“Gillian, I asked you a question,” he began unsteadily. She confronted him swiftly. Her eyes were steady under his, though the pallor of her face was ghastly.
“You are the one person who has no right to ask me that question, Barry.” There was no anger in her voice, there was not even reproach, but a gentle dignity that almost unmanned him. He turned away with a gesture of infinite regret.
“I beg your pardon,” he said, in a strangled voice. “I was a cur—what I said was damnable.” He faced her again with sudden vehemence. “I wish to God I had left you free. I had no right to marry you, to ruin your life with my selfishness, to bar you from the love and children that should have been yours. You might have met a man who would have given you both, who would have given you the full happy life you ought to have. In my cursed egoism I have done you almost the greatest injury a man can do a woman. My God, I wonder you don’t hate me!”
She forced back the words that rushed to her lips. She knew the danger of an unconsidered answer, the danger of the whole situation. The durability of their future life seemed to depend on her reply, its continuance to hang on a slender thread that, perilously strained, threatened momentarily to snap. She was fearful of precipitating the crisis she had long realised was pending and which now seemed drawing to a head. An unconsidered word, an intonation even, might bring about the catastrophe she feared.
She sought for time, praying for inspiration to guide her. The waiting tea table supplied her immediate want.
Mechanically she filled the cups and cut cake with deliberate precision while her mind worked feverishly.
His distress weighed with her more than her own.
Positive as she now was of the true reason that had prompted him to marry her she saw in his outburst only another chivalrous attempt to hide that reason from her. He had purposely endeavoured to misrepresent himself, and, understanding, a wave of passionate gratitude filled her.
Her love was clamouring for audible expression. If she could only speak! If she could only break through the restrictions that hampered her, tell him all that was in her heart, measure the force of her living love against the phantom of that dead past that had killed in him all the joy of life. But she could not speak. Pride kept her silent, and the knowledge that she could not add to the burden he already bore the embarrassment of an unsought love.
But something she must say, and that before he noticed the hesitation that might rob her words of any worth. Only by refusing to attach an undue value to the significance of what he had said could she arrest the dangerous trend of the conversation and bring it to a safer level.
She sat down slowly, re-arranging the simple tray with ostentatious care.
“You didn’t force me to marry you, Barry,” she said quietly. “I knew what I was doing, I realised the difficulties that might arise. But you have nothing to reproach yourself with. You have been kind and considerate in everything. I am enormously grateful to you—and I am very content with my life. Please believe that. There is only one thing that I could wish changed; you said that we were to be friends—and you have let me be only a fair weather friend. Won’t you let me sometimes share and help in the difficulties, as well as in the pleasures? Your interests, your obligations are so great—” she went on hurriedly, lest he should think she was aiming at deeper, more personal concerns—“I can’t help knowing that there must be difficulties. If you would only let me take my part—” She looked up, meeting his gloomy stare at last, and a faint appeal crept into her eyes. “I’m not a child, Barry, to be shown only the sunny side of life.”
An indescribable expression flitted across his face, changing it marvellously.
“I would never have you know the dark side,” he said briefly, as he took the cup she held out to him.
She was conscious that the tension, though lessened had not altogether disappeared. There was in his manner a constraint that set her heart throbbing painfully. She glanced furtively from time to time at his stern worn face, and the weariness in his eyes brought a lump into her throat.
He talked spasmodically, of friends whom he had seen in London, of a hundred and one trivial matters, but of the business that had kept him in town he said nothing and she wondered what had been in his mind when he had departed from an established rule and deliberately sought her in a room that he never entered. Had he come with any express intention, any confidence that had been thwarted by Mouston’s stupid behaviour? She stifled a sigh of disappointment. He might never again be moved by the same impulse.
With growing anxiety she noticed that his restlessness was greater even than usual. Refusing a second cup of tea he lit a cigarette, pacing up and down as he talked, his hands plunged deep in his pockets.
In one of the silences that punctuated his jerky periods he paused by a little table on which lay a portfolio, and lifting it idly looked at the sketches it contained. With a sudden look of apprehension Gillian started and made a half movement as if to rise, then with a shrug she sank back on the sofa, watching him intently. It was her private sketch book, and there was in it one portrait in particular, his own, that she had no wish for him to see. But remonstrance would only call attention to what she hoped might pass unnoticed. Craven turned over the sketches slowly. He had seen little of his wife’s work since their marriage, she was shy of submitting it to him, and with the policy of non-interference he had adopted he had expressed no curiosity. He recognised many faces, and, recognising, remembered wherein lay her special skill. He found himself looking for characteristics that were known to him in the portraits of the men and women he was studying. There was no attempt at concealment—vices and virtues, liberality of mind, pettiness of soul were set forth in naked truth. A sympathetic picture of Peters arrested him, though the name written beneath it puzzled. He looked at the kindly generous countenance with its friendly half-sad eyes and tender mouth with a feeling of envy. He would have given years of his life to have possessed the peace of mind that was manifested in the calm serenity of his agent’s face.
His lips tightened as he laid the sketch down. With his thoughts lingering on the last portrait for a second or two he looked at the next one absently. Then a stifled exclamation broke from him and he peered at it closer. And, watching, Gillian drew a deep breath, clenching her hands convulsively. He stood quite still for what seemed an eternity, then came slowly across the room and stood directly in front of her. And for the first time she was afraid of meeting his eyes.
“Do I look like—that?”
Her head drooped lower, her fingers twining and intertwining nervously, and her dry lips almost refused their office.
“I have seen you like that,” very slowly and almost inaudibly, but he caught the reluctant admission.
“So—damnable?”
She flinched from the loathing in his voice.
“I am sorry—” she murmured faintly.
“Good God!” the profanity was wrung from him, but had he thought of it he would have considered it justified, for the face at which he was staring was the beautiful tormented face of a fallen angel. He looked with a kind of horror at the hungry passionate eyes fierce with unsatisfied longing, shadowed with terrible memory, tortured, hopeless; at the set mouth, a straight grim line under the trim golden brown moustache; at the bitterness and revolt expressed in all the deep cut lines of the tragic face. He laid it down with a feeling of repulsion. She saw him like that! The pain of it was intolerable.
He laughed with a harsh mirthlessness that made her quiver.
“It is a truer estimation of my character than the one you gave me a few minutes ago,” he said bitterly, “and you may thank heaven I am your husband only in name. God keep you from a nearer acquaintance with me.” And turning on his heel he left her. Long after he had gone she sat on motionless, her fingers picking mechanically at the chintz cover of the sofa, staring into space with wide eyes brimming with tears. She knew it was a cruel sketch, but she had never meant him to see it. It had taken shape unconsciously under her hand, and while she hated it she had kept it because of the remarkable likeness and because it was the only picture she had of him.