The Divine Fire Part 89

His voice was so low that she could hardly have heard it but for the intense vibration of the tones. There was a pause in which they seemed still to be throbbing, but with no meaning behind the pa.s.sionate pulse of sound.

"I didn't mean to tell you. I know you'd rather think it wasn't so.

And I would have let you think it if it hadn't been for what you told me--what I made you tell me."

"I don't understand. What did I tell you?"

"You told me the truth." He spoke with a sudden savage energy. "How could I go on lying after that?"

She looked at him with that almost imperceptible twitching of her soft mouth which he knew to be a sign of suffering; and in her eyes there was pain and a vague terror.

"I might have gone on lying to the end, if nothing had depended on it.

But if you tell me that you only give your consent to a thing on one condition, and I know that I can't possibly fulfil the condition, what am I to do? Say nothing about it, and do what you would loathe me for doing if you knew?"

Till now she had left the ma.n.u.script lying in her lap, where unconsciously her hands covered it with a gentle protecting touch. But as he spoke she took it up and put it away from her with an irresistible impulse of rejection. He knew that he was answered.

"If I had," he said, "in one sense I should have done you no wrong.

All this would be nothing to the world which would read these poems.

But when I knew that it made all the difference to _you_--"

She turned, as he had seen her turn once and only Once before, in reproach that was almost anger.

"To me? Do you suppose I'm thinking of myself?"

"Perhaps not. That doesn't prevent my thinking of you. But I was thinking of myself, too. Supposing I had done this thing that you would have loathed; even though you had never known it, I should have felt that I had betrayed your trust, that I had taken something from you that I had no right to take, something that you would never have given me if you had known. What was I to do?"

She did not answer him. Once before, he remembered, when his honour was in difficulties, she had refused to help it out, left it to struggle to the light; which was what it did now.

"It would have been better to have said nothing and done nothing."

He expected her to close instantly with that view of his behaviour which honour had presented as the final one, but this she did not do.

"If you had said nothing you might have done what you liked."

"I see. It's my saying it that makes the difference?"

"That is _not_ what I meant. I meant that you were free to publish what you have written. You are not free to say these things to me."

"For the life of me I don't know why I said them. It means perdition for my poems and for me. I knew that was all I had to gain by telling you the truth."

"But it _isn't_ the truth. You know it isn't. You don't even think it is."

"And if it were, would it be so terrible to you to hear it?"

She did not answer. She only looked at him, as if by looking she could read the truth. For his face had never lied.

He persisted. "If it were true, what would you think of me?"

"I should think it most dishonourable of you to say so. But it isn't true."

He smiled. "Therefore it can't be dishonourable of me to say so."

"No, not that. You are not dishonourable; therefore it can't be true.

Let us forget that you ever said it."

"But I can't forget that it's true any more than I can make it untrue.

You think me dishonourable, because you think I've changed. But I haven't changed. It always was so, ever since I knew you; and that's more than five years ago now. I am dishonourable; but that's not where the dishonour comes in. _The_ dishonourable thing would have been to have left off caring for you. But I never did leave off. There never was a minute when it wasn't true, nor a minute when I didn't think it.

If I was sure of nothing else I was always sure of that. Where the dishonour came in was in caring for another woman, in another way."

"The dishonour would come in if you'd left off caring for her. And you haven't done that. It would come in a little now, I think, if you said that you didn't care. But you don't say it; you don't even think it.

Shall I tell you the truth? You've let your genius get too strong a hold over you. You've let it get hold, too, of this feeling that you had for me. And now, though you know perfectly well--as well as I do--that it's all over, your genius is trying to persuade you that the feeling is still there when it isn't."

"That is not so, but you can say it is, if it makes you any happier."

"It does make me happier to think that it's your genius, not you, that says these things. For I can forgive your genius; but I couldn't have forgiven you."

At that moment he felt a savage jealousy of his genius, because she loved it. "And yet, you said a little while ago you couldn't separate the two."

"You have obliged me to separate them, to find an excuse for you. This ought not to have happened; but it could not have happened to a man who was not a poet."

All the time she was miserably aware that she was trying to defend herself with subtleties against the impact of a terrible reality. And because that reality must weigh more heavily on him than her, she was trying to defend him too, against himself, to force on him, against himself, her own subtilizing, justifying view.

But his subtlety was a match for hers. "Your cousin once did me the honour to say I was one-seventh part a poet, and upon my honour I prefer his estimate to yours."

"What is mine?"

"That I'm nothing but a poet. That there wasn't enough of me left over to make a man."

"That is not my estimate, and you know it. I think you so much a man that your heart will keep you right, even though your genius has led you very far astray."

"Is that all you know about it?"

"Well, I'm not sure that it is your genius, this time. I rather think it's your sense of honour. I believe you think that because you once cared for me you've got to go on caring, lest I should accuse you of being faithless to your dream." ("Surely," she said to herself, "I've made it easy for him now?")

But the word was too much for him. "For Goodness' sake don't talk to me any more about my dream. You may think any mortal thing you like about me, so long as you don't do that."

She smiled faintly, as if with an effort at forbearance. "Very well then, I won't talk about your dream. I'll say you were afraid lest I should think you had been faithless to _me_. It would never have occurred to you if you hadn't seen me again. It will not occur to you after I am gone. It will be all over by to-morrow."

"Why to-morrow?" He spoke stupidly. Fear had made him stupid. "Why to-morrow?"

"Because I am going to-morrow."

Then he knew that it was indeed all over. The door which had been open to him was about to close; and once closed it would never be open to him again.

"What _must_ you think of me--"

"I think you have done very wrong, and that our talking about it only makes it worse. And so--I'm sorry--but I must ask you to leave me."

But he did not leave her. "And I must ask you to forgive me," he said gently.