Part 49 (1/2)

Terror, humiliation, and the spectacle of violence had torn away a veil from before her eyes. She saw her own life in its true perspective. And, that she might see it the more clearly and understand, she had the story of another life wherewith to compare it.

It is a quality of big performances, whether in art or life, that while they surprise when first apprehended, they appear upon thought to be so simple that it is astonis.h.i.+ng surprise was ever felt.

Something of that quality Tony's career possessed. It had come upon Millie as a revelation, yet, now she was thinking: ”Yes, that is what Tony would do. How is it I never guessed?” She put him side by side with that other man, the warrior of the drawing-rooms, and she was filled with shame that ever she could have preferred the latter even for a moment of madness.

They walked slowly on again. Millie drew her lace wrap more closely about her throat.

”Are you cold?” asked Tony. ”You are lightly clothed to be talking here. We had better perhaps walk on, and keep what you have to tell me until to-morrow.”

”No,” she answered quickly, ”I am not cold. And I must tell you what I have to tell you to-night. I want all this bad, foolish part of my life to end to-night, to be extinguished just as those lights were extinguished a minute since. Only there is something I should like to say to you first.” Millie's voice wavered now and broke. ”If we do not walk along the road together any more,” she went on timidly, ”I will still be glad that you came back to-night. I do not know that you will believe that--I do not, indeed, see why you should; but I should very much like you to believe it; for it is the truth. I have learned a good deal, I think, during the last three hours. I would rather go on alone--if it is to be so--in this dim, clean starlight, than ever be back again in the little room with its lights and flowers. Do you understand me?”

”I think so,” said Tony.

”At all events, the road is visible ahead,” she went on. ”One sees it glimmering, one can keep between the banks; while, in the little lighted room it is easy to get lost.”

And thus to Millie now, as to Pamela when she rode back from her last interview with Warrisden at the village of the three poplars, the riband of white road stretching away in the dusk became a parable.

”Yes,” said Tony, ”perhaps my path was really the easier one to follow. It was direct and plain.”

”Ah,” said Millie, ”it only seems so because you have traversed it, and are looking back. I do not think it was so simple and direct while you walked upon it.” And Tony, remembering the doubts and perplexities which had besieged him, could not but a.s.sent.

”I do not think, too, that it was so easy to discover at the beginning.”

There rose before Tony's eyes the picture of a ketch-rigged boat sailing at night over a calm sea. A man leaned over the bulwarks, and the bright glare from a lights.h.i.+p ran across the waves and flashed upon his face. Tony remembered the moment very clearly when he had first hit upon his plan; he remembered the weeks of anxiety of which it was the outcome. No, the road had not been easy to find at the beginning. He was silent for a minute, and then he said gently--

”I am sorry that I asked you to tell your story--I am sorry that I did not leave the decision to you. But it shall be as though you told it of your own accord.”

The sentence was a concession, no less in the manner of its utterance than in the words themselves. Millie took heart, and told him the whole story of her dealings with Lionel Callon, without excuses and without concealments.

”I seemed to mean so much to him, so little to you,” she said. ”You see, I did not understand you at all. You were away, too, and he was near. I do not defend myself.”

She did not spare herself, she taxed her memory for the details of her days; and as she spoke the story seemed more utterly contemptible and small than even she in her abas.e.m.e.nt had imagined it would be. But she struggled through with it to the end.

”That night when you stood beneath the windows in Berkeley Square,”

she said, ”he was with me. He ran in from Lady Millingham's party and talked with me for half an hour. Yes, at the very time when you were standing on the pavement he was within the house. I know, for you were seen, and on the next day I was told of your presence. I was afraid then. The news was a shock to me. I thought, 'Suppose you had come in!'”

”But, back there, in the room,” Tony interrupted, ”you told me that you wished I had come in.”

”Yes,” she answered. ”And it is quite true; I wish now that you had come in.”

She told him of the drive round Regent's Park, and of the consent she gave that night to Lionel Callon.

”I think you know everything now,” she said. ”I have tried to forget nothing. I want you, whatever you decide to do, to decide knowing everything.”

”Thank you,” said Tony, simply. And she added--

”I am not the first woman I know who has thrown away the substance for the shadow.”

Upon the rest of that walk little was said. They went forward beneath the stars. A great peace lay upon sea and land. The hills rose dark and high upon their left hand, the sea murmured and whispered to them upon the right. Millie walked even more slowly as they neared the hotel at Eze, and Tony turned to her with a question--