as she entered the hall, that Darrow was seated at the
+desk in Owen's study. He heard her step, and looking up turned in his
+chair without rising. Their eyes met, and she saw that his were clear
+and smiling. He had a heap of papers at his elbow and was evidently
+engaged in some official correspondence. She wondered that he could
+address himself so composedly to his task, and then ironically reflected
+that such detachment was a sign of his superiority. She crossed the
+threshold and went toward him; but as she advanced she had a sudden
+vision of Owen, standing outside in the cold autumn dusk and watching
+Darrow and Sophy Viner as they faced each other across the lamplit
+desk...The evocation was so vivid that it caught her breath like a blow,
+and she sank down helplessly on the divan among the piled-up books.
+Distinctly, at the moment, she understood that the end had come. "When
+he speaks to me I will tell him!" she thought...
+
+Darrow, laying aside his pen, looked at her for a moment in silence;
+then he stood up and shut the door.
+
+"I must go to-morrow early," he said, sitting down beside her. His voice
+was grave, with a slight tinge of sadness. She said to herself: "He
+knows what I am feeling..." and now the thought made her feel less
+alone. The expression of his face was stern and yet tender: for the
+first time she understood what he had suffered.
+
+She had no doubt as to the necessity of giving him up, but it was
+impossible to tell him so then. She stood up and said: "I'll leave you
+to your letters." He made no protest, but merely answered: "You'll come
+down presently for a walk?" and it occurred to her at once that she
+would walk down to the river with him, and give herself for the last
+time the tragic luxury of sitting at his side in the little pavilion.
+"Perhaps," she thought, "it will be easier to tell him there."
+
+It did not, on the way home from their walk, become any easier to tell
+him; but her secret decision to do so before he left gave her a kind
+of factitious calm and laid a melancholy ecstasy upon the hour. Still
+skirting the subject that fanned their very faces with its flame, they
+clung persistently to other topics, and it seemed to Anna that their
+minds had never been nearer together than in this hour when their hearts
+were so separate. In the glow of interchanged love she had grown less
+conscious of that other glow of interchanged thought which had once
+illumined her mind. She had forgotten how Darrow had widened her world
+and lengthened out all her perspectives, and with a pang of double
+destitution she saw herself alone among her shrunken thoughts.
+
+For the first time, then, she had a clear vision of what her life would
+be without him. She imagined herself trying to take up the daily round,
+and all that had lightened and animated it seemed equally lifeless and
+vain. She tried to think of herself as wholly absorbed in her daughter's
+development, like other mothers she had seen; but she supposed those
+mothers must have had stored memories of happiness to nourish them. She
+had had nothing, and all her starved youth still claimed its due.
+
+When she went up to dress for dinner she said to herself: "I'll have
+my last evening with him, and then, before we say good night, I'll tell
+him."
+
+This postponement did not seem unjustified. Darrow had shown her how
+he dreaded vain words, how resolved he was to avoid all fruitless
+discussion. He must have been intensely aware of what had been going on
+in her mind since his return, yet when she had attempted to reveal it
+to him he had turned from the revelation. She was therefore merely
+following the line he had traced in behaving, till the final moment
+came, as though there were nothing more to say...
+
+That moment seemed at last to be at hand when, at her usual hour after
+dinner, Madame de Chantelle rose to go upstairs. She lingered a little
+to bid good-bye to Darrow, whom she was not likely to see in the
+morning; and her affable allusions to his prompt return sounded in
+Anna's ear like the note of destiny.
+
+A cold rain had fallen all day, and for greater warmth and intimacy they
+had gone after dinner to the oak-room, shutting out the chilly vista of
+the farther drawing-rooms. The autumn wind, coming up from the river,
+cried about the house with a voice of loss and separation; and Anna and
+Darrow sat silent, as if they feared to break the hush that shut them
+in. The solitude, the fire-light, the harmony of soft hangings and old
+dim pictures, wove about them a spell of security through which Anna
+felt, far down in her heart, the muffled beat of an inextinguishable
+bliss. How could she have thought that this last moment would be the
+moment to speak to him, when it seemed to have gathered up into its
+flight all the scattered splendours of her dream?
+
+
+
+
+XXXVI
+
+
+Darrow continued to stand by the door after it had closed. Anna felt
+that he was looking at her, and sat still, disdaining to seek refuge in
+any evasive word or movement. For the last time she wanted to let him
+take from her the fulness of what the sight of her could give.
+
+He crossed over and sat down on the sofa. For a moment neither of them
+spoke; then he said: "To-night, dearest, I must have my answer."
+
+She straightened herself under the shock of his seeming to take the very
+words from her lips.
+
+"To-night?" was all that she could falter.
+
+"I must be off by the early train. There won't be more than a moment in
+the morning."
+
+He had taken her hand, and she said to herself that she must free it
+before she could go on with what she had to say. Then she rejected this
+concession to a weakness she was resolved to defy. To the end she would
+leave her hand in his hand, her eyes in his eyes: she would not, in
+their final hour together, be afraid of any part of her love for him.
+
+"You'll tell me to-night, dear," he insisted gently; and his insistence
+gave her the strength to speak.
+
+"There's something I must ask you," she broke out, perceiving, as she
+heard her words, that they were not in the least what she had meant to
+say.
+
+He sat still, waiting, and she pressed on: "Do such things happen to men
+often?"
+
+The quiet room seemed to resound with the long reverberations of her
+question. She looked away from him, and he released her and stood up.
+
+"I don't know what happens to other men. Such a thing never happened to
+me..."
+
+She turned her eyes back to his face. She felt like a traveller on a
+giddy path between a cliff and a precipice: there was nothing for it now
+but to go on.
+
+"Had it...had it begun...before you met her in Paris?"
+
+"No; a thousand times no! I've told you the facts as they were."
+
+"All the facts?"
+
+He turned abruptly. "What do you mean?"
+
+Her throat was dry and the loud pulses drummed in her temples.
+
+"I mean--about her...Perhaps you knew...knew things about
+her...beforehand."
+
+She stopped. The room had grown profoundly still. A log dropped to the
+hearth and broke there in a hissing shower.
+
+Darrow spoke in a clear voice. "I knew nothing, absolutely nothing," he
+said.
+
+She had the answer to her inmost doubt--to her last shameful unavowed
+hope. She sat powerless under her woe.
+
+He walked to the fireplace and pushed back the broken log with his foot.
+A flame shot out of it, and in the upward glare she saw his pale face,
+stern with misery.
+
+"Is that all?" he asked.
+
+She made a slight sign with her head and he came slowly back to her.
+"Then is this to be good-bye?"
+
+Again she signed a faint assent, and he made no effort to touch her or
+draw nearer. "You understand that I sha'n't come back?"
+
+He was looking at her, and she tried to return his look, but her eyes
+were blind with tears, and in dread of his seeing them she got up and
+walked away. He did not follow her, and she stood with her back to him,
+staring at a bowl of carnations on a little table strewn with books. Her
+tears magnified everything she looked at, and the streaked petals of the
+carnations, their fringed edges and frail curled stamens, pressed upon
+her, huge and vivid. She noticed among the books a volume of verse he
+had sent her from England, and tried to remember whether it was before
+or after...
+
+She felt that he was waiting for her to speak, and at last she turned to
+him. "I shall see you to-morrow before you go..."
+
+He made no answer.
+
+She moved toward the door and he held it open for her. She saw his hand
+on the door, and his seal ring in its setting of twisted silver; and the
+sense of the end of all things came to her.
+
+They walked down the drawing-rooms, between the shadowy reflections of
+screens and cabinets, and mounted the stairs side by side. At the end of
+the gallery, a lamp brought out turbid gleams in the smoky battle-piece
+above it.
+
+On the landing Darrow stopped; his room was the nearest to the stairs.
+"Good night," he said, holding out his hand.
+
+As Anna gave him hers the springs of grief broke loose in her. She
+struggled with her sobs, and subdued them; but her breath came unevenly,
+and to hide her agitation she leaned on him and pressed her face against
+his arm.
+
+"Don't--don't," he whispered, soothing her.
+
+Her troubled breathing sounded loudly in the silence of the sleeping
+house. She pressed her lips tight, but could not stop the nervous
+pulsations in her throat, and he put an arm about her and, opening his
+door, drew her across the threshold of his room. The door shut
+behind her and she sat down on the lounge at the foot of the bed. The
+pulsations in her throat had ceased, but she knew they would begin again
+if she tried to speak.
+
+Darrow walked away and leaned against the mantelpiece. The red-veiled
+lamp shone on his books and papers, on the arm-chair by the fire, and
+the scattered objects on his dressing-table. A log glimmered on the
+hearth, and the room was warm and faintly smoke-scented. It was the
+first time she had ever been in a room he lived in, among his personal
+possessions and the traces of his daily usage. Every object about her
+seemed to contain a particle of himself: the whole air breathed of him,
+steeping her in the sense of his intimate presence.
+
+Suddenly she thought: "This is what Sophy Viner knew"...and with a
+torturing precision she pictured them alone in such a scene...Had he
+taken the girl to an hotel...where did people go in such cases? Wherever
+they were, the silence of night had been around them, and the things he
+used had been strewn about the room...Anna, ashamed of dwelling on the
+detested vision, stood up with a confused impulse of flight; then a wave
+of contrary feeling arrested her and she paused with lowered head.
+
+Darrow had come forward as she rose, and she perceived that he was
+waiting for her to bid him good night. It was clear that no other
+possibility had even brushed his mind; and the fact, for some dim
+reason, humiliated her. "Why not...why not?" something whispered in her,
+as though his forbearance, his tacit recognition of her pride, were a
+slight on other qualities she wanted him to feel in her.
+
+"In the morning, then?" she heard him say.
+
+"Yes, in the morning," she repeated.
+
+She continued to stand in the same place, looking vaguely about the
+room. For once before they parted--since part they must--she longed to
+be to him all that Sophy Viner had been; but she remained rooted to the
+floor, unable to find a word or imagine a gesture that should express
+her meaning. Exasperated by her helplessness, she thought: "Don't I feel
+things as other women do?"
+
+Her eye fell on a note-case she had given him. It was worn at the
+corners with the friction of his pocket and distended with thickly
+packed papers. She wondered if he carried her letters in it, and she put
+her hand out and touched it.
+
+All that he and she had ever felt or seen, their close encounters
+of word and look, and the closer contact of their silences, trembled
+through her at the touch. She remembered things he had said that had
+been like new skies above her head: ways he had that seemed a part of
+the air she breathed. The faint warmth of her girlish love came back
+to her, gathering heat as it passed through her thoughts; and her heart
+rocked like a boat on the surge of its long long memories. "It's because
+I love him in too many ways," she thought; and slowly she turned to the
+door.
+
+She was aware that Darrow was still silently watching her, but he
+neither stirred nor spoke till she had reached the threshold. Then he
+met her there and caught her in his arms.
+
+"Not to-night--don't tell me to-night!" he whispered; and she leaned
+away from him, closing her eyes for an instant, and then slowly opening
+them to the flood of light in his.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVII
+
+
+Anna and Darrow, the next day, sat alone in a compartment of the Paris
+train.
+
+Anna, when they entered it, had put herself in the farthest corner
+and placed her bag on the adjoining seat. She had decided suddenly to
+accompany Darrow to Paris, had even persuaded him to wait for a later
+train in order that they might travel together. She had an intense
+longing to be with him, an almost morbid terror of losing sight of him
+for a moment: when he jumped out of the train and ran back along the
+platform to buy a newspaper for her she felt as though she should never
+see him again, and shivered with the cold misery of her last journey
+to Paris, when she had thought herself parted from him forever. Yet she
+wanted to keep him at a distance, on the other side of the compartment,
+and as the train moved out of the station she drew from her bag the
+letters she had thrust in it as she left the house, and began to glance
+over them so that her lowered lids should hide her eyes from him.
+
+She was his now, his for life: there could never again be any question
+of sacrificing herself to Effie's welfare, or to any other abstract
+conception of duty. Effie of course would not suffer; Anna would pay for
+her bliss as a wife by redoubled devotion as a mother. Her scruples
+were not overcome; but for the time their voices were drowned in the
+tumultuous rumour of her happiness.
+
+As she opened her letters she was conscious that Darrow's gaze was fixed
+on her, and gradually it drew her eyes upward, and she drank deep of the
+passionate tenderness in his. Then the blood rose to her face and she
+felt again the desire to shield herself. She turned back to her letters
+and her glance lit on an envelope inscribed in Owen's hand.
+
+Her heart began to beat oppressively: she was in a mood when the
+simplest things seemed ominous. What could Owen have to say to her? Only
+the first page was covered, and it contained simply the announcement
+that, in the company of a young compatriot who was studying at the Beaux
+Arts, he had planned to leave for Spain the following evening.
+
+"He hasn't seen her, then!" was Anna's instant thought; and her feeling
+was a strange compound of humiliation and relief. The girl had kept her
+word, lived up to the line of conduct she had set herself; and Anna
+had failed in the same attempt. She did not reproach herself with
+her failure; but she would have been happier if there had been less
+discrepancy between her words to Sophy Viner and the act which had
+followed them. It irritated her obscurely that the girl should have been
+so much surer of her power to carry out her purpose...
+
+Anna looked up and saw that Darrow's eyes were on the newspaper. He
+seemed calm and secure, almost indifferent to her presence. "Will it
+become a matter of course to him so soon?" she wondered with a twinge of
+jealousy. She sat motionless, her eyes fixed on him, trying to make him
+feel the attraction of her gaze as she felt his. It surprised and shamed
+her to detect a new element in her love for him: a sort of suspicious
+tyrannical tenderness that seemed to deprive it of all serenity. Finally
+he looked up, his smile enveloped her, and she felt herself his in every
+fibre, his so completely and inseparably that she saw the vanity of
+imagining any other fate for herself.
+
+To give herself a countenance she held out Owen's letter. He took it and
+glanced down the page, his face grown grave. She waited nervously till
+he looked up.
+
+"That's a good plan; the best thing that could happen," he said, a just
+perceptible shade of constraint in his tone.
+
+"Oh, yes," she hastily assented. She was aware of a faint current of
+relief silently circulating between them. They were both glad that Owen
+was going, that for a while he would be out of their way; and it seemed
+to her horrible that so much of the stuff of their happiness should be
+made of such unavowed feelings...
+
+"I shall see him this evening," she said, wishing Darrow to feel that
+she was not afraid of meeting her step-son.
+
+"Yes, of course; perhaps he might dine with you."
+
+The words struck her as strangely obtuse. Darrow was to meet his
+Ambassador at the station on the latter's arrival, and would in all
+probability have to spend the evening with him, and Anna knew he had
+been concerned at the thought of having to leave her alone. But how
+could he speak in that careless tone of her dining with Owen? She
+lowered her voice to say: "I'm afraid he's desperately unhappy."
+
+He answered, with a tinge of impatience: "It's much the best thing that
+he should travel."
+
+"Yes--but don't you feel..." She broke off. She knew how he disliked
+these idle returns on the irrevocable, and her fear of doing or saying
+what he disliked was tinged by a new instinct of subserviency against
+which her pride revolted. She thought to herself: "He will see the
+change, and grow indifferent to me as he did to HER..." and for a moment
+it seemed to her that she was reliving the experience of Sophy Viner.
+
+Darrow made no attempt to learn the end of her unfinished sentence. He
+handed back Owen's letter and returned to his newspaper; and when he
+looked up from it a few minutes later it was with a clear brow and a
+smile that irresistibly drew her back to happier thoughts.
+
+The train was just entering a station, and a moment later their
+compartment was invaded by a commonplace couple preoccupied with
+the bestowal of bulging packages. Anna, at their approach, felt the
+possessive pride of the woman in love when strangers are between herself
+and the man she loves. She asked Darrow to open the window, to place her
+bag in the net, to roll her rug into a cushion for her feet; and while
+he was thus busied with her she was conscious of a new devotion in his
+tone, in his way of bending over her and meeting her eyes. He went back
+to his seat, and they looked at each other like lovers smiling at a
+happy secret.
+
+Anna, before going back to Givre, had suggested Owen's moving into her
+apartment, but he had preferred to remain at the hotel to which he had
+sent his luggage, and on arriving in Paris she decided to drive there at
+once. She was impatient to have the meeting over, and glad that Darrow
+was obliged to leave her at the station in order to look up a colleague
+at the Embassy. She dreaded his seeing Owen again, and yet dared not
+tell him so, and to ensure his remaining away she mentioned an urgent
+engagement with her dress-maker and a long list of commissions to be
+executed for Madame de Chantelle.
+
+"I shall see you to-morrow morning," she said; but he replied with a
+smile that he would certainly find time to come to her for a moment on
+his way back from meeting the Ambassador; and when he had put her in a
+cab he leaned through the window to press his lips to hers.
+
+She blushed like a girl, thinking, half vexed, half happy: "Yesterday he
+would not have done it..." and a dozen scarcely definable differences
+in his look and manner seemed all at once to be summed up in the boyish
+act. "After all, I'm engaged to him," she reflected, and then smiled
+at the absurdity of the word. The next instant, with a pang of
+self-reproach, she remembered Sophy Viner's cry: "I knew all the while
+he didn't care..." "Poor thing, oh poor thing!" Anna murmured...
+
+
+At Owen's hotel she waited in a tremor while the porter went in search
+of him. Word was presently brought back that he was in his room and
+begged her to come up, and as she crossed the hall she caught sight of
+his portmanteaux lying on the floor, already labelled for departure.
+
+Owen sat at a table writing, his back to the door; and when he stood up
+the window was behind him, so that, in the rainy afternoon light, his
+features were barely discernible.
+
+"Dearest--so you're really off?" she said, hesitating a moment on the
+threshold.
+
+He pushed a chair forward, and they sat down, each waiting for the
+other to speak. Finally she put some random question about his
+travelling-companion, a slow shy meditative youth whom he had once or
+twice brought down to Givre. She reflected that it was natural he should
+have given this uncommunicative comrade the preference over his livelier
+acquaintances, and aloud she said: "I'm so glad Fred Rempson can go with
+you."
+
+Owen answered in the same tone, and for a few minutes their talk dragged
+itself on over a dry waste of common-places. Anna noticed that, though
+ready enough to impart his own plans, Owen studiously abstained from
+putting any questions about hers. It was evident from his allusions that
+he meant to be away for some time, and he presently asked her if she
+would give instructions about packing and sending after him some winter
+clothes he had left at Givre. This gave her the opportunity to say that
+she expected to go back within a day or two and would attend to the
+matter as soon as she returned. She added: "I came up this morning with
+George, who is going on to London to-morrow," intending, by the use
+of Darrow's Christian name, to give Owen the chance to speak of her
+marriage. But he made no comment, and she continued to hear the name
+sounding on unfamiliarly between them.
+
+The room was almost dark, and she finally stood up and glanced about for
+the light-switch, saying: "I can't see you, dear."
+
+"Oh, don't--I hate the light!" Owen exclaimed, catching her by the wrist
+and pushing her back into her seat. He gave a nervous laugh and added:
+"I'm half-blind with neuralgia. I suppose it's this beastly rain."
+
+"Yes; it will do you good to get down to Spain."
+
+She asked if he had the remedies the doctor had given him for a previous
+attack, and on his replying that he didn't know what he'd done with the
+stuff, she sprang up, offering to go to the chemist's. It was a
+relief to have something to do for him, and she knew from his "Oh,
+thanks--would you?" that it was a relief to him to have a pretext for
+not detaining her. His natural impulse would have been to declare that
+he didn't want any drugs, and would be all right in no time; and his
+acquiescence showed her how profoundly he felt the uselessness of their
+trying to prolong their talk. His face was now no more than a white blur
+in the dusk, but she felt its indistinctness as a veil drawn over aching
+intensities of expression. "He knows...he knows..." she said to
+herself, and wondered whether the truth had been revealed to him by some
+corroborative fact or by the sheer force of divination.
+
+He had risen also, and was clearly waiting for her to go, and she turned
+to the door, saying: "I'll be back in a moment."
+
+"Oh, don't come up again, please!" He paused, embarrassed. "I mean--I
+may not be here. I've got to go and pick up Rempson, and see about some
+final things with him." She stopped on the threshold with a sinking
+heart. He meant this to be their leave-taking, then--and he had not
+even asked her when she was to be married, or spoken of seeing her again
+before she set out for the other side of the world.
+
+"Owen!" she cried, and turned back.
+
+He stood mutely before her in the dimness.
+
+"You haven't told me how long you're to be gone."
+
+"How long? Oh, you see...that's rather vague...I hate definite dates,
+you know..."
+
+He paused and she saw he did not mean to help her out. She tried to say:
+"You'll be here for my wedding?" but could not bring the words to her
+lips. Instead she murmured: "In six weeks I shall be going too..." and
+he rejoined, as if he had expected the announcement and prepared his
+answer: "Oh, by that time, very likely..."
+
+"At any rate, I won't say good-bye," she stammered, feeling the tears
+beneath her veil.
+
+"No, no; rather not!" he declared; but he made no movement, and she went
+up and threw her arms about him. "You'll write me, won't you?"
+
+"Of course, of course----"
+
+Her hands slipped down into his, and for a minute they held each other
+dumbly in the darkness; then he gave a vague laugh and said: "It's
+really time to light up." He pressed the electric button with one hand
+while with the other he opened the door; and she passed out without
+daring to turn back, lest the light on his face should show her what she
+feared to see.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVIII
+
+
+Anna drove to the chemist's for Owen's remedy. On the way she stopped
+her cab at a book-shop, and emerged from it laden with literature. She
+knew what would interest Owen, and what he was likely to have read,
+and she had made her choice among the newest publications with the
+promptness of a discriminating reader. But on the way back to the hotel
+she was overcome by the irony of adding this mental panacea to the
+other. There was something grotesque and almost mocking in the idea of
+offering a judicious selection of literature to a man setting out on
+such a journey. "He knows...he knows..." she kept on repeating; and
+giving the porter the parcel from the chemist's she drove away without
+leaving the books. She went to her apartment, whither her maid had
+preceded her. There was a fire in the drawing-room and the tea-table
+stood ready by the hearth. The stormy rain beat against the uncurtained
+windows, and she thought of Owen, who would soon be driving through it
+to the station, alone with his bitter thoughts. She had been proud of
+the fact that he had always sought her help in difficult hours; and now,
+in the most difficult of all, she was the one being to whom he could
+not turn. Between them, henceforth, there would always be the wall of an
+insurmountable silence...She strained her aching thoughts to guess how
+the truth had come to him. Had he seen the girl, and had she told him?
+Instinctively, Anna rejected this conjecture. But what need was there of
+assuming an explicit statement, when every breath they had drawn for the
+last weeks had been charged with the immanent secret? As she looked back
+over the days since Darrow's first arrival at Givre she perceived
+that at no time had any one deliberately spoken, or anything been
+accidentally disclosed. The truth had come to light by the force of its
+irresistible pressure; and the perception gave her a startled sense of
+hidden powers, of a chaos of attractions and repulsions far beneath
+the ordered surfaces of intercourse. She looked back with melancholy
+derision on her old conception of life, as a kind of well-lit and well
+policed suburb to dark places one need never know about. Here they were,
+these dark places, in her own bosom, and henceforth she would always
+have to traverse them to reach the beings she loved best!
+
+She was still sitting beside the untouched tea-table when she heard
+Darrow's voice in the hall. She started up, saying to herself: "I must
+tell him that Owen knows..." but when the door opened and she saw his
+face, still lit by the same smile of boyish triumph, she felt anew the
+uselessness of speaking...Had he ever supposed that Owen would not know?
+Probably, from the height of his greater experience, he had seen long
+since that all that happened was inevitable; and the thought of it, at
+any rate, was clearly not weighing on him now.
+
+He was already dressed for the evening, and as he came toward her he
+said: "The Ambassador's booked for an official dinner and I'm free after
+all. Where shall we dine?"
+
+Anna had pictured herself sitting alone all the evening with her
+wretched thoughts, and the fact of having to put them out of her mind
+for the next few hours gave her an immediate sensation of relief.
+Already her pulses were dancing to the tune of Darrow's, and as they
+smiled at each other she thought: "Nothing can ever change the fact that
+I belong to him."
+
+"Where shall we dine?" he repeated gaily, and she named a well-known
+restaurant for which she had once heard him express a preference. But as
+she did so she fancied she saw a shadow on his face, and instantly she
+said to herself: "It was THERE he went with her!"
+
+"Oh, no, not there, after all!" she interrupted herself; and now she was
+sure his colour deepened.
+
+"Where shall it be, then?"
+
+She noticed that he did not ask the reason of her change, and this
+convinced her that she had guessed the truth, and that he knew she had
+guessed it. "He will always know what I am thinking, and he will
+never dare to ask me," she thought; and she saw between them the same
+insurmountable wall of silence as between herself and Owen, a wall of
+glass through which they could watch each other's faintest motions but
+which no sound could ever traverse...
+
+They drove to a restaurant on the Boulevard, and there, in their
+intimate corner of the serried scene, the sense of what was unspoken
+between them gradually ceased to oppress her. He looked so light-hearted
+and handsome, so ingenuously proud of her, so openly happy at being with
+her, that no other fact could seem real in his presence. He had learned
+that the Ambassador was to spend two days in Paris, and he had reason to
+hope that in consequence his own departure for London would be deferred.
+He was exhilarated by the prospect of being with Anna for a few hours
+longer, and she did not ask herself if his exhilaration were a sign of
+insensibility, for she was too conscious of his power of swaying her
+moods not to be secretly proud of affecting his.
+
+They lingered for some time over the fruit and coffee, and when they
+rose to go Darrow suggested that, if she felt disposed for the play,
+they were not too late for the second part of the programme at one of
+the smaller theatres.
+
+His mention of the hour recalled Owen to her thoughts. She saw his train
+rushing southward through the storm, and, in a corner of the swaying
+compartment, his face, white and indistinct as it had loomed on her in
+the rainy twilight. It was horrible to be thus perpetually paying for
+her happiness!
+
+Darrow had called for a theatrical journal, and he presently looked up
+from it to say: "I hear the second play at the Athenee is amusing."
+
+It was on Anna's lips to acquiesce; but as she was about to speak she
+wondered if it were not at the Athenee that Owen had seen Darrow with
+Sophy Viner. She was not sure he had even mentioned the theatre, but the
+mere possibility was enough to darken her sky. It was hateful to her to
+think of accompanying Darrow to places where the girl had been with him.
+She tried to reason away this scruple, she even reminded herself with
+a bitter irony that whenever she was in Darrow's arms she was where the
+girl had been before her--but she could not shake off her superstitious
+dread of being with him in any of the scenes of the Parisian episode.
+She replied that she was too tired for the play, and they drove back
+to her apartment. At the foot of the stairs she half-turned to wish him
+good night, but he appeared not to notice her gesture and followed her
+up to her door.
+
+"This is ever so much better than the theatre," he said as they entered
+the drawing-room.
+
+She had crossed the room and was bending over the hearth to light the
+fire. She knew he was approaching her, and that in a moment he would
+have drawn the cloak from her shoulders and laid his lips on her neck,
+just below the gathered-up hair. These privileges were his and, however
+deferently and tenderly he claimed them, the joyous ease of his manner
+marked a difference and proclaimed a right.
+
+"After the theatre they came home like this," she thought; and at the
+same instant she felt his hands on her shoulders and shrank back.
+
+"Don't--oh, don't!" she cried, drawing her cloak about her. She saw from
+his astonished stare that her face must be quivering with pain.
+
+"Anna! What on earth is the matter?"
+
+"Owen knows!" she broke out, with a confused desire to justify herself.
+
+Darrow's countenance changed. "Did he tell you so? What did he say?"
+
+"Nothing! I knew it from the things he didn't say."
+
+"You had a talk with him this afternoon?"
+
+"Yes: for a few minutes. I could see he didn't want me to stay."
+
+She had dropped into a chair, and sat there huddled, still holding her
+cloak about her shoulders.
+
+Darrow did not dispute her assumption, and she noticed that he expressed
+no surprise. He sat down at a little distance from her, turning about in
+his fingers the cigar-case he had drawn out as they came in. At length
+he said: "Had he seen Miss Viner?"
+
+She shrank from the sound of the name. "No...I don't think so...I'm sure
+he hadn't..."
+
+They remained silent, looking away from one another. Finally Darrow
+stood up and took a few steps across the room. He came back and paused
+before her, his eyes on her face.
+
+"I think you ought to tell me what you mean to do." She raised her head
+and gave him back his look. "Nothing I do can help Owen!"
+
+"No; but things can't go on like this." He paused, as if to measure his
+words. "I fill you with aversion," he exclaimed.
+
+She started up, half-sobbing. "No--oh, no!"
+
+"Poor child--you can't see your face!"
+
+She lifted her hands as if to hide it, and turning away from him bowed
+her head upon the mantel-shelf. She felt that he was standing a little
+way behind her, but he made no attempt to touch her or come nearer.
+
+"I know you've felt as I've felt," he said in a low voice--"that we
+belong to each other and that nothing can alter that. But other thoughts
+come, and you can't banish them. Whenever you see me you remember...you
+associate me with things you abhor...You've been generous--immeasurably.
+You've given me all the chances a woman could; but if it's only made you
+suffer, what's the use?"
+
+She turned to him with a tear-stained face. "It hasn't only done that."
+
+"Oh, no! I know...There've been moments..." He took her hand and raised
+it to his lips. "They'll be with me as long as I live. But I can't see
+you paying such a price for them. I'm not worth what I'm costing you."
+
+She continued to gaze at him through tear-dilated eyes; and suddenly
+she flung out the question: "Wasn't it the Athenee you took her to that
+evening?"
+
+"Anna--Anna!"
+
+"Yes; I want to know now: to know everything. Perhaps that will make
+me forget. I ought to have made you tell me before. Wherever we go, I
+imagine you've been there with her...I see you together. I want to know
+how it began, where you went, why you left her...I can't go on in this
+darkness any longer!"
+
+She did not know what had prompted her passionate outburst, but already
+she felt lighter, freer, as if at last the evil spell were broken. "I
+want to know everything," she repeated. "It's the only way to make me
+forget."
+
+After she had ceased speaking Darrow remained where he was, his arms
+folded, his eyes lowered, immovable. She waited, her gaze on his face.
+
+"Aren't you going to tell me?"
+
+"No." The blood rushed to her temples. "You won't? Why not?"
+
+"If I did, do you suppose you'd forget THAT?"
+
+"Oh--" she moaned, and turned away from him.
+
+"You see it's impossible," he went on. "I've done a thing I loathe,
+and to atone for it you ask me to do another. What sort of satisfaction
+would that give you? It would put something irremediable between us."
+
+She leaned her elbow against the mantel-shelf and hid her face in her
+hands. She had the sense that she was vainly throwing away her last hope
+of happiness, yet she could do nothing, think of nothing, to save it.
+The conjecture flashed through her: "Should I be at peace if I gave him
+up?" and she remembered the desolation of the days after she had sent
+him away, and understood that that hope was vain. The tears welled
+through her lids and ran slowly down between her fingers.
+
+"Good-bye," she heard him say, and his footsteps turned to the door.
+
+She tried to raise her head, but the weight of her despair bowed it
+down. She said to herself: "This is the end...he won't try to appeal to
+me again..." and she remained in a sort of tranced rigidity, perceiving
+without feeling the fateful lapse of the seconds. Then the cords that
+bound her seemed to snap, and she lifted her head and saw him going.
+
+"Why, he's mine--he's mine! He's no one else's!" His face was turned to
+her and the look in his eyes swept away all her terrors. She no longer
+understood what had prompted her senseless outcry; and the mortal
+sweetness of loving him became again the one real fact in the world.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIX
+
+
+Anna, the next day, woke to a humiliated memory of the previous evening.
+
+Darrow had been right in saying that their sacrifice would benefit no
+one; yet she seemed dimly to discern that there were obligations not
+to be tested by that standard. She owed it, at any rate, as much to his
+pride as to hers to abstain from the repetition of such scenes; and
+she had learned that it was beyond her power to do so while they
+were together. Yet when he had given her the chance to free herself,
+everything had vanished from her mind but the blind fear of losing him;
+and she saw that he and she were as profoundly and inextricably bound
+together as two trees with interwoven roots. For a long time she brooded
+on her plight, vaguely conscious that the only escape from it must come
+from some external chance. And slowly the occasion shaped itself in her
+mind. It was Sophy Viner only who could save her--Sophy Viner only who
+could give her back her lost serenity. She would seek the girl out and
+tell her that she had given Darrow up; and that step once taken there
+would be no retracing it, and she would perforce have to go forward
+alone.
+
+Any pretext for action was a kind of anodyne, and she despatched her
+maid to the Farlows' with a note asking if Miss Viner would receive her.
+There was a long delay before the maid returned, and when at last she
+appeared it was with a slip of paper on which an address was written,
+and a verbal message to the effect that Miss Viner had left some days
+previously, and was staying with her sister in a hotel near the Place de
+l'Etoile. The maid added that Mrs. Farlow, on the plea that Miss Viner's
+plans were uncertain, had at first made some difficulty about giving
+this information; and Anna guessed that the girl had left her friends'
+roof, and instructed them to withhold her address, with the object
+of avoiding Owen. "She's kept faith with herself and I haven't," Anna
+mused; and the thought was a fresh incentive to action.
+
+Darrow had announced his intention of coming soon after luncheon, and
+the morning was already so far advanced that Anna, still mistrustful of
+her strength, decided to drive immediately to the address Mrs. Farlow
+had given. On the way there she tried to recall what she had heard of
+Sophy Viner's sister, but beyond the girl's enthusiastic report of
+the absent Laura's loveliness she could remember only certain vague
+allusions of Mrs. Farlow's to her artistic endowments and matrimonial
+vicissitudes. Darrow had mentioned her but once, and in the briefest
+terms, as having apparently very little concern for Sophy's welfare, and
+being, at any rate, too geographically remote to give her any practical
+support; and Anna wondered what chance had brought her to her sister's
+side at this conjunction. Mrs. Farlow had spoken of her as a celebrity
+(in what line Anna failed to recall); but Mrs. Farlow's celebrities were
+legion, and the name on the slip of paper--Mrs. McTarvie-Birch--did not
+seem to have any definite association with fame.
+
+While Anna waited in the dingy vestibule of the Hotel Chicago she had so
+distinct a vision of what she meant to say to Sophy Viner that the girl
+seemed already to be before her; and her heart dropped from all the
+height of its courage when the porter, after a long delay, returned
+with the announcement that Miss Viner was no longer in the hotel. Anna,
+doubtful if she understood, asked if he merely meant that the young lady
+was out at the moment; but he replied that she had gone away the
+day before. Beyond this he had no information to impart, and after a
+moment's hesitation Anna sent him back to enquire if Mrs. McTarvie-Birch
+would receive her. She reflected that Sophy had probably pledged her
+sister to the same secrecy as Mrs. Farlow, and that a personal appeal to
+Mrs. Birch might lead to less negative results.
+
+There was another long interval of suspense before the porter reappeared
+with an affirmative answer; and a third while an exiguous and hesitating
+lift bore her up past a succession of shabby landings.
+
+When the last was reached, and her guide had directed her down a winding
+passage that smelt of sea-going luggage, she found herself before a door
+through which a strong odour of tobacco reached her simultaneously with
+the sounds of a suppressed altercation. Her knock was followed by a
+silence, and after a minute or two the door was opened by a handsome
+young man whose ruffled hair and general air of creased disorder led her
+to conclude that he had just risen from a long-limbed sprawl on a sofa
+strewn with tumbled cushions. This sofa, and a grand piano bearing a
+basket of faded roses, a biscuit-tin and a devastated breakfast tray,
+almost filled the narrow sitting-room, in the remaining corner of which
+another man, short, swarthy and humble, sat examining the lining of his
+hat.
+
+Anna paused in doubt; but on her naming Mrs. Birch the young man
+politely invited her to enter, at the same time casting an impatient
+glance at the mute spectator in the background.
+
+The latter, raising his eyes, which were round and bulging, fixed them,
+not on the young man but on Anna, whom, for a moment, he scrutinized as
+searchingly as the interior of his hat. Under his gaze she had the sense
+of being minutely catalogued and valued; and the impression, when he
+finally rose and moved toward the door, of having been accepted as
+a better guarantee than he had had any reason to hope for. On the
+threshold his glance crossed that of the young man in an exchange of
+intelligence as full as it was rapid; and this brief scene left Anna so
+oddly enlightened that she felt no surprise when her companion,
+pushing an arm-chair forward, sociably asked her if she wouldn't have
+a cigarette. Her polite refusal provoked the remark that he would,
+if she'd no objection; and while he groped for matches in his loose
+pockets, and behind the photographs and letters crowding the narrow
+mantel-shelf, she ventured another enquiry for Mrs. Birch.
+
+"Just a minute," he smiled; "I think the masseur's with her." He
+spoke in a smooth denationalized English, which, like the look in his
+long-lashed eyes and the promptness of his charming smile, suggested a
+long training in all the arts of expediency. Having finally discovered a
+match-box on the floor beside the sofa, he lit his cigarette and dropped
+back among the cushions; and on Anna's remarking that she was sorry
+to disturb Mrs. Birch he replied that that was all right, and that she
+always kept everybody waiting.
+
+After this, through the haze of his perpetually renewed cigarettes, they
+continued to chat for some time of indifferent topics; but when at last
+Anna again suggested the possibility of her seeing Mrs. Birch he rose
+from his corner with a slight shrug, and murmuring: "She's perfectly
+hopeless," lounged off through an inner door.
+
+Anna was still wondering when and in what conjunction of circumstances
+the much-married Laura had acquired a partner so conspicuous for his
+personal charms, when the young man returned to announce: "She says it's
+all right, if you don't mind seeing her in bed."
+
+He drew aside to let Anna pass, and she found herself in a dim untidy
+scented room, with a pink curtain pinned across its single window, and
+a lady with a great deal of fair hair and uncovered neck smiling at her
+from a pink bed on which an immense powder-puff trailed.
+
+"You don't mind, do you? He costs such a frightful lot that I
+can't afford to send him off," Mrs. Birch explained, extending a
+thickly-ringed hand to Anna, and leaving her in doubt as to whether the
+person alluded to were her masseur or her husband. Before a reply was
+possible there was a convulsive stir beneath the pink expanse, and
+something that resembled another powder-puff hurled itself at Anna with
+a volley of sounds like the popping of Lilliputian champagne corks. Mrs.
+Birch, flinging herself forward, gasped out: "If you'd just give him
+a caramel...there, in that box on the dressing-table...it's the only
+earthly thing to stop him..." and when Anna had proffered this sop to
+her assailant, and he had withdrawn with it beneath the bedspread, his
+mistress sank back with a laugh.
+
+"Isn't he a beauty? The Prince gave him to me down at Nice the other
+day--but he's perfectly awful," she confessed, beaming intimately on her
+visitor. In the roseate penumbra of the bed-curtains she presented to
+Anna's startled gaze an odd chromo-like resemblance to Sophy Viner, or
+a suggestion, rather, of what Sophy Viner might, with the years and in
+spite of the powder-puff, become. Larger, blonder, heavier-featured,
+she yet had glances and movements that disturbingly suggested what was
+freshest and most engaging in the girl; and as she stretched her bare
+plump arm across the bed she seemed to be pulling back the veil from
+dingy distances of family history.
+
+"Do sit down, if there's a place to sit on," she cordially advised;
+adding, as Anna took the edge of a chair hung with miscellaneous
+raiment: "My singing takes so much time that I don't get a chance to
+walk the fat off--that's the worst of being an artist."
+
+Anna murmured an assent. "I hope it hasn't inconvenienced you to see me;
+I told Mr. Birch--"
+
+"Mr. WHO?" the recumbent beauty asked; and then: "Oh, JIMMY!" she
+faintly laughed, as if more for her own enlightenment than Anna's.
+
+The latter continued eagerly: "I understand from Mrs. Farlow that your
+sister was with you, and I ventured to come up because I wanted to ask
+you when I should have a chance of finding her."
+
+Mrs. McTarvie-Birch threw back her head with a long stare. "Do you
+mean to say the idiot at the door didn't tell you? Sophy went away last
+night."
+
+"Last night?" Anna echoed. A sudden terror had possessed her. Could it
+be that the girl had tricked them all and gone with Owen? The idea was
+incredible, yet it took such hold of her that she could hardly steady
+her lips to say: "The porter did tell me, but I thought perhaps he was
+mistaken. Mrs. Farlow seemed to think that I should find her here."
+
+"It was all so sudden that I don't suppose she had time to let the
+Farlows know. She didn't get Mrs. Murrett's wire till yesterday, and she
+just pitched her things into a trunk and rushed----"
+
+"Mrs. Murrett?"
+
+"Why, yes. Sophy's gone to India with Mrs. Murrett; they're to meet at
+Brindisi," Sophy's sister said with a calm smile.
+
+Anna sat motionless, gazing at the disordered room, the pink bed, the
+trivial face among the pillows.
+
+Mrs. McTarvie-Birch pursued: "They had a fearful kick-up last spring--I
+daresay you knew about it--but I told Sophy she'd better lump it, as
+long as the old woman was willing to...As an artist, of course, it's
+perfectly impossible for me to have her with me..."
+
+"Of course," Anna mechanically assented.
+
+Through the confused pain of her thoughts she was hardly aware that
+Mrs. Birch's explanations were still continuing. "Naturally I didn't
+altogether approve of her going back to that beast of a woman. I said
+all I could...I told her she was a fool to chuck up such a place as
+yours. But Sophy's restless--always was--and she's taken it into her
+head she'd rather travel..."
+
+Anna rose from her seat, groping for some formula of leave-taking. The
+pushing back of her chair roused the white dog's smouldering animosity,
+and he drowned his mistress's further confidences in another outburst
+of hysterics. Through the tumult Anna signed an inaudible farewell, and
+Mrs. Birch, having momentarily succeeded in suppressing her pet under a
+pillow, called out: "Do come again! I'd love to sing to you."
+
+Anna murmured a word of thanks and turned to the door. As she opened it
+she heard her hostess crying after her: "Jimmy! Do you hear me? Jimmy
+BRANCE!" and then, there being no response from the person summoned: "DO
+tell him he must go and call the lift for you!"
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Reef, by Edith Wharton
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE REEF ***
+
+***** This file should be named 283.txt or 283.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/2/8/283/
+
+Produced by Gail Jahn, and John Hamm
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.