Part 31 (1/2)
”Beloved,” he said, and now there was no pa.s.sion, no fierceness of desire in his voice, only unutterable tenderness. ”Beloved, please G.o.d you will find it in your heart to be good to me. All my thoughts are yours, but for that one thing over which I need your faith. . . . I think no man ever loved a woman so utterly as I love you. And oh!
little white English rose of my heart, I'd never ask more than you could give. Love isn't all pa.s.sion. It's tenderness and s.h.i.+elding and service, dear, as well as fire and flame. A man loves his wife in all the little ways of daily life as well as in the big ways of eternity.”
He stooped his head, and a shaft of sunlight flickered across his bright hair. Diana watched it with a curious sense of detachment.
Very gently he laid her hands against his lips, and the next moment he was swinging away from her across the stretch of yellow sand, leaving her alone once more with the sea and the sky and the wheeling gulls.
CHAPTER XV
DIANA'S DECISION
Max had been gone a week--a week of distress and miserable indecision for Diana, racked as she was between her love and her conviction that marriage under the only circ.u.mstances possible would inevitably bring unhappiness. Over and above this fear there was the instinctive recoil she felt from Errington's demand for such blind faith. Her pride rebelled against it. If he loved her and had confidence in her, why couldn't he trust her with his secret? It was treating her like a child, and it would be wrong--all wrong--she argued, to begin their married life with concealment and secrecy for its foundation.
One morning she even wrote to him, telling him definitely either that he must trust her altogether, or that they must part irrevocably. But the letter was torn up the same afternoon, and Diana went to bed that night with her decision still untaken.
For several nights she had slept but little, and once again she pa.s.sed long hours tossing feverishly from side to side of the bed or pacing up and down her room, love and pride fighting a stubborn battle within her. Had Max remained at Crailing, love would have gained an easy victory, but, true to his promise, he had gone away, leaving her to make her decision free and untrammelled by his influence.
Diana's face was beginning to show signs of the mental struggle through which she was pa.s.sing. Dark shadows lay beneath her eyes, and her cheeks, even in so short a time, had hollowed a little. She was irritable, too, and unlike herself, and at last Stair, whose watchful eyes had noted all these things, though he had refrained from comment, taxed her with keeping him outside her confidence.
”Can't I help, Di?” he asked, laying his hand on her shoulder, and twisting her round so that she faced him.
The quick colour flew into her cheeks. For a moment she hesitated, while Stair, releasing his hold of her, dropped into a chair and busied himself filling and lighting his pipe.
”Well?” he queried at last, smiling whimsically. ”Won't you give me an old friend's right to ask impertinent questions?”
Impulsively she yielded.
”You needn't, Pobs. I'll tell you all about it.”
When she had finished, a long silence ensued. Not that Stair was in any doubt as to what form his advice should take--idealist that he was, there did not seem to him to be any question in the matter. He only hesitated as to how he could best word his counsel.
At last he spoke, very gently, his eyes lit with that inner radiance which gave such an arresting charm of expression to his face.
”My dear,” he said, ”it seems to me that if you love him you needs _must_ trust him. 'Perfect love casteth out fear.'”
Diana shook her head.
”Mightn't you reverse that, Pobs, and say that he would trust _me_--if he loves me?”
”No, not necessarily.” Alan sucked at his pipe. ”He knows what his secret is, and whether it is right or wrong for you to share it. You haven't that knowledge. And that's where your trust must come in. You have to believe in him enough to leave it to him to decide whether you ought to be told or not. Have you no confidence in his judgment?”
”I don't think husbands and wives should have secrets from one another,” protested Diana obstinately.
”Does he propose to have any other than this one?”
”No.”
”Then I don't see that you need complain. The present and the future are yours, but you've no right to demand the past as well. And this secret, whatever it may be, belongs to the past.”
”As far as I can see it will be cropping up in the future as well,”