Part 34 (1/2)

”If you love me, you must tell me.”

She was silent, the white hands working nervously with her handkerchief.

”Lucy!” he insisted--”you must say what stands between you and my love.

It's true, I've no right to ask, as I had no right to speak to you of love. But when we've said as much as we have said--we can't stop there.

You will tell me, dear?”

She shook her head: ”It--it's impossible.”

”But you can't ask me to be content with that answer!”

”Oh!” she cried--”_how_ can I make you understand?... When you said what you did, that night--it seemed as if a new day were dawning in my life. You made me believe it was because of me. You put me above you--where I'd no right to be; but the fact that you thought me worthy to be there, made me proud and happy: and for a little, in my blindness, I believed I could be worthy of your love and your respect.

I thought that, if I could be as strong as you during that year you asked in which to prove your strength, I might listen to you, tell you everything, and be forgiven.... But I was wrong, how wrong I soon learned.... So I had to leave you at whatever cost!”

She ceased to speak, and for several minutes there was silence. But for her quick, convulsive breathing, the girl sat like a woman of stone, staring dry-eyed out of the window. And Lanyard sat as moveless, the heart in his bosom as heavy and cold as a stone.

At length, lifting his head, ”You leave me no alternative,” he said in a voice dull and hollow even in his own hearing: ”I can only think one thing...”

”Think what you must,” she said lifelessly: ”it doesn't matter, so long as you renounce me, put me out of your heart and--leave me.”

Without other response, he leaned forward and tapped the gla.s.s; and as the cab swung in toward the curb, he laid hold of the door-latch.

”Lucy,” he pleaded, ”don't let me go believing--”

She seemed suddenly infused with implacable hostility. ”I tell you,”

she said cruelly--”I don't care what you think, so long as you go!”

The face she now showed him was ashen; its mouth was hard; her eyes shone feverishly.

And then, as still he hesitated, the cab pulled up and the driver, leaning back, unlatched the door and threw it open. With a curt, resigned nod, Lanyard rose and got out.

Immediately the girl bent forward and grasped the speaking-tube; the door slammed; the cab drew away and left him standing with the pose, with the gesture of one who has just heard his sentence of death p.r.o.nounced.

When he roused to know his surroundings, he found himself standing on a corner of the avenue du Bois.

It was bitter cold in the wind sweeping down from the west, and it had grown very dark. Only in the sky above the Bois a long reef of crimson light hung motionless, against which leafless trees lifted gnarled, weird silhouettes.

While he watched, the pus.h.i.+ng crimson ebbed swiftly and gave way to mauve, to violet, to black.

XIX

UNMASKED

When there was no more light in the sky, a profound sigh escaped Lanyard's lips; and with the gesture of one signifying submission to an omen, he turned and tramped heavily back across-town.

More automaton than sentient being, he plodded on along the second enceinte of flaring, noisy boulevards, now and again narrowly escaping annihilation beneath the wheels of some coursing motor-cab or ponderous, grinding omnibus.