Part 81 (1/2)

”Oh, you are a partisan!” says he irritably, rising abruptly, and preparing to pace the room.

Margaret catches his coat as he goes by her.

”I entreat, I implore you to be quiet. It is so _slight_ a part.i.tion,” says she. ”Do sit down like a dear boy and talk softly, unless”--wistfully and evidently hopefully--”you want to go away.”

”Well, I don't,” says he grimly.

He reseats himself. An extraordinary fascination keeps him in this room, even in face of the fact that the mistress of it is plainly longing for his departure. She has even openly hinted at it. And the fascination? It lies there behind the folding-doors. There is no romance in it, he tells himself; it is rather the feeling of an enemy who knows his foe to be close by. He turns to Margaret.

”Why did she refuse that money?”

”Why did you refuse hers?”

”Pshaw! You're evading the question. To take half of her little pittance! I wonder you can even suggest the thing. It--it is almost an insult,” says he, reddening to his brows.

”I didn't mean it,” says Margaret quickly, the more so that she thinks he is going to walk the room again. ”Of course you could not have taken it.”

”And yet I did take her money,” says he miserably; ”I wish to heaven now I hadn't. _Then_ it seemed a fair exchange--her money for my t.i.tle; it is done every day, and no one thinks anything of it--but now---- It was a most cursed thing,” says he.

”It would have been nothing--nothing,” says Margaret eagerly, ”if you had been heart-whole. But to marry her, loving another, that was wrong--unpardonable----”

”Unpardonable!” He looks at her with a start. What does she mean? Is he beyond pardon, indeed? Pardon from---- ”That's all over,” says he.

”It wasn't over _then!”_

”I don't know----” He gets up and walks to the window in an agitated fas.h.i.+on, and then back again. ”Margaret, I don't believe I ever loved her.”

Margaret stares at him.

”You are talking of Marian?”

”Yes; Marian. If I did love her, then there is no such thing as love--love the eternal--because I love her no longer.”

”It is not that,” says Margaret; ”but love can be killed. Poor love!” she sighed. ”Marian of her own accord has killed yours.”

There is a long pause; then: ”Well, I'm glad of it,” says he.

He lifts his arms high above his head, as a man might who yawns, or a man might who has all at once recognised that he is rid of a great enc.u.mbrance.

”I suppose you did not come here to discuss your love affairs with Marian,” says Margaret, a little coldly.

In a strange sort of way she had liked Marian, and she knew that Marian, in a strange sort of way, clung to _her_. And, besides, to say love could be killed! It was tantamount to saying love could die! Has _her_ love died? Colonel Neilson had been with her a good deal since her return to town, and there had been moments of heart-burning, when she had searched her heart indeed, and found it wanting--wanting in its fixed determination to be true for ever to the dear dead beloved. And such a miserable wanting, a mere craving to be as others are--to live in the life of another, to know the warmth, the _breath_ of the world's suns.h.i.+ne--to love, and be loved again.

No wonder Margaret is angry with Rylton for bringing all these delinquencies into the light of certainty.

”No,” says Sir Maurice moodily. ”I came here to see you.”

”You told me you intended leaving town yesterday.”