"She. Electra."
"What then?"
"I was presented to her grandmother as my father"s daughter, not as her brother"s--wife." She was breathless upon the word. All the color went out of her face. She looked faint and wan.
"But it couldn"t be," he was repeating. "Didn"t you speak of Tom at all?"
"No."
"Didn"t she?"
"No."
He essayed a bald and unreasonable comfort.
"There, you see! You didn"t mention him, and Electra hardly brings herself to do it to any one. He never ceased being a trial to her. You must let me say that."
"Ah, that wasn"t it! Every time I might have spoken, a hand, a clever, skillful hand and cold as ice pushed me away. I can never speak of it.
She won"t let me."
He was with her, every impulse of his eager heart; but a tardy conscience pulled him up, bidding him remember that other loyalty.
"Give her time," he pleaded. "It"s a shock to her. Perhaps it ought not to be; but it is. Everything about Tom has always been a shock."
She, as well as he, remembered now that they spoke of Electra, whose high-bred virtues he had extolled to her in those still evenings on their voyage, when her courage failed her and he had opened to her the book of Electra"s truth and justice.
"Do you think," she said wistfully, "I might stay at your grandmother"s a few days more?"
"You are to stay forever. Grannie dotes upon you."
"No! no! But I shall have to think. I shall have to make my plans."
Again Peter felt yesterday"s brand of anger against his imperial lady, or, he told himself immediately, the unfortunate circ.u.mstances of this misunderstanding. "You run on," he said. "Grannie"s where you left her.
If you don"t feel like talking you can skip in at that little gate and the side door up to your room. I"m going back to see Electra."
"You mustn"t talk about me!"
"No!" He smiled at her in a specious rea.s.surance, and went striding on over the path by which she had come.
Electra, in the fulfillment of her intention, had gone scrupulously to her grandmother"s door, to ask if she needed anything, and then, when she had been denied, returned to the library, where she stood when Peter appeared on the threshold, as if she had been expecting him. He did not allow his good impulse to cool, but hurried forward to her with an abounding interest and a certainty of finding it fulfilled. As at first, when he had come to her in the garden the day before, he uttered her name eloquently, and broke out upon the heels of it,--
"I didn"t see you all yesterday, after that first minute."
Electra looked at him seriously, and his heart sank. Peter had been thinking straight thoughts and swearing by crude values in these five years when he had lived with men and women who said what they meant, things often foolish and outrageous, but usually honest, and his mind had got a trick of a.s.serting itself. None of the judgments it had been called upon to make seemed to matter vitally; but this one disconcertingly did, and to his horror he found himself wondering if Electra could possibly mean to be so hateful. Electra meant nothing of the kind. She had a pure desire toward the truth, and she a.s.sumed that Peter"s desire tallied with her own. She felt very strongly on the point in question, and she saw no reason why he should not offer the greatest hospitality toward her convictions.
"Peter," she said at once, "you must not talk to me about that woman."
"So she said," Peter was on the point of irresistibly retorting, but he contented himself with the weak make-shift that at least gains time,--
"What woman?"
"Markham MacLeod"s daughter."
"Tom"s wife? Tom"s widow?"
Electra looked at him in definite reproof.
"You must not do that, Peter," she warned him. "You must not speak of her in that way."
"For G.o.d"s sake, why not, Electra?"
"That is not her t.i.tle. You must not give it to her."
He stared at her for a number of seconds, while she met his gaze inflexibly. Then his face broke up, as if a hand had struck it. Light and color came into it, and his mouth trembled.
"Electra," he said, "what do you want me to understand?"
"You do understand it, Peter," she said quietly. "I can hardly think you will force me to state it explicitly."
"You can"t mean it! no, you can"t. You mustn"t imply things, Electra.
You imply she was not married to him."
Still Electra was looking at him with that high demeanor which, he felt with exasperation, seemed to make great demands upon him of a sort that implied a.s.sumptions he must despise.
"This is very difficult for me," she was saying, and Peter at once possessed himself of one pa.s.sive hand.
"Of course it is difficult," he cried warmly. "I told her so. I told her everything connected with Tom always was difficult. She knows that as well as we do."
"Have you talked him over with her?" The tone was neutral, yet it chilled him.
"Good Lord, yes! We"ve done nothing but talk him over from an outside point of view. When she was deciding whether to come here, whether to write you or just present herself as she has--of course Tom"s name came into it. She was Tom"s wife, wasn"t she? Tom"s widow?"
"No! no!" said Electra, in a low and vehement denial. "She was not."
Peter blazed so that he seemed to tower like a long thin guidepost showing the way to anger. "I said the same thing yesterday."
"That was before you saw her. It means more now, infinitely more."
"I hope it does."
"Think what you"re saying, Electra," he said violently, so that she lifted her hand slightly, as if to reprove him. "You refuse to receive her--"
"I have received her,--as her father"s daughter. I may even do so again."
"But not as your sister?"
"That would be impossible. You must see it is impossible, feeling as I do."
"But how, how? You imply things that dizzy me, and then, when it comes to the pinch, I can"t get a sane word out of you." That seemed to him, as to her, an astonishing form of address to an imperial lady, and he added at once, "Forgive me!" But he continued irrepressibly, "Electra, you can"t mean you doubt her integrity."