here and tell me. I think I have a right to ask that of you."
"Oh—rights!" she said. "But it's quite simple. I threw you over, as you call it, because I found out you didn't care for me."
"I—not care for you?"
"Exactly."
"But even so—if you believed it—but how could you? Even so—why not have told me—why not have given me a chance?" His voice trembled.
Hers was firm.
"I was giving you a chance, and I wanted to make sure that you would take it. If I'd just said, 'You don't care for me,' you'd have said, 'Oh, yes I do!' And we should have been just where we were before."
"Then it wasn't that you were tired of me?"
"Oh, no," she said sedately, "it wasn't that!"
"Then you—did you really care for me still, even when you sent back the ring and wouldn't see me, and went to Germany, and wouldn't open my letters, and all the rest of it?"
"Oh, yes!"—she laughed lightly—"I loved you frightfully all that time. It does seem odd now to look back on it, doesn't it? but I nearly broke my heart over you."
"Then why the devil—"
"You mustn't swear," she interrupted; "I never heard you do that before. Is it the Indian climate?"
"Why did you send me away?" he repeated.
"Don't I keep telling you?" Her tone was impatient. "I found out you didn't care, and—and I'd always despised people who kept other people when they wanted to go. And I knew you were too honourable, generous, soft-hearted—what shall I say?—to go for your own sake, so I thought, for your sake, I would make you believe you were to go for mine."
"So you lied to me?"
"Not exactly. We weren't suited—since you didn't love me."
"I didn't love you?" he echoed again.
"And somehow I'd always wanted to do something really noble, and I never had the chance. So I thought if I set you free from a girl you didn't love, and bore the blame myself, it would be rather noble. And so I did it."
"And did the consciousness of your own nobility sustain you comfortably?" The sneer was well sneered.
"Well—not for long," she admitted. "You see, I began to doubt after a while whether it was really my nobleness after all. It began to seem like some part in a play that I'd learned and played—don't you know that sort of dreams where you seem to be reading a book and acting the story in the book at the same time? It was a little like that now and then, and I got rather tired of myself and my nobleness, and I wished I'd just told you, and had it all out with you, and both of us spoken the truth and parted friends. That was what I thought of doing at first. But then it wouldn't have been noble! And I really did want to be noble—just as some people want to paint pictures, or write poems, or climb Alps. Come, take me back to the ball-room. It's cold here in the Past."
But how could he let the curtain be rung down on a scene half finished, and so good a scene?
"Ah, no! tell me," he said, laying his hand on hers; "why did you think I didn't love you?"
"I knew it. Do you remember the last time you came to see me? We quarrelled—we were always quarrelling—but we always made it up. That day we made it up as usual, but you were still a little bit angry when you went away. And then I cried like a fool. And then you came back, and—you remember—"
"Go on," he said. He had bridged the ten years, and the scene was going splendidly. "Go on; you must go on."
"You came and knelt down by me," she said cheerfully. "It was as good as a play—you took me in your arms and told me you couldn't bear to leave me with the slightest cloud between us. You called me your heart's dearest, I remember—a phrase you'd never used before—and you said such heaps of pretty things to me! And at last, when you had to go, you swore we should never quarrel again—and that came true, didn't it?"
"Ah, but why?"
"Well, as you went out I saw you pick up your gloves off the table, and I knew—"
"Knew what?"
"Why, that it was the gloves you had come back for and not me—only when you saw me crying you were sorry for me, and determined to do your duty whatever it cost you. Don't! What's the matter?"
He had caught her wrists in his hands and was scowling angrily at her.
"Good God! was that all? I did come back for you. I never thought of the damned gloves. I don't remember them. If I did pick them up, it must have been mechanically and without noticing. And you ruined my life for that?"
He was genuinely angry; he was back in the past, where he had a right to be angry with her. Her eyes grew soft.
"Do you mean to say that I was wrong—that it was all my fault—that you did love me?"
"Love you?" he said roughly, throwing her hands from him; "of course I loved you—I shall always love you. I've never left off loving you. It was you who didn't love me. It was all your fault."
He leaned his elbows on his knees and his chin on his hands. He was breathing quickly. The scene had swept him along in its quickening flow. He shut his eyes, and tried to catch at something to steady himself—some rope by which he could pull himself to land again. Suddenly an arm was laid on his neck, a face laid against his face. Lips touched his hand, and her voice, incredibly softened and tuned to the key of their love's overture, spoke—
"Oh, forgive me, dear, forgive me! If you love me still—it's too good to be true—but if you do—ah, you do!—forgive me, and we can forget it all! Dear, forgive me! I love you so!"
He was quite still, quite silent.
"Can't you forgive me?" she began again. He suddenly stood up.
"I'm married," he said. He drew a long breath and went on hurriedly, standing before her, but not looking at her. "I can't ask you to forgive me—I shall never forgive myself."
"It doesn't matter," she said, and she laughed; "I—I wasn't serious. I saw you were trying to play the old comedy, and I thought I had better play up to you. If I'd known you were married—but it was only your glove, and we're such old acquaintances! There's another dance beginning. Please go—I've no doubt my partner will find me."
He bowed, gave her one glance, and went. Halfway down the stairs he turned and came back. She was still sitting as he had left her. The angry eyes she raised to him were full of tears. She looked as she had looked ten years before, when he had come back to her, and the cursed gloves had spoiled everything. He hated himself. Why had he played with fire and raised this ghost to vex her? It had been such pretty fire, and such a beautiful ghost. But she had been hurt—he had hurt her. She would blame herself now for that old past; as for the new past, so lately the present, it would not bear thinking of.
The scene must be rounded off somehow. He had let her wound her pride, her self-respect.
