The Nest, The White Pagoda, The Suicide, A Forsaken Temple, Miss Jones and the Masterpiece Part 14

"He knows--everything."

"He prevented you! He met you and prevented you! I see it all.

Haldicott, it _is_ you, isn't it----"

Haldicott reluctantly turned to him.

"My dear fellow, can I ever thank you enough? My dear Haldicott, it's all too astonis.h.i.+ng. You know? And _why_ she was going to? The poor, darling child!" He had risen, and, with his arm around Allida's shoulders, was gazing at her.

"I saw Miss Fraser posting her letter to you, and guessed from her expression that something very bad was up," said Haldicott. "I forced her to walk a little with me, and I made her tell me the story; and then I made her see that the truer love for you would be shown in living. She had just recognised that,"--Haldicott smiled at her,--"and she was going to write, and see if she couldn't waylay that letter--spare you the pain of it and, at all events, tell you that she wasn't going to burden you with unfair remorse for the rest of your days. That's about the truth of it all, isn't it?" And he so believed it to be, now, the only essential truth, or, at least, the half-truth that she had better believe in, that his smile had not a touch of bitterness.

Allida still held her pen and still gazed at him.

"Ah! thank G.o.d for it all--for the fact that the letter wasn't waylaid, and for the fact that you _were_, Allida! When I think of it--that gift coming to me--your gift, Allida--and not too late--not too late!"

The young man, in his rapturous thankfulness, indifferent to the guardian presence, raised her hand to his lips, kissing it with a fervour where tears struggled with smiles.

"I'll go now," Haldicott said gently. "I'm so--immensely glad for you both."

But Allida, at this, started from her helpless apathy.

"No, no! Don't--don't go!" she cried. "I can't think. It's all so impossible. Do you mean," and her eyes now went to Ainslie while she drew her hand from his--"do you mean that you love me?"

"Love you, darling Allida? Don't you see it?"

"Because you got the letter," Allida said, as if linking in her mind a chain of evidence. "If you hadn't got it--you would not love me now."

"Forgive me, dearest, for my blindness! I should not have known you if I had not got it."

Allida still looked at him.

"You are just as dear--even dearer than I thought you; you are even more worthy of any love than I dreamed," she said. Her face had lost all apathy, all helplessness. It was with the stricken resolution that it could so strangely show that she pushed back her chair and rose, moving away from the young man, who, enchantingly a fairy prince, gazed at her with adoring eyes.

"It was written in a dream," said Allida, clasping her hands and returning his gaze. "It was written in a dream," she repeated. "It was all--all the whole year--a dream--only a dream."

The trust of his gaze was too deep for understanding to sink through it.

"I am awake now," said Allida; "you are dearer than I ever dreamed, but I am awake."

"When reality comes, the past always seems rather dream-like," Ainslie said. He felt and understood as well, as truly as the other had done.

"Darling Allida, I can never be worthy of such a love as yours, but I will try. And now that you are awake, you will find how much better waking is than any dream."

She gasped at this, and retreated before him.

"But I am horrid; I am unbelievable. There isn't any reality. There isn't any love to be worthy of," she cried, and covered her face with her hands.

Ainslie, from her att.i.tude of avowal and abas.e.m.e.nt, looked his stupefaction at Haldicott, and, for all answer, got a stupefaction as complete.

"What _does_ she mean?" the younger man at length inquired.

"I don't think she knows what she means," Haldicott answered. "I think she is, naturally, overwrought. All feeling, all meaning, is paralyzed.

She probably won't mean anything worth listening to for a good while."

They were speaking quite as if Allida, standing there with her hidden face, were a lunatic, the diagnosis of whose harmless case was as yet impossible in the absence of fresh symptoms. But a symptom was forthcoming.

"I mean _that_," she said. "I don't understand. I can't explain. It's as if something were broken in me. There isn't any love; there never will be. If you can ever forgive me, please tell me so--when you do. It mustn't be more than a dream for you, too--a dream only an hour long."

The two men again exchanged glances, but now with more hesitation.

"But, Allida,"--Ainslie spoke with gentle pain--"I love you. I am not dreaming. Do you mean to say that you can't love me? Do you mean to say that if I had loved you, with no letter to awaken me, you would have thought your love a dream, merely because it was answered?"

"It isn't that. I can't explain. Something broke. You came too late.

It's as if I had died--and become almost another person. I know it's unbelievable; I don't understand it myself; but it is true. It is all over, really."

"All over?" dazedly Ainslie repeated. "But why? After those letters?

After what you were going to do? Allida!"

She dropped her hands, and once more her eyes went to Haldicott in that look--the appeal of incompetence. But there was more in it: suffering and shame, and a strength that strove to hide them from him.

"Perhaps, my dear Ainslie, you had better go," said Haldicott, "for the present at least." But, in its wonder, his answering look now appealed and was helpless in its incomprehension.

Ainslie stared at her.

"Good-bye," he said at last.

"Oh, good-bye," said Allida, with a fervor of relief that all her humility and pity could not dissemble.

"Good-bye," he repeated, holding her hand, "sweet, strange, cruel Allida."

She put her hand over his and looked clearly at him.

"Remember," she said--"remember how absurd I am."

He was gone. Allida did not turn to Haldicott. She remained looking at the door that had closed on the exit of her "best beloved."

"But _why_?" said Haldicott. He repeated Ainslie's broken words almost faintly. "When the dream came true--why didn't you take it?"

She made no reply.

"I never meant that because it had been a dream it couldn't become a reality," he went on.

She looked vaguely round the room. Indeed, things swam to her; the nearest support was the mantelpiece. She leaned against it, looking down.

"It's not anything I said--in my efforts to shake you awake? You _were_ in love with him, you know. Weren't you in love with him, Allida?"

"Yes; I suppose so. How can I tell you anything? All I know is that I was dreaming."

"But--why did the dream go?"