Part 40 (1/2)

Her eyes went past him over the gate, out into the wood beyond. Dusk was falling about them; it shaded her face, intangibly altered it, made it for the moment almost as he had known it before. She looked very young, and tired. This was the picture of her, and he knew it then as he looked at her, that he would carry with him to the longest day he lived.

”Is it nothing to you,” he cried in a rush, ”that when the time came I couldn't do it? The yacht's breaking down had nothing in the world to do with it. I had already decided to turn back, to break my promise. That the--accident happened just then was only a wretched chance. I was going to put about at that moment.”

She hesitated almost imperceptibly, seemed for a brief second to waver.

But perhaps she dared not let herself believe him now: perhaps the strongest wish of her heart was to hurt him as deeply as she could.

”To say the least,” she said with a little deliberate movement of distaste, ”your coincidences are unfortunate. You--won't mind if I go on being grateful to the--_gear_?”

Under that crowning taunt, his self-restraint snapped like an overstretched bow-string.

”You shall not say that. You shall not. Miss Carstairs, you _know_ I could have kept you on the yacht if I had wanted to. You _know_ how I gave the order to put about and bring you back to Hunston. Did I look in the least then like a man whose hopes and plans had been ruined? You know I did not. You know I said to you that I--I was the happiest man in America. Will you tell me what on earth that could mean--except that I had decided to give up a thing that has been a millstone around my neck ever since--I met you?”

She made no reply, did not look at him. The dusk shadowed her eyes; and whether her silence meant good or ill he could not tell.

”You cannot answer, you see. We both know why. You will not be fair to me, Miss Carstairs. It is that night in the Academy box-office over again. Because I _had_ to deceive you once--not for my own sake--you will not look at the plain facts. But in your heart--just like that other night--_I know you believe me.”_

Of course she could not let that pa.s.s now. ”I do not!” she said. ”I do not. I must ask you, please, not to keep me here any longer.”

Varney's face went a shade paler. Arguing about his own veracity was even less bearable than he had thought; his manner all at once became singularly quiet.

”The merest moment, if you will. I can prove what I say,” he answered slowly, ”but of course I won't do that. You must believe what _I_ say, believe _me_. Nothing else matters but that.... Don't you know that it took a very strong reason to make me break faith with my old friend, your father--to make me stand here begging to be believed, like this?

You have only to look at me, I think. Don't you know that I couldn't possibly deceive you now ... after what has happened to me?”

”I don't know what you mean. I don't understand. Don't tell me. Nothing has happened ...”

”Everything has happened,” he said still more quietly. ”I've fallen crazily in love with you.”

She did not lift her eyes; neither moved nor spoke; gave no sign that she had heard. He went on slowly:

”This--might be hard to believe, except that it must be so easy to see.

I've known you less than three days, and I never wanted to--even like you. My one idea was to think of you as my enemy. That was what Maginnis and I agreed--plotting together like a pair of nihilists. It all seems so preposterous now. Everything was against me from the beginning. I wouldn't face it till to-day, this afternoon. Then it all came over me in a rush, and, of course, your happiness became a great deal more to me than your father's. So we turned around, and it was then that I told you how happy I was. Didn't you know then what I meant? Of course it was because I had just found out ... how you were the one person in the world who mattered to me.”

There was a long silence. It deepened, grew harder to break. Little Jenny Thurston, watching these two through an upstairs shutter, marveled what adults found to say to each other in these interminable colloquies.

A young c.o.c.k-sparrow, piqued by their stillness, alighted on the fence near by and studied them, eye c.o.c.ked inquisitively.

”Of course, I'm not--asking anything,” said Varney. ”About this, I mean.

I am answered, and over-answered, already. But ... do you believe now that I--voluntarily gave it up?”

”Oh,” said Mary, ”you--you must not ask me that. You must not talk to me like this. I did trust you once--fully--when you were almost a stranger; last night--and then this afternoon--”

”Do you believe me,” said Varney, ”or do you not?”

Her lower lip was trembling very slightly, and she set her white teeth upon it. The sudden knowledge that she was near to tears terrified her, goaded her to lengths. She gathered all her pride of opinion and young sense of wrong and frightened feminine instinct, for a final desperate stand; and so flung at him more pa.s.sionately than she knew: ”How many times must I tell you? _I do not! I do not_!”

Varney gave her a last look, stamping her face upon his mind, and took a step backward from the gate.

”Then,” said he ... ”this is good-bye, indeed.”