Part 19 (1/2)

Lingard's bare hand involuntarily rested on the dented figures, the interlaced initials....

Three weeks ago he would have prayed Jane's leave to add a J. and an H.

to these rude scores, for three weeks ago he had been one of the great company of the world's lovers, understanding and sympathising with all the absurdities of love.

And now--even now, though he knew himself for a traitor to the woman sitting silent by his side, he yet felt in a strange way that the link between them was eternal--that in no way could it be broken. Each, so he a.s.sured himself fiercely, had a call on the other.

He was about to put this belief, this instinctive certainty, to the test.

”As I said just now, I've something to ask you, Jane----” His words came haltingly; to his listener they sounded very cold.

”Yes, Hew?” She looked round at him. He was staring at the ground as if something lay there he alone could see.

”I asked you to come out with me to-night, because--because”--and then in a voice so low, so hoa.r.s.e, that she had to bend forward to catch the words--”I want to ask you, to implore you, Jane--to marry me at once.”

”At once?” she repeated. ”When do you mean by at once, Hew?” She also spoke in a still, low voice. They seemed to be hatching a conspiracy of which one, if not both, should feel ashamed.

And more than ever it seemed to Jane Oglander as if another man, a stranger, had taken possession of Hew Lingard's shape.

”I mean at once!” he answered harshly. ”To-morrow--or the day after to-morrow. There's no necessity why we should ever go back to Rede Place! Why shouldn't we walk down to the station now, from here? We should be in London in an hour and a half. People have often done stranger things than that. We could send a message from the station to----” His voice wavered, his lips refused to form Mrs. Maule's name.

He thrust the thought of Athena violently from him; and with the muttered words, ”Can't you understand? I love you--I want you, Jane----”

he turned and gathered the woman sitting so stilly by his side into his arms.

She gave a stifled cry of surprise; and then, as he kissed her fiercely once, twice, and then again, there broke from her a low, bitter sigh--the sigh of a woman who feels herself debased by the caresses for which she has longed, of which she has been starved.

To Jane Oglander a kiss, so light, so willing a loan on the part of many women, was so intimate a gift as to be the forerunner of complete surrender. And to-night each of Hew Lingard's kisses was to her a profaned sacrament. Not so had they kissed on that day in London. Now his kisses told her, as no words could have done, of a divided allegiance.

She lay unresponsive, trembling in his arms, her eyes full of a wild, piteous questioning....

With a sudden sense of self-loathing and shame he released her from his arms.

”Well?” he said sullenly. ”Well, Jane?” but he knew what her answer would and must be.

”I can't do what you wish, Hew. I don't think that either of us would be happy now--if we did that.” She spoke in a quiet, restrained voice. She was too miserable, too deeply humiliated, for tears.

Together they walked out of the summer house and retraced their steps along the ridge.

”As I cannot do what you wish, would you like me to end our engagement?”

He turned on her fiercely. ”I did not think,” he cried, ”that there lived a woman in the world who could be as cruel as you have been to me to-night!”

”I did not mean to be cruel,” she said mournfully.

”Unless you wish to drive me to the devil, don't speak like that again,”

he said violently. ”Promise me, I mean, that you won't think of breaking our engagement.”