Part 24 (1/2)
”I don't know, Camelia, but--my wife would have to be.”
”She _will_ be.”
”Don't make me hurt you--don't be so cruel to yourself.”
”She will be,” Camelia repeated.
”I beg of you--I implore you, Camelia.” He hardened his face to meet her look, searching, eager, pitiful.
”How could I say this unless I believed you loved me--had always loved me? Don't speak; don't say no; don't send me away. You are angry. You have the right to be; but, ah! if you only knew what I feel for you.”
”Don't tell me, Camelia.”
”But I must. I love everything about you--I always have. When you were near me I saw every gesture you made, heard every word you spoke, knew every thought you had about me. I love your little ways--I know them all; that wag of your foot when you are angry, the look of your teeth when you smile, your hands, your face, your dear rough hair----”
Perior had turned from red to white, and still looking at him, shaking her head a little, she finished very simply on a long sigh--
”I can't live without you. I _can't_.”
”Camelia, I can't marry you,” he said; and then, taking breath in the ensuing silence, ”You are mistaken. I don't love you. I have your welfare at my heart; I wish you all happiness, all good. I am sorry, terribly sorry for you; but I do not love you. You must believe me. I do not love you. I will not marry you.--G.o.d forgive me for the lie,” he said to himself; ”but no, no, no, I can_not_ marry her, poor impulsive, wilful, half n.o.ble, half pitiful child, a thousand times no.” The strong rebellion of his very soul steadied him. He could yield without a tremor to his pity, could take her hands and hold them in a clasp convincingly paternal and pitying.
Camelia closed her eyes, drawing in a long breath, too sharp in its accepted bitterness for the break of a sob. Her face, with this tragedy of still woe upon it, was almost unrecognizable. Until now it had been a face of triumph. Defeat--and that at last she recognized defeat he saw--changed its very lines; the iron entered her soul, and something left her face for ever. For a long time she did not speak, and her voice seemed dimmed, as though spoken from a great distance, when she said, her eyes still closed, ”Then you never loved me!”
”Never,” said Perior, who, encompa.s.sed by the saving lie, could freely breathe in the tonic atmosphere of his resolute pain.
”But--you are fond of me?” said Camelia; and as she spoke, from under the solemn pressure of her eyelids, pressed down as on a dead hope, great tears came slowly.
”Great Heaven! Fond of you? _Fond_ of you? Yes--yes, my dear Camelia.”
He leaned forward and kissed her forehead above the closed eyes.
”Ah!” she murmured, ”I was so sure you loved me!” More than its rigid misery, the humble bewilderment on her face, as of a creature stricken helpless, and not comprehending its pain, hurt him, warned him that every moment made it more difficult to keep down the fluttering of a longing he would not, must never satisfy. He seemed to crush a harsh hand on its delicate wings as he said--
”And now you will go. You will let me walk home with you?”
She shook her head. ”No, no.”
She went towards the door, her hand still in his.
”You should not go alone. I beg of you, dear, to let me come.”
”I would rather go alone.”
They were in the hall, and she had not looked at him again. She put her hand out to the door and then she paused. Perior had also paused.
”Will you kiss me good-bye?” she said.
”Will I? O Camelia!” At that moment he felt himself to be more false than he had been during all the scene with her, for as he kissed her the fluttering wings beat upward with the exultant throb of a released desire. And she did not know. She believed him. All her hope was stricken in the dust. And yet they clung together--lovers; he ashamed of his knowledge; she pathetic, tragic, in her chastened, her humiliated, trust and ignorance.
CHAPTER XIX