The Flaw in the Crystal Part 15

For thought went wider and deeper than any deed; it was of the very order of the Powers intangible wherewith she had worked. Why, thoughts unborn and shapeless, that ran under the threshold and hid there, counted more in that world where It, the Unuttered, the Hidden and the Secret, reigned.

She knew now that her surrender of last night had been the ultimate deliverance. She was not afraid any more to meet Rodney; for she had been made pure from desire; she was safeguarded forever.

He had been gone about an hour when she heard him at the gate again and in the room below.

She went down to him. He came forward to meet her as she entered; he closed the door behind them; but her eyes held them apart.

"Did you not get my wire?" she said.

"Yes. I got it."

"Then why ..."

"Why did I come? Because I knew what was happening. I wasn't going to leave you here for Powell to terrify you out of your life."

"Surely--you thought they'd gone?"

"I knew they hadn't or you wouldn't have wired."

"But I would. I'd have wired in any case."

"To put me off?"

"To--put--you--off."

"Why?"

He questioned without divination or forewarning. The veil of flesh was as yet over his eyes, so that he could not see.

"Because I didn't mean that you should come, that you should ever come again, Rodney."

He smiled.

"So you went back on me, did you?"

"If you call it going back."

She longed for him to see.

"That was only because you were frightened," he said.

He turned from her and paced the room uneasily, as if he saw. Presently he drew up by the hearth and stood there for a moment, puzzling it out; and she thought that he had seen.

He hadn't. He faced her with a smile again.

"But it was no good, dear, was it? As if I wouldn't know what it meant.

You wouldn't have done it if you hadn't been ill. You lost your nerve.

No wonder, with those Powells preying on you, body and soul, for weeks."

"No, Rodney, no. I didn't _want_ you to come back. And I think--now--it would be better if you didn't stay."

It seemed to her now that perhaps he had seen and was fighting what he saw.

"I'm not going to stay," he said, "I am going--in another hour--to take Powell away somewhere."

He took it up where she had made him leave it. "Then, Agatha, I shall come back again. I shall come back--let me see--on Sunday."

She swept that aside.

"Where are you going to take him?"

"To a man I know who'll look after him."

"Oh, Rodney, it'll break Milly's heart."

She had come, in her agitation, to where he stood. She sat on the couch by the corner of the hearth, and he looked down at her there.

"No," he said, "it won't. It'll give him a chance to get all right. I've convinced her it's the only thing to do. He can't be left here for you to look after."

"Did she tell you?"

"She wouldn't have told me a thing if I hadn't made her. I dragged it out of her, bit by bit."

"Rodney, that was cruel of you."

"Was it? I don't care. I'd have done it if she'd bled."

"What did she tell you?"

"Pretty nearly everything, I imagine. Quite enough for me to see what, between them, they've been doing to you."

"Did she tell you _how he got well_?"

He did not answer all at once. It was as if he drew back before the question, alien and disturbed, s.h.i.+rking the discerned, yet unintelligible issue.

"Did she tell you, Rodney?" Agatha repeated.

"Well, yes. She _told_ me."

He seemed to be making, reluctantly, some admission. He sat down beside her, and his movement had the air of ending the discussion. But he did not look at her.

"What do you make of it?" she said.

This time he winced visibly.

"I don't make anything. If it happened--if it happened--like _that_, Agatha ..."

"It did happen."