still liked tea—and looked over some papers, and saw, outside, the afternoon grow stiller and more golden, and knew that all dreads were in abeyance and that the somnolence, as of a drugged sweetness and fatigue, still kept him safe.
He was conscious at last of a purely physical chill; the library was cool and he stepped into the sunlight on the lawn, walking up and down among the flowers and, presently, across the grassy terraces, to the lower groups of trees, vaguely directing his steps to the little summer-house that faced the west and was as full of sunlight at this hour as a fretted shell of warm, lapping sea-water. They could not see him, on their way up from the river, nor he them, from here, and after a half-hour or so of dreamy basking it would be time to dress for dinner, Sir Walter would have gone and Kitty would be at the house again.
He followed the narrow path, set thickly with young ashes and sycamores, and saw beyond the trees the roof of the summer-house heaped with illumined festoons of traveller's-joy, and then, when he was near, he heard voices within it, Kitty's voice and Sir Walter's.
Hesitating, half-turning to go back, it was as if a childish panic of shyness seized him, so that he smiled at himself as he stood there, in the arrested attitude of an involuntary eavesdropper. But the smile faded. A look of bewilderment came to his face. Kitty was weeping and Sir Walter was pleading with her, and so strange was Sir Walter's voice, so strange what he was saying to Kitty, that all the strangeness of the day found now its culminating moment.
He walked on, slowly, unwillingly, helplessly, walked on, as he now knew, into some far other form of suffering than any that had been foreseen by him that afternoon.
A rustic seat ran round the summer-house. On the side most hidden he sank down. He did not choose the hidden side. He had no feeling of will or choice; had they come out upon him he would have looked at them with the same bewildered eyes. But, dully, he felt that he must know—know—why Kitty was unhappy.
Sunken on the seat, among the traveller's-joy, exhausted, yet alert, his head dizzy and his heart stilled, as it were, to listen, it was this amazement and curiosity that Holland felt rather than anger, jealousy, or grief.
Kitty was unhappy; Sir Walter loved her, and she loved Sir Walter. Sir Walter was imploring her to come away with him. "But you do love me," was the phrase that he repeated again and again, the strong protest of fact against her refusal.
The dizziness lifting, the heart beating more normally, Holland knew more. Kitty was unhappy and loved Sir Walter, but, deeper than that, was the truth that she was happy in her knowledge of his love, deeper than that—though this depth was of thankfulness in her husband's heart—was the truth that the love was as yet a beautiful pastime; there was joy for her in her own sadness, drama in her pain; she was a child with a strange toy in her hand; it charmed her and she had not learned to dread it.
Her husband's comprehension of her, of her childishness, her fluidity, her weakness, actually touched with respect his comprehension of Sir Walter; for Sir Walter's strength was reverent, even in his recklessness there was dignity. Holland knew that he spoke the truth when he said to Kitty that she might trust him for life.
It was the real thing with Sir Walter. With Kitty the real thing could be little more than the response to reality in others. There was the danger that her husband steadied himself to look at, as he sat in the sunlight outside the summer-house and listened.
The dizziness was quite gone. He had never felt a greater mental clarity. He knew that he must be suffering; but suffering seemed relegated to some region of mere physical sensation. He saw and understood so many things that he had never seen or understood before. He felt no jealousy, not a pang of the defrauded, injured male, not a throb of the broken-hearted lover; yet it was not indifference to Kitty that gave him his immunity; he had never cared more for Kitty; it was, perhaps, in a tenderer key, as he cared for the station-master, as he cared, now, for Sir Walter. He was himself soon to die and, as personalities, as related to his own life, people had ceased to count; but as lives that were to go on after he was dead, they counted as they had never done till then; and Kitty most of all. It was this intense consciousness of her youth, of all the years of life she had to live, that pressed with such clearness and such fear upon him. She had all her life before her and she held in her hands a terrible, a beautiful toy that, suddenly transformed to an engine of destruction, might shatter her.
Sir Walter was going. He said that he would come again to-morrow.
"Nicholas will be here," said Kitty. She no longer wept. Her voice, now that the stress of the situation was over, had regained its pensive sweetness.
"Yes," said Sir Walter, "that's what's so odious, darling; he will always be here and everything will be twisted and horrible. I like your husband."
"He is a strange man; I sometimes think that he cares for nothing but his work; he is all thought and no heart. I don't believe that he would really mind if I were to go away with you. He would smile, sadly and ironically, and say: 'Poor, silly child.' And then he would turn to his papers. I'm nothing to him but a doll, a convenient, domestic doll. And he doesn't care for playing with dolls except for a little while now and then." Kitty spoke with a sober pathos that did not veil resentment.
"Ah, you can say all that to me—and expect me to go on bearing seeing you wasted and thrown away!" Sir Walter broke out. "What stands between us? Why must we go on suffering like this?"
"Isn't it a great joy—to know that the other is there, understanding—and caring?"
"A killing sort of joy."
"How cruel, how wrong you are," Kitty murmured; but her husband knew that for her, indeed, the joy was deep, and that it was in such moments of power over an emotion she could rouse yet dominate that she had her keenest sense of it.
"I can't help it," said Sir Walter. "I shall always want you to come away with me."
"Good-bye:—for to-day."
"It's you who are cruel."
At that, silence following, Holland knew that Kitty's quiet tears fell again.
Sir Walter was subjugated. He pleaded for pardon; promised not to torment her—to try not to torment her. A trysting-place was fixed on for next day and Holland felt another chill of fear at Kitty's swift resource and craft in planning it. The child knew how to plot and lie. It thought itself nobly justified, no doubt, and that its fidelity to duty gave it the right to every liberty of conscience. And before Sir Walter went there was a moment of relenting that showed how near was the joy of yielding to the joy of ruthlessness, "For this once—for this once only—" Kitty murmured. And Holland knew that Sir Walter held her in his arms and kissed her.
After his departure Kitty sat on for some moments in the summer-house. She sighed deeply once or twice and Holland fancied, from her light movements, that she had leaned her arms on the table and rested her head on them. He heard presently, that she was softly saying a prayer, and at the sound, tears filled his eyes. Then, rising, she collected her basket of flowers, her parasol, her books, and walked away with slow steps along the path leading to the house.
CHAPTER II
Two facts stood clear before Holland's eyes. He had been culpably blind and Kitty was in danger. He asked himself if he had not been culpably selfish too, for Kitty's summing up of his attitude towards her would have hurt had he not been beyond such hurts; but, looking back, he could not see
