第63章

"I wanted you to do it," she repeated.She was under the spell of her love and of his touch.She was clutching to save what she could, was desperately hoping it might not be so little as she feared."I had the--the same impulse that you had." She looked at him timidly, with a pleading smile."And please don't say you're sorry you did it, even if you feel so.You'll think me very bold--I know it isn't proper for young women to make such admissions.But--don't reproach yourself--please!"If she could have looked into his mind as he stood there, crushed and degraded in his own eyes, she would have been a little consoled--for, in defiance of his self-scorn and self-hate, his nerves were tingling with the memory of that delirium, and his brain was throbbing with the surge of impulses long dormant, now imperious.But she was not even looking toward him--for, through her sense of shame, of wounded pride, her love was clamoring to her to cry out: "Take me in your arms again! I care not on what terms, only take me and hold me and kiss me."The rain presently ceased as abruptly as it had begun and they returned under the dripping leaves to the highroad.She glanced anxiously at him as they walked toward the town, but he did not speak.She saw that if the silence was to be broken, she must break it.

"What can I say to convince you?" she asked, as if not he but she were the offender.

He did not answer.

"Won't you look at me, please?"

He looked, the color mounting in his cheeks, his eyes unsteady.

"Now, tell me you'll not make me suffer because you fancy you've wronged me.Isn't it ungallant of you to act this way after I've humiliated myself to confess I didn't mind?""Thank you," he said humbly, and looked away.

"You won't have it that I was in the least responsible?" She was teasing him now--he was plainly unaware of the meaning of her yielding."He's so modest," she thought, and went on: "You won't permit me to flatter myself I was a temptation too strong even for your iron heart, Don Quixote?"He flushed scarlet, and the suspicion, the realization of the truth set her eyes to flashing.

"It's before another woman he's abasing himself," she thought, "not before me.He isn't even thinking of me." When she spoke her tone was cold and sneering: "I hope she will forgive you.

She certainly would if she could know what a paladin you are."He winced, but did not answer.At the road up the bluffs she paused and there was an embarrassed silence.Then he poured out abrupt sentences:

"It was doubly base.I betrayed your friendly trust, I was false to her.Don't misunderstand--she's nothing to me.She's nothing to me, yet everything.I began really to live when Ibegan to love her.And--every one must have a--a pole-star.And she's mine--the star I sail by, and always must.And--" He halted altogether, then blundered on: "I shall not forgive myself.But you--be merciful--forgive me--forget it!""I shall do neither," she replied curtly, jealousy and vanity stamping down the generous impulse that rose in response to his appeal.And she went up her road.A few yards and she paused, hoping to hear him coming after her.A few yards more and she sat down on a big boulder by the wayside.Until now all the wishes of her life had been more or less material, had been wishes which her wealth or the position her wealth gave had enabled her instantly to gratify.She buried her face in her arms and sobbed and rocked herself to and fro, in a cyclone of anger, and jealousy, and shame, and love, and despair.

"I hate him!" she exclaimed between clenched teeth."I hate him, but--if he came and wanted me, oh, how I would LOVE him!"Meanwhile Pauline was at her father's.

"He isn't down yet," said her mother."You know, he doesn't finish dressing nowadays until he has read the papers and his mail.Then he walks in the garden.""I'll go there," said Pauline."Won't you bring him when he's ready?"She never entered the garden that the ghosts of her childhood--how far, far it seemed!--did not join her, brushing against her, or rustling in tree and bush and leafy trellis.She paused at the end of the long arbor and sat on the rustic bench there.A few feet away was the bed of lilies-of-the-valley.

Every spring of her childhood she used to run from the house on the first warm morning and hurry to it; and if her glance raised her hopes she would kneel upon the young grass and lower her head until her long golden hair touched the black ground; and the soil that had been hard and cold all winter would be cracked open this way and that; and from the cracks would issue an odor--the odor of life.And as she would peer into each crack in turn she would see, down, away down, the pale tip of what she knew to be an up-shooting slender shaft.And her heart would thrill with joy, for she knew that the shafts would presently rise green above the black earth, would unfold, would blossom, would bloom, would fling from tremulous bells a perfumed proclamation of the arrival of spring.

As she sat waiting, it seemed to her that through the black earth of her life she could see and feel the backward heralds of her spring--"after the long winter," she said to herself.