"It"s what I won"t do. I"m not going back to _that_. Don"t you see that"s why I won"t go back to you?"
Her apathy had become exhaustion. The flat, powerless voice, dying of its own utterance, gave him a sense of things past and done with, sunk into the ultimate oblivion. No voice of her energy and defiance could have touched him so. Her indifference troubled him like pa.s.sion; in its completeness, its finality, it stirred him to decision, to acceptance of its terms. She was ready to fall from his grasp by her own dead weight.
There was only one way in which he could hold her.
"Kitty," he said, "is that really why you won"t come back?"
"Yes; that"s why. Anything--anything but that."
"I see. You"re tired of it? And you want to give it up? Well, I"m not sure that I don"t want you to."
"Then why," she moaned, "why won"t you let me go?"
"Simply because I can"t. I"ve tried it, Kitty. I can"t."
He came and sat close to her. He leaned his face to hers and spoke thickly and low.
"You can"t give it up, dear. You"re bound to go back."
"No--no--no. Don"t talk about it."
"I won"t. I won"t ask you to go back; but I can"t do without you."
"Oh yes, you can. There are other women."
"I loathe them all. I wouldn"t do for one of them what I"ll do for you."
"What will you do for me?"
"I"ll marry you, Kitty."
She laughed in her tired fashion. "You want to make an honest woman of me, do you?"
"No. I think I"m endeavouring to make myself an honest man. If you give Lucy up for me I don"t want you to lose by the transaction. You were to have been married; but for me perhaps, you would have been. Very well, I"ll marry you."
"And that," said she, "will make it all right?"
"Well, won"t it?"
"No, it won"t. How could it?"
"You know how. It will help you to keep straight. That"s what you want, isn"t it?"
"Oh yes, that"s what I _want_. And you think I"ll keep straight by marrying you?"
"I won"t swear to it. But I know it"s ten to one that you"ll go to the devil if you don"t marry me. And you say you don"t want to do that."
"I don"t want--to marry you."
He shrugged his shoulders. "Perhaps not; but even marrying me might be better than the other alternative."
"It wouldn"t," she cried. "It would be worse. If I married you I couldn"t get away from you. I couldn"t get away from _it_. You"d keep me in it. It"s what you like me for--what you"re marrying me for. You haven"t married, all these years, because you can"t stand living with a decent woman. And you think, if I marry you, it will make it all right.
All right!"
She rose and defied him. "Why, I"d rather be your mistress. Then I could get away from you. I shall get away now."
She turned violently, and he leaped up and caught her in his arms. She struggled, beating upon his breast, and crying with a sad, inarticulate cry. She would have sunk to the floor if he had not kept his hold of her.
He raised her, and she stood still, breathing hard, while he still grasped her tightly by the wrists.
"Let me go," she said faintly.
"Where are you going to?"
"I don"t know."
"You"ve no money. If you"re not going back what are you going to do?"
"I don"t know."
Her eyelids dropped, and he saw mendacity in her eyes" furtive fleeing under cover. He held her tighter. His arm shook her, not brutally, but with a nervous movement that he was powerless to control.
"You lie," he said. "You"ve been lying to me all the time. You _are_ going back. You"re going to that fellow Lucy."
"No. I"m going--somewhere--where I shan"t see him."
"Where?"
"I don"t know."
"Abroad?"
"I think so."
"By yourself?"
Her eyelids quivered, and she panted. "Yes."
There was a knock at the door.
"Let me go," she said again.
He let her go.
"You"re going to live--by yourself--respectably--abroad?"
She was silent.
"And how long do you think that will last?"