Part 43 (2/2)

”You most certainly would not!” He said. ”If you did, you'd be sure to lose your way, old girl.”

For a second they walked in silence.

”D'you ever feel”--she turned to face him--”d'you ever feel you'd been in a place before--and yet you knew you'd never been there at all?”

”No,” he told her a bit too abruptly.

”You needn't be so stuffy, Gregory,” she murmured.

”Oh, my dear!” He caught her and held her in his arms. ”Can't you see that it's all like a horrible nightmare? Can't you see that I'm not able to know positively until it's actually happened--and then--oh, my G.o.d!--If it should be too late!”

Her hands clenched rigidly on his shoulders.

”Gregory,” she whispered, ”tell me, dear--you've been so strange of late--so terribly unlike yourself. Tell me, dear, what is it?”

”Nothing, dearest girl--nothing.”

”Oh, but there is something!” She exclaimed pa.s.sionately. ”I've known it right along. I haven't asked because I thought you'd tell me. Why--one must be blind not to see how you've changed! You're--you're just a skeleton of yourself, Gregory.” She paused for breath. ”Can't you bring yourself to tell me--can't you, dear?”

”If I only knew,” he muttered, ”if I only knew--for certain.”

Her eyes were lifted to his. The brows met in a puckering frown above them.

”Gregory--that time you were away--for a whole fortnight--did anything happen, then--Gregory?”

”Did anything happen?” She had surprised him into it. ”Good G.o.d, did anything happen? Why, you don't know what it was like--You couldn't know! If they'd told me such a thing were possible--I shouldn't have believed it! I wanted to think--I wanted to work the thing out for myself--so I went down there for a rest. Rest--”

He broke off then, but she stood very silently beside him and presently he went on again.

”Have you ever felt you were going mad, Kathleen? Raving, tearing--mad?

That's how I felt for two weeks. I thought it would never end. And all the time--why, I couldn't think! I couldn't do anything but feel that something was driving me to do something--something tremendous, as if the very force of my own life were making me do this thing that I had been sent into life to do. And, Kathleen,” his voice sank to a hoa.r.s.e whisper, ”I couldn't understand--what--it--was!”

She put her arm about his neck and drew his head down until her cheek rested on his.

”I couldn't think a thought,” he muttered. ”I'd laid myself open to the thing. It just swept over me and through me. It saturated me with the impulse to do the thing I had come into the world to do! The one thing that stood out--was--the feeling that it would have to be done--soon.”

He paused for a moment. ”And then one afternoon at the club--when I'd been back a day or two--something came to me-a sudden knowledge of--well, of rottenness--that--that might have to be done away with--as if that had something to do with it. Only I don't know, Kathleen--not--as yet.”

He looked at her then and he saw her eyes were filled with tears. He thought he had frightened her. He waited until he had himself well in hand before he spoke again.

”Kathleen, always believe in the good of things, dearest girl. And, Kathleen,” the words that came to him were almost as great a surprise to him as they were to her. ”Never leave that crucifix off your neck.

Promise me, dear?”

”I promise.”

A little later they went in to tea.

He got to bed that night with a great feeling of relief that in the morning they would all be back in town. He had thought something would happen. He had not known what, but the feeling had been there. He did not mind admitting it to himself now, and he did not mind acknowledging that he could not understand how the thing, whatever it was, had been avoided. Unformed, undefinable, it had been powerfully imminent. He fell asleep wondering what it was that he had expected.

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