Running Sands Part 62

She bowed her dark head in a.s.sent.

"You are very sure?" he asked.

"Very, very sure."

"So that it was not"--he hesitated as if he knew that he had no right to put the question--"it was not merely pa.s.sion?"

Muriel looked straight into his eyes.

"It was so far from merely pa.s.sion," she answered, "that I have only twice even so much as kissed him."

Stainton believed her now. His hand dropped from her arm. It seemed to him that she would have hurt him less had her love for von Klausen been baser.

There was a long pause.

"I see," said Stainton at last; and again: "I see."

He looked up at the high cliff bending far above them.

"And--von Klausen," he presently pursued--"you will let me ask it, won't you? In a moment you will see that I have a good reason. You are sure that his love for you is--is of the same sort that yours is for him?"

"Quite."

"Why?"

"On the same evidence."

"I see. I had begun to think so this morning. He came to see me."

She gave a short cry.

"Is he hurt?" she asked.

"Why should I hurt him? It is not his fault that he has hurt me. No, I didn't hurt him; I merely came by train to Aubagne, and thence here by motor-bus, to learn--what I have learned; and to say--what I am about to say."

"You told him where I was?"

"I did not name the place. I simply said that you had gone away, leaving a note in which you told me that you were bound for a certain secluded spot to be alone."

Muriel clasped her white hands in distress.

"He will guess," she said. "He will guess from that. It was he told me of this place--told me only the other day in much those words."

Stainton smiled a little.

"I fancied he would guess," said he: "I intended that he should."

"But he will follow!"

"No doubt."

"You--you--why do you speak so?"

"He can't get a convenient train from Ma.r.s.eilles, so he will probably come the whole way by motor."

"He will--he will! He will know that you have come----"

"I told him that I meant to."

"And he will think you mean to punish me----"

"Yes."

"And--oh, don't you see?--he will come to protect me!"

The husband again put his hand timidly upon her arm.

"My dear," he said, "that is just what I wanted him to do--and what I feared he might not do if I told him that I wanted it. The worst thing about this whole tragedy is that it is unnecessary, a quite useless tragedy. I've thought a great deal since you spoke out plainly to me, and I am beginning to see--even I, who wish not to see it--that you were not so far from right; for if man's stupidity hadn't devised for itself a wholly crooked and muddled system for the conduct of his life, this sort of now common catastrophe simply couldn't happen. Listen."

He plucked at her sleeve, and she turned her pale face toward him.

"All my life," he went on, "I've been afraid of two things: old age and--something else. Perhaps I've learned better in the last few hours.

I've tried to learn that only the laws of man are horrible and bad and that no natural law can be, if we face it for what it is, either repellent or wrong. Before, I tried to be young. I trained myself to be young. I denied my youth, believing that I could strengthen and prolong it. I decided that youth was a state of mind--that it could be retained by an effort of the will. I postponed love with that in mind, and I postponed too long. Then, when I never doubted myself, I married you."

He released her arm.

"I married you," he continued; "and so, from sinning against myself, I began to sin against another. Much that you said last night was right. I have been selfish. I have robbed you of your youth, and I've given you nothing in return but what a man might give to spoil a child or to flatter a mistress. It wasn't a marriage. I see that now. The white heat of pa.s.sion fused together two pieces of greatly differing metals, but when the pa.s.sion cooled, the welding wouldn't hold: the joint snapped. I thought I could hold you. Hold you--as if that could be love which must be held! I took a low advantage of your ignorance of life. I came to you, who knew nothing, and said: 'I will teach you'--but--I was giving you the half-suns.h.i.+ne of the sunset when your just portion was the blaze of noon. I was keeping youth from youth."

Her large eyes were tender with tears.

"Do you mean it?" she asked. "Do you really mean--all this?"

"As I never meant anything else in my life. I violated nature and must pay the price."

Throughout all time and lands, he now felt, youth calls to youth, generation to generation, and not all the laws upon the statute-books of all the world can silence it.

"I've thought that you were ignorant," he was saying; "perhaps you were wiser than I. You are not breaking the law. You are fulfilling it. I was the one that was ignorant. I was the one that was wrong."

Out of sheer generosity, though her brain and heart cried a.s.sent to his every word, she tried to protest. But the youth in her heart clamoured that he was speaking truth.

"And so," he concluded, "now that I am sure that you truly love each other, I mean to step aside."

She looked at him blankly.

"Step aside?" she repeated.

"I mean to make what reparation is possible: I must."