She wondered, in her strange kind of mouse-in-the-trap trance, about that
unhappiness. Was there to be no happiness, for her anywhere? Was she
always to want more than she got, was all this passion now too late? Was
it real at all? Was it not a fever, a phantom, a hallucination? Did she
see Morris? Did she not rather see something that she must seize to slake
her burning feverish thirst? For one moment she had known happiness, when
her arms had gone around him and she had been able to console and comfort
him. But comfort him for how long? Was he not as unhappy as she, and would
they not always be unhappy? Was he not weighed down by the sin that he had
committed, that he, as he thought, had caused her to commit?...At that
she sprang up from the chair and paced the room, murmuring aloud: "No, no,
I did it. My sin, not his. I will care for him, watch over him--watch over
him, care for him. He must be glad."...She sank down by the bed, burying
her face in her hands.
* * * * *
Brandon was in his study finishing his letters. But behind his application
to the notes that he was writing his brain was moving like an animal
steathily investigating an unlighted house. He was thinking of his wife--
and of himself. Even as he was writing "And therefore it seems to me, my
dear Ryle, that with regard to the actual hour of the service, eight
o'clock----" his inner consciousness was whispering to him. "How you miss
Falk! How lonely the house seems without him! You thought you could get
along without love, didn't you? or, at least, you were not aware that it
played any very great part in your life. But now that the one person whom
you most sincerely loved is gone, you see that it was not to be so simply
taken for granted, do you not? Love must be worked for, sacrificed for,
cared for, nourished and cherished. You want some one to cherish now, and
you are surprised that you should so want...yes, there is your wife--
Amy...Amy.... You had taken her also for granted. But she is still with
you. There is time."
His wife was illuminated with tenderness. He put down his pen and stared
in front of him. What he wanted and what she wanted was a holiday. They
had been too long here in this place. That was what he needed, that was
the explanation of his headaches, of his tempers, of his obsession about
Ronder.
As soon as this Pybus St. Anthony affair was settled he would take his
wife abroad. Just the two of them. Another honeymoon after all these
years. Greece, Italy...and who knows? Perhaps he would see Falk on his
way through London returning...Falk....
He had forgotten his letters, staring in front of him, tapping the table
with his pen.
There was a knock on the door. The maid said, "A lady to see you, sir. She
says it's important"--and, before he could ask her name, some one else was
in the room with him and the door was closed behind her.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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