The Firing Line Part 59

"What is it, s.h.i.+ela?" he inquired, surprised.

"Garry--will you tell me something--if you can?... Then, what does it mean, the saying--'souls lost through love'? Does it mean what we have done?--because I am married? Would people think our souls lost--if they knew?"

"No, you blessed child!"

"Well, how can--"

"It's a lie anyway," he said. "Nothing is lost through love. It is something very different they mean."

"Yes," she said calmly, "something quite inconceivable, like 'Faust' and 'The Scarlet Letter,' ... I _thought_ that was what they meant!"

Brooding over him, silent, pensive, clear eyes fearlessly meeting his, she drifted into guiltless retrospection.

"After all," she said, "except for letting everybody know that we belong to each other this is practically like marriage. Look at that honeymoon up there, Garry.... If, somehow, they could think we are engaged, and would let us alone for the rest of our lives, it would not matter....

Except I should like to have a house alone with you."

And she stooped, resting her cheek lightly against his, eyes vaguely sweet in the moonlight.

"I love you so," she murmured, as though to herself, "and there seems no end to it. It is such a hopeless sequence when yesterday's love becomes to-day's adoration and to-morrow's wors.h.i.+p. What am I to do? What is the use of saying I am not free to love you, when I do?" She smiled dreamily. "I was silly enough to think it impossible once. Do you remember?"

"You darling!" he whispered, adoring her innocence. Then as he lay, head cradled on her knees, looking up at her, all unbidden, a vision of the future in its sharp-cut ominous desolation flashed into his vision--the world without her!--the endless stretch of time--youth with no meaning, effort wasted, attainment without desire, loneliness, arid, terrible days unending.

"It is too--too senseless!" he breathed, stumbling to his feet as the vague, scarcely formulated horror of it suddenly turned keen and bit into him as he began to realise for the first time something of what it threatened.

"What is it, Garry?" she asked in gentle concern, as he stood looking darkly at her. "Is it time to go? You are tired, I know." She rose and opened the great gla.s.s doors. "You poor tired boy," she whispered, waiting for him. And as he did not stir: "What is the matter, Garry?"

"Nothing. I am trying to understand that our winter is ended."

She nodded. "Mother and Gray and Cecile and I go North in April.... I wish we might stay through May--that is, if you--" She looked at him in silent consternation. "Where will _you_ be!"

He said in a sullen voice: "That is what I was thinking of--our separation.... Do you realise that it is almost here?"

"No," she said faintly, "I cannot."

He moved forward, opening the gla.s.s doors wider; she laid one hand on his arm as though to guide herself; but the eastern corridors were bright with moonlight, every corner illuminated.

They were very silent until they turned into the south corridor and reached her door; and there he suddenly gave way to his pa.s.sionate resentment, breaking out like a spoiled boy:

"s.h.i.+ela, I tell you it's going to be unendurable! There must be some way out, some chance for us.... I _don't_ mean to ask you to do what is--what you consider dishonourable. You wouldn't do it anyway, whether or not I asked you--"

"But don't ask me," she said, turning very white. "I don't know what I am capable of if I should ever see you suffer!"

"You _couldn't_ do it!" he repeated; "it isn't in you to take your happiness at their expense, is it? You say you know how they would feel; I don't. But if you're asking for an annulment--"

"What? Do you mean divorce?"

"No.... That is--different--"

"But what--"

"You dear," he said, suddenly gentle, "you have never been a--wife; and you don't know it."

"Garry, are you mad?"

"s.h.i.+ela, dear, some day will you very quietly ask some woman the difference between divorce and annulment?"

"Y-yes, if you wish.... Is it something you mayn't tell me, Garry?"

"Yes.... I don't know! You sometimes make me feel as though I could tell you anything.... Of course I couldn't ... you darling!" He stepped nearer. "You are so good and sweet, so utterly beyond evil, or the vaguest thought of it--"

"Garry--I am _not_! And you know it!"

He only laughed at her.

"You _don't_ think I am a horrid sort of saint, do you?"

"No, not the horrid sort--"

"Garry! How can you say such things when I'm half ready now to run away with you!"

The sudden hint of fire in her face and voice, and something new in her eyes, sobered him.

"Now do you know what I am?" she said, breathing unevenly and watching him. "Only one thing keeps me respectable. I'd go with you; I'd live in rags to be with you. I ask nothing in the world or of the world except you. You could make me what you pleased, mould me--mar me, I believe--and I would be the happiest woman who ever loved. _That_ is your saint!"

Flushed with her swift emotion, she stood a minute facing him, then laid her hand on the door k.n.o.b behind her, still looking him in the eyes.

Behind her the door slowly swung open under the pressure.

His own self-control was fast going; he dared not trust himself to speak lest he break down and beg for the only chance that her loyalty to others forbade her to take. But the new and deeper emotion which she had betrayed had awakened the ever-kindling impatience in him, and now, afire, he stood looking desperately on all he must for ever lose, till the suffering seemed unendurable in the checked violence of his revolt.

"Good night," she whispered sorrowfully, as the shadow deepened on his altered face.

"Are you going!"

"Yes.... And, somehow I feel that perhaps it is better not to--kiss me to-night. When I see you--this way--Garry, I could find it in me to do anything--almost.... Good night."

Watching him, she waited in silence for a while, then turned slowly and lighted the tiny night-lamp on the table beside her bed.

When she returned to the open door there was no light in the hall. She heard him moving somewhere in the distance.

"Where are you, Garry?"

He came back slowly through the dim corridor.

"Were you going without a word to me?" she asked.

He came nearer and leaned against the doorway.

"You are quite right," he said sullenly. "I've been a fool to let us drift in this way. I don't know where we're headed for, and it's time I did."