Part 23 (1/2)
”Really cared!” he said. ”Why, you have taught me what that word means. You'll never doubt that?”
”No,” Meg said. ”Not now. I know this is new to us both. I won't doubt anything ever again.”
”She was friendless,” he said. ”And for some strange reason she thought herself fond of me.”
”What a very strange thing to feel! I really can't understand it.
Fancy a woman feeling fond of a thing that walks on its head!”
”Don't laugh, Meg. She does, or thinks she does.”
Meg looked into his eyes. ”I'll never doubt you, Mike,” she said, ”if you'll tell me, under these dear stars, which have made you confess your love for me, that there has been no deep feeling on your side, that there is nothing that matters between you.”
Mike took her two hands. ”On my side, there has been nothing but friends.h.i.+p, I swear it,” he said. ”I never, never desired anything else. There has been nothing that matters.”
”I'm so glad,” Meg said. ”You're so high, Mike, so awfully high in my love. Your drifting is all a part of it. I love you for all your mad dreams and dear unworldliness, for your struggling and striving for the highest. I should hate to have to believe that you were less high than I imagined.”
”But I kissed her, Meg,” he said, abruptly. The truth was drawn from him, as his confession of love had been, torn from him by some power outside himself. He hated giving her pain, and it had been scarcely necessary if Margaret had been other than she was.
It had not mattered--yet if truth was beauty and beauty was G.o.d, and his religion was that the kingdom of G.o.d is within us, how could he hold it back, this deed which, little as it might seem in the eyes of most people, had been for him a thing which did matter?
”You kissed her!” Meg said. Something that was not love was now bursting her throat. Her voice was uncertain. It hurt Michael like a thrust from a sharp knife.
”Yes,” he said. ”I kissed her, more than once.”
”Her lips?” Meg asked.
”Yes, Meg, her lips.”
”You kissed her as you have kissed me to-night?”
”Good heavens, no!” he cried. ”Meg, how could you think it?”
”Life is strange,” Meg said, a little wearily. ”When everything seems most beautiful, some ugliness shows its head . . . the light gets so dim.”
”Dearest,” Mike said, ”do you remember what you said on that morning when we found each other again? You said, 'Let's go forward; things are explained.'”
”Yes, I remember,” she said, and as she spoke happiness shone in her eyes like a flame relit; ”yes, I said regrets were foolish, I said I understood. But . . .” she hesitated; the thought of Mike's lips pressed to any other woman's than her own stifled her. She was his so completely, that any other man's lips pressed to hers, except Freddy's, would nauseate her. Yet Mike had kissed Millicent. Was it that night on the terrace, or the evening at the Pyramids? she wondered.
”We have gone forward, Meg. Millicent”--Meg s.h.i.+vered as he said the woman's Christian name--”was splendid at the Pyramids, she really was.”
Again Meg s.h.i.+vered. Splendid! How, she wondered, had she been splendid? Meg hated being an inquisitor, yet she had to know; it was her right.
”Then it was not at the Pyramids that you kissed her?” she asked.
”No, no!” Mike said. ”Of course not!” He looked at her in wonder.
”If it had been, I should not have dared to kiss you to-night.”
”It's nice of you to say that, dear. Oh, Mike,” she said tenderly, ”you mean the world to me! I shall grow older by years for each moment that we don't trust one another! I should have known, I should never have doubted! You've chosen a very jealous woman, Mike.”
”If you'd gone off to the Pyramids with some one whom I disliked as much as you dislike Millicent, I'd have been furious!” He felt Meg s.h.i.+ver. He divined the reason; he would not let that hurt her again.