"And--and if he were," the girl cried, "would you care?"
Joan started, her face grew colder.
"I do not understand."
"Yes, you--you do. Why are you marrying him? Why are you taking him from me when--"
"Taking him from--you?" Joan"s voice was like ice water on flames of fire. Ellice was silent.
"Miss Meredyth, I came here to-day to see you, to speak to you, to--to open my heart to you." Her lips trembled. "Perhaps I am wrong, perhaps I have no right to be here to say what I am going to say. I told Connie; she--she knows that I have come here, and she knows why."
"Yes; go on."
"If--if you loved him it would be different. I would not dare think of saying anything then. I think I would be glad. I could, at any rate, be reconciled to it, because it would be for his happiness. If you loved him--but you don"t--you don"t! He is a man who could not live without love. It is part of his life. He might think, might believe that he would be content to take you because you are lovely and--and good and clever, and all those things that I am not, even though you do not love him, but the time would come when his heart would ache for the love you withheld. Oh, Joan--Joan, forgive me--forgive me, but I must speak. I think you would if you were in my place!"
The cold bitterness was pa.s.sing slowly from Joan"s face. There came a tinge of colour into her cheeks; her eyes that watched the girl grew softer and more tender.
"Go on," she said; "go on, tell me!"
"I have nothing more to say."
"Yes, you have--you have much more. You have this to say--you love him and want him, you wish to take him from me. Is that it, Ellice?"
"If you loved him I would not have dared to come. I would have told myself that I was content. But you don"t. I have watched you--yes, spied on you--looking for some sign of tenderness that would prove to me that you loved him; but it never came. And so I know that you are marrying Johnny Everard with no love, accepting all the great love that he is offering to you and giving him nothing in exchange. Oh, it is not fair!"
"It is not fair," Joan said; "it is not fair, and yet I thought of that.
I told him just what you have told me, and still he seemed to be content."
"Because he loves you so, and because he has hope in the future, because in spite of everything he still hopes that he might win your heart, and I know that he never can."
"How do you know that?"
"Because I--I think you have already given your heart away."
And now Joan"s eyes flamed, the anger came back. "By what right do you say that? How dared you say that?"
"It is only what I believed. I believed that a woman so sweet, so beautiful, so good as you, must love. You could not live your life without love. If it has not come yet, then it will come some day, and then if you are his--his wife, it will come too late. You are made for love, Joan, just as he is. You could not live your life without it--you would feel need for it. Oh yes, you think I am a child, a foolish, romantic schoolgirl, a stupid little thing, talking, talking, but in your heart you know that I am right."
"But if he--loves me," Joan said softly, "if he loves me, little Ellice, then how can I break my word to him?"
"I do not ask you to break your word to him, only tell him, tell him the truth again. Tell him what I have told you, tell him--if there is someone else, if you have already met someone you care for--tell him that too, so that he will know how impossible it must ever be that you will give him the love he hoped to win. Tell him that, be frank and truthful. Remember, it is for all your lives--all his life and all yours. When he realises that your heart can never be his, do you think he will not surfer more, will not his sufferings be longer drawn out than if you told him so frankly now? If the break was to come now, to come and be ended for ever--but to live together, to live a mock life, to live beneath the same roof, to share one another"s lives, and yet know one another"s souls to be miles and miles apart--oh, Joan, you would suffer, and he too, he perhaps even more than you."
"And you love him?" Joan said softly. "You love him, Ellice?"
"With all my heart and soul. I would die for him. It--it sounds foolish, this sort of thing is foolish, the kind of words a silly girl would say, yet it is the truth."
"I think it is," Joan said. "But then, dear, if he loves me, he could not love you?"
"I think he might," Ellice said softly.
She was thinking of the morning, of the look she had seen in his eyes, the awakening look of a man who sees things he has been blind to.
"I think he might," her heart echoed. "I think he might, in time, in a little time." And did not know, could not guess, that even at this moment Johnny Everard, sitting alone in his little study with untended papers strewn about him, was thinking of her--thinking of the look he had seen in her eyes that very day, out in the sunshine of the fields.
"So you came to me to tell me. It was brave of you?"
"I had to come. I could not have come if you had been different from what you are."
"Then, even though I am taking away the man you love from you, you do not hate me?"
"Hate you? Sometimes I think I wished I could--but I could not. If I had hated you, if I had thought you cold and hard to all the world, I would not be here. I have come to plead to you because you are generous and honest, true and good. I could not have come otherwise."
"What must I do, little Ellice?"
"Tell him the truth, if there is--"
"There is--yet that could never come to anything."
"Why not?"
"Because--ah, you can"t understand."
"Still, your heart is not your own; you could never give it to Johnny Everard."
"And I must tell him so, and then--"
"And then you will ask him if he would be content to live all his life without love, knowing that he will never, never win your heart, because it would be impossible."
"But I have given him my promise, Ellice."
"I know, I know; and you will not break it, because you could not break a promise. But you will tell him this, and offer him his freedom; it will be for him to decide."
Joan stood for many moments in silence, her hand still resting on the girl"s shoulder. Then she drew Ellice to her; she thrust back the shining hair, and kissed the girl"s forehead. "I think--yes, I think I shall do all this, Ellice," she said.
CHAPTER XLIV
POISON
"Johnny! Johnny! Have you gone to sleep, dear? There is someone here to see you."
"Eh?" Johnny started into wakefulness, he huddled his untidy papers together. "I must have been dozing off. I was thinking. Con, is Gipsy back yet?"
"Not yet, and I am getting a little anxious about her; it is almost dusk. But there is someone here asking for you."
"Who?"