Part 22 (1/2)

”Tell me about it.”

But Fay tore herself out of her sister's arms and threw herself face downwards on the bed.

”I can't,” she gasped. ”I must and I can't. I must and I can't.”

Magdalen remained standing in the middle of the room. She knew that the breaking moment had come and she waited.

She waited a long time.

The storm without spent itself before the storm within had spent itself.

At last Fay sat up.

Then Magdalen moved quietly to the dying fire. She put on some coal, she blew the dim embers to a glow.

Fay watched her.

Magdalen did not look at her. She sat down by the fire, keeping her eyes fixed upon it.

”I have done something very wicked,” said Fay in a hollow voice from the bed. ”If I tell you all about it will you promise, will you swear to me that you will never tell anybody?”

”I promise,” said Magdalen after a moment.

”Swear it.”

”I swear.”

Fay made several false starts and then said:

”I was very unhappy with Andrea.”

Magdalen became perceptibly paler and then very red.

”He never cared for me,” continued Fay, slipping off the bed, and kneeling down before the fire. ”It's a dreadful thing to marry a man who does not really care. I sometimes think men can't care. They are too selfish. They don't know what love is. I was very young. I did not know anything about life. He was kind, but he never understood me.”

Magdalen's eyes filled with tears. In the room at the end of the pa.s.sage she had listened to her mother's faint voice in nights of wakeful weakness speaking of her unhappy marriage. Did all women who failed to love deep enough say the same things? And as Magdalen had listened in silence then so she listened in silence now.

”He did not trust me. And then I had no children, and he was dreadfully disappointed. And he kept things to himself. There was no real confidence between us, as there ought to be between husband and wife, those whom G.o.d has joined together. Andrea never seemed to remember that. And gradually his conduct had its natural effect. I grew not to care for him, and--he brought it on himself--I'm not excusing myself, Magdalen--I see now that I was to blame too--I ended by caring for someone else--someone who _did_ love me, who always had since we were boy and girl together.”

”Not Michael!”

”Yes. Michael. And when he came out to Rome it began all over again. It never would have done if Andrea had been a good husband. I did my best.

I tried to stave it off, but I was too miserable and lonely and I cared at last. And he was madly in love with me. He wors.h.i.+pped me.”

Fay paused. She was looking earnestly into her recollections. She was so far withholding nothing. As she knelt before the fire making her confession Magdalen saw that according to her lights she was speaking the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

”Of course he found it out at last and--and we agreed to part. We decided that he must leave Rome. He wished to see me once to say good-bye. Was it _very_ wrong of me to let him come once,--just once?”

”It was perhaps natural. And after Michael had said good-bye why did not he leave Rome?”