Part 110 (1/2)

(Her tears stopped falling suddenly.)

”I admit that I made a gross appeal to your pity.”

”My pity?”

”Yes, your pity.” His words were curt and hard because of the terrible restraint he had to put upon himself. ”I did it because it was the best argument. Otherwise it would have been abominable of me to have said those things.”

”I wasn't thinking of anything you said, only of what you've done.”

”I haven't done much. But tell me the truth. Whether would you rather I had done it for your sake or for mere honour's sake?”

”I would rather you had done it for honour's sake.” She said it out bravely, though she knew that it was the profounder confession of her feeling. He, however, was unable to take it that way.

”I thought so,” he said. ”Well, that _is_ why I did it.”

”I see. I wanted to know the truth; and now I know it.”

”You don't know half of it--” His pa.s.sion leapt to his tongue under the torture, but he held it down. He paused, knowing that this moment in which he stood was one of those moments which have the spirit and the power of eternity, and that it was his to save or to destroy it.

So admirable indeed was his control that it had taken their own significance from his words, and she read into them another meaning.

Her face was white with terror because of the thing she had said; but she still looked at him without flinching. She hardly realized that he was going, that he was trying to say good-bye.

”I will take the books--if you can keep them for me a little while.”

Some perfect instinct told her that this was the only way of atonement for her error. He thanked her as if they had been speaking of a trifling thing.

She rose, holding the ma.n.u.script loosely in her clasped hands, and he half thought that she was going to give it back to him. He took it from her and threw it on the window-seat, and held her hands together for an instant in his own. He looked down at them, longing to stoop and kiss them, but forebore, because of his great love for her, and let them go. He went out quickly. He had sufficient self-command to find Kitty and thank her and take his leave.

As the door closed on him Lucia heard herself calling him back, with what intention she hardly knew, unless it were to return his poems.

”Keith,” she said softly--”Keith.” But even to her own senses it was less a name than a sound that began in a sob and ended in a sigh.

Kitty found her standing in the window-place where he had left her.

”Has anything happened?” she asked.

”I asked him to marry me, Kitty, and he wouldn't. That was all.”

”Are you sure you did, dear? From the look of him I should have said it was the other way about.”

CHAPTER LXXV

”I don't know what to think of it, Kitty. What do you think?”

”I think you've been playing with fire, dear. With the divine fire.

It's the most dangerous of all, and you've got your little fingers burnt.”

”Like Horace. He once said the burnt critic dreads the divine fire.

I'm not a critic.”

”That you most certainly are not.”