Part 44 (1/2)

”No,” she said. ”There are things which we really ought to say to each other. You do believe I wish I had never come?”

”I can quite understand,” said he, stiffly.

”It hurts,” she said.

”Why should it matter so much?” he asked.

”I don't know--but it does.”

He drew himself up and his face grew stern.

”I don't cease to be an honourable man because of my profession; or to be worthy of respect because I am loyal to sacred obligations.”

”You put me in the wrong,” she said. ”And I deserve it. But it all hurts.

It hurts dreadfully. Can't you see? The awful pity of it? You of all men to be condemned to a fife like this. And you suffer too. It all hurts.”

”Remember,” said he, ”it was the life to which I was bred.”

She felt hopeless. ”It's my own fault for coming,” she said. ”I should have left things as they were when we parted in April. There was beauty--you made it quite clear that our parting was final. You couldn't have acted otherwise. Forgive me for all I've said. I pride myself on being a practical woman; but--for that reason perhaps--I'm unused to grappling with emotional situations. If I've been unkind, it's because I've been stabbing myself and forgetting I'm stabbing you at the same time.”

He walked a pace or two further with her. For the first time he seemed to recognize what he, Andrew Lackaday, had meant to her.

”I'm sorry,” he said gravely. ”I never dreamed that it was a matter of such concern to you. If I had, I shouldn't have left you in any doubt. To me you were the everything that man can conceive in woman. I wanted to remain in your memory as the man the war had made me. Vanity or pride, I don't know. We all have our failings. I wors.h.i.+pped you as the _Princesse Loinlaine_. I never told you that I am a man who has learned to keep himself under control. Perhaps under too much control. I shouldn't tell you now, if----”

”You don't suppose I'm a fool,” she interrupted. ”I knew. And the Verity-Stewarts knew. And even my little cousin Evadne knew.”

They still strolled along the path under the trees. He said after a while:

”I'm afraid I have made things very difficult for you.”

She was pierced with remorse. ”Oh, how like you! Any other man would have put it the other way round and accused me of making things difficult for him. And he would have been right. For I did come here to get news of you from Anthony Hylton. He was so discreet that I felt that he could tell me something. And I came and found you and have made things difficult for you.”

He said in his sober way: ”Perhaps it is for the best that we have met and had this talk. We ought to have had it months ago, but--” he turned his face wistfully on her--”we couldn't, because I didn't know. Anyhow, it's all over.”

”Yes,” she sighed. ”It's all over. We're up against the stone wall of practical life.”

”Quite so,” said he. ”I am Pet.i.t Patou, the mountebank; my partner is Madame Patou, whom I have known since I was a boy of twenty, to whom I am bound by indissoluble ties of mutual fidelity, loyalty and grat.i.tude; and you are the Lady Auriol Dayne. We live, as I said before, in different spheres.”

”That's quite true,” she said. ”We have had our queer romance. It won't hurt us. It will sweeten our lives. But, as you say, it's over. It has to be over.”

”There's no way out,” said he. ”It's doubly locked. Good-bye.”

He bent and kissed her hand. To the casual French valetudinarians sitting and strolling in the park, it was nothing but a social formality. But to Auriol the touch of his lips meant the final parting of their lives, the consecrated burial of their love.

She lingered for a few moments watching his long, straight back disappear round the corner of the path, and then turned and joined me by the park gate. On our way to the hotel the only thing she said was:

”I don't seem to have much chance, do I, Tony?”

It was after lunch, while we sat, as the day before, at the end of the terrace, that she told me of what had taken place between Lackaday and herself, while I had been hanging about the gate. I must confess to pressing her confidence. Since I was lugged, even as a sort of _raisonneur_, into their little drama, I may be pardoned for some curiosity as to development. I did not seem, however, to get much further.

They had parted for ever, last April, in a not unpoetic atmosphere. They had parted for ever now in circ.u.mstances devoid of poetry. The only bit of dramatic progress was the mutual avowal, apparently dragged out of them.

It was almost an anticlimax. And then dead stop. I put these points before her. She agreed dismally. Bitterly reproached herself for giving way in Paris to womanish folly; also for deliberately bringing about the morning's explanation.