Part 22 (2/2)

”Relatively--yes.”

”It is so strange,” she sighed. ”It is so inconsistent. It is like a child catching at a new toy. Do you know, Mr. Melville”--she hesitated--”all this has made me feel old. I feel very much older, very much wiser than he is. I cannot help it. I am afraid it is for all women ... to feel that sometimes.”

She reflected profoundly. ”For _all_ women-- The child, man! I see now just what Sarah Grand meant by that.”

She smiled a wan smile. ”I feel just as if he had been a naughty child.

And I--I wors.h.i.+pped him, Mr. Melville,” she said, and her voice quivered.

My cousin coughed and turned about to stare hard out of the window. He was, he perceived, much more shockingly inadequate even than he had expected to be.

”If I thought she could make him happy!” she said presently, leaving a hiatus of generous self-sacrifice.

”The case is--complicated,” said Melville.

Her voice went on, clear and a little high, resigned, impenetrably a.s.sured.

”But she would not. All his better side, all his serious side-- She would miss it and ruin it all.”

”Does he--” began Melville and repented of the temerity of his question.

”Yes?” she said.

”Does he--ask to be released?”

”No.... He wants to come back to me.”

”And you----”

”He doesn't come.”

”But do you--do you want him back?”

”How can I say, Mr. Melville? He does not say certainly even that he wants to come back.”

My cousin Melville looked perplexed. He lived on the superficies of emotion, and these complexities in matters he had always a.s.sumed were simple, put him out.

”There are times,” she said, ”when it seems to me that my love for him is altogether dead.... Think of the disillusionment--the shock--the discovery of such weakness.”

My cousin lifted his eyebrows and shook his head in agreement.

”His feet--to find his feet were of clay!”

There came a pause.

”It seems as if I have never loved him. And then--and then I think of all the things that still might be.”

Her voice made him look up, and he saw that her mouth was set hard and tears were running down her cheeks.

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