"It was a term of endearment. Besides, it is not his fault that he does not weigh fourteen stones—"
"Stone," said he with the tremor of a smile.
"No, stones," said Nadine. "I choose that it should be stones: fourteen great square lumps. Hughie, don't catch my words up and correct me. I am serious and all you can answer is 'stone' instead of 'stones.'"
"I did it without thinking," he said. "I only fell back into the sort of speech there used to be between us. It was like that, serious one moment and silly the next. I spoke without thinking, as we used to speak. I won't do it again."
"And why not?" demanded Nadine.
"Because now that you tell me you really are going to marry Seymour, everything is changed between us. This is what I came to tell you. I am not going to hang about, a mixture between a valet and an ami de la maison. You have chosen now. When you refused me before, there was always in my mind the hope that some day you would give me a different answer. I waited long and patiently and willingly for that chance. Now the chance no longer exists. You have scratched me—"
Nadine drew her eyebrows together.
"Scratched you?" she said. "Oh, I see, a race: not nails."
"And I am definitely and finally out of it."
"You mean you are no longer among my friends?" asked Nadine.
"I shall not be with you so much or so intimately. We must talk over it just this once. We will stroll if you like. It is too hot for you standing in the sun without a hat."
"No, we will settle it here and now," said she quickly. "You don't understand. My marriage with Seymour will make no difference in the quality of affection I have always had for you. Why should I give up my best friend? Why should you?"
"Because you are much more than my best friend, and I am obliged to give up, at last, that idea of you. You have forced me to see that it is not to be realized. And I won't sit about your house, to have people pointing at me, and saying to each other, 'That's the one who is so frightfully in love with her.' It may sound priggish, but I don't choose to be quite so unmanly as that. Nor would you much respect me if I did so choose."
"But I never did respect you," said Nadine quickly. "I never thought of you as respectable or otherwise. It doesn't come in. You may steal and cheat at cards, and I shall not care. I like whom I like: I like you tremendously. What do you mean you are going to do? Go to Burmah or Bengal? I don't want to lose you, Hughie. It is unkind of you. Besides, we shall not marry for a long time yet, and even then— Ah, it is the old tale, the old horror called Me all over again—I don't love anybody. Many are delightful and I am so fond of them. But the other, the absorption, the gorgeous foolishness of it all, it is away outside of me, a fairy-tale and I am grown up now and say, 'For me it is not true.'"
Hugh came a step nearer her.
"You poor devil," he said gently.
Tears, as yet unshed, gathered in Nadine's eyes. They were fairly creditable tears: they were not at any rate like the weepings of the great prig-prince and compounded merely of "languor and self-pity," but sorrow for Hugh was one ingredient in them. Yet in the main they were for herself, since the only solvent for egoism is love.
"Yes, I am that," she said. "I'm a poor devil. I'm lost, as I said to that foolish Arbuthnot woman with her feet and great violin. Hark, she is playing it again: she is a big 'C major'! She has been scolding me, though if it comes to that I gave it her back with far more gamin in my tongue. And now you say you will not be friends any longer, and Mama does not like my marrying Seymour, though she does not argue, and there is no one left but myself, and I hate myself. Oh, I am lost, and I wave my flags and there is no one who sees or understands. I shall go back to Daddy, I think, and he and I will drink ourselves drunk, and I shall have the red nose. But you are the worst of them all, Hugh! It is a very strange sort of love you have for me, if all it can do is to desert me. And yet the other day I felt as you feel; I felt it would only be fair to you to see you less. I am a damned weathercock. I go this way and that, but the wind is always cold. I am sorry for you, I want you to be happy, I would make you happy myself, if I could."
Nadine's eyes had quite overflowed, and as she poured out this remarkable series of lamentations, she dabbed at her moistened cheeks. Yet Hugh, though he was so largely to blame, as it seemed, for this emotion, and though all the most natural instincts in him longed to yield, knew that deep in him his determination was absolutely unsoftened. It, and his love for Nadine were of the quality of nether mill-stones. But all the rest of him longed to comfort her.
"Oh, Nadine, don't cry," he said. "I'm not worth crying about, to begin with."
"It is not you alone I cry about," said Nadine with justice. "I cry a little for you, every third drop is for you. The rest is quite for myself."
"It is never worth while to cry for oneself," he said.
"Who wants it to be worth while? I feel like crying, therefore I cry. Hardly anything I do is worth while, yet I go on doing, and I get tired of it before it is done. Already I am tired of crying, and besides it gives me the red nose without going to Daddy. Not you and I together are worth making myself ugly for. But you are so disagreeable, Hughie: first I wanted to stroll, and you said 'no,' and then when I didn't want to stroll you said 'yes,' and you aren't going to be friends with me, and I feel exactly as I used to feel when I was six years old, and it rained. Come, let us sit down a little, and you shall tell me what you mean to do, and how it will be between us. I will be very good: I will bless any plan you make, like a bishop. It shall all be as you will. I owe you so much and there is no way by which I can ever repay you. I don't want to be a curse to you, Hughie; I don't indeed."
She sat down, leaning against a great beech trunk, and he lay on the coarse meadow-grass beside her.
"I know you don't," he said.
He looked at her steadily, as she finished mopping her cheeks. Her little burst of tears had not made her nose at all red; it had but given a softness to her eyes. Never before had he so strongly felt her wayward, irresistible charm, which it was so impossible to analyse or explain. Indeed, if it came to analysis there were strange ingredients there; there was egoism as complete, and yet as disarming, as that of a Persian kitten; there was the unreasonableness of a spoilt child; there was the inconsiderateness and unreliability of an April day, which alternates its gleams of the saffron sun of spring with cold rain and plumping showers.
Yet he felt that there was something utterly adorable, wholly womanly that lay sheathed in these more superficial imperfections, something that stirred within them conscious of the coming summer, just as the life embalmed within the chrysalis stirs, giving token of the time when the husk shall burst, and that which was but a gray crawling thing shall be wafted on wings of silver emblazoned with scarlet and gold. Then there was her beauty too, which drew his eyes after the wonder of its perfection, and was worthy of the soul that he divined in her. And finally (and this perhaps to him was the supreme magnet) there was the amazing and superb quality of her vitality, that sparkled and effervesced in all she did and said, so that for him her speech was like song or light, and to be with her was to be bathed in the effulgence of her spirit. And Hugh, looking at her now, felt, as always, that his self slipped from him, so that he was conscious of her only; she possessed him, and he lay like the sea with the dazzle of sunlight on it that both reflects the radiance and absorbs it.
Then he sat up: and half turned from her, for there were things to be said yet that he could scarcely say while he looked at her.
"I
