"No--not for loving you. G.o.d knows, I can"t help that! But because I would have taken you and made you mine . . . you who are not mine at all."
"I"m all yours, really, Peter."
She came a few steps nearer to him, standing sweet and unafraid before him, her grave eyes shining with a kind of radiance.
"Dear," she went on simply, throwing out her hands in a little defenceless gesture, "if you want me, I"ll come to you. . . . Not--not secretly . . . while I"m still pledged to Roger. But openly, before all the world. I"ll go with you . . . if you"ll take me."
She stood very still, waiting for his answer. Right or wrong, in that moment of utter sacrifice of self, she had risen to the best that was in her. She was willing to lay all on love"s altar--body, soul, and spirit, and that honour of the Davenants which she had been so schooled to keep untarnished. Her pledge to Roger, her uncle"s faith in her--all these must be tossed into the fire to make her gift complete.
But the agony in Peter"s face when the mask had fallen from it had temporarily destroyed for her all values except the value of love.
Peter took the fluttering, outstretched fingers and laid his lips against them. Then he relinquished them slowly, lingeringly. Pa.s.sion had died out of his face. His eyes held only a grave tenderness, and the sternly sweet expression of his mouth recalled to Nan the man as she had first known him, before love, terrible and beautiful, had come into their lives to destroy them.
"I should never take you, dear," he said at last. "A man doesn"t hurt the thing he loves--not in his right senses. What he"ll do when the madness is on him--only his own soul knows."
She caught his arm impetuously.
"Peter, let me come! I"m not afraid of being hurt--not if we"re together. It"s only the hurt of being without you that I can"t bear. . . . Oh, I know what you"re thinking"--as she read the negation in his face--"that I should regret it, that I should mind what people said. Dear, if I can give you happiness, things like that simply wouldn"t count. . . . Ah, believe me, Peter!"
He looked down at her with the tenderness one accords a child, ignorantly pleading to have its way. He knew Nan"s temperament--knew that, in spite of all her courage, when the moment of exaltation had pa.s.sed not even love itself could make up for the bitterness of its price, if bought at such a cost. He pictured her exposed to the slights of those whose position was still una.s.sailable, waiting drearily at Continental watering-places till the decree absolute should be p.r.o.nounced, and finally, restored to respectability in so far as marriage with him could make it possible, but always liable to be unpleasantly reminded, as she went through life, that there had been a time when she had outraged convention. It was unthinkable! It would break her utterly.
"Even if that were all, it still wouldn"t be possible," he said gently.
"You don"t know what you would have to face. And I couldn"t let you face it. But it isn"t all. . . . There"s honour, dear, and duty. . . ."
Her gaze met his in dreary interrogation.
"Then--then, you"ll go away?" Her voice faltered, broke.
"Yes, I shall go away . . . out of your life."
He fell silent a moment. Then, with an effort, he went on:
"This is good-bye. We mustn"t see each other again--"
"No, no," she broke in a little wildly. "Don"t go, Peter, I can"t bear it." She clung to him, repeating piteously: "Don"t go . . . don"t go!"
He stooped and pressed his lips to her hair, holding her in his arms.
"My dear!" he murmured. "My very dear!"
And so they remained for a little s.p.a.ce.
Presently she lifted her face, white and strained, to his.
"_Must_ you go, Peter?"
"Heart"s beloved, there is no other way. We may not love . . . and we can"t be together and not love. . . . So I must go."
She lay very still in his arms for a moment. Then he felt a long, shuddering sigh run through her body.
"Yes," she whispered. "Yes. . . . Peter, go very quickly. . . ."
He took her face between his hands and kissed her on the mouth--not pa.s.sionately, but with the ineffably sad calmness of farewell.
"G.o.d keep you, dear," he said.
The door closed behind him, shutting him from her sight, and she stood for a few moments staring dazedly at its wooden panels. Then, with a sudden desperate impulse, she tore it open again and peered out.
But there was only silence--silence and emptiness. He had gone.
CHAPTER XXVII
THE DARK ANGEL
The following morning Ralph and Penelope breakfasted alone, the latter having given orders that Nan was on no account to be disturbed. It was rather a dreary meal. They were each oppressed by the knowledge which last night had revealed to them--the knowledge of the tragedy of love into which their two friends had been thrust by circ.u.mstances.
On their return from the concert at the Albert Hall they had encountered Mallory in the vestibule of the Mansions, and the naked misery stamped upon his face had arrested them at once.
"Peter, what is it?"
The question had sped involuntarily from Penelope"s lips as she met his blank, unseeing gaze. The sound of her voice seemed to bring him back to recognition.
"Go to Nan!" he said in queer, clipped tones. "She"ll need you. Go at once!"
And from a Nan whose high courage had at last bent beneath the storm, leaving her spent and unresisting, Penelope had learned the whole unhappy truth.
Since breakfast the Fentons had been dejectedly discussing the matter together.
"Why doesn"t she break off this miserable engagement with Trenby?"
asked Ralph moodily.
"She won"t. I think she would have done if--if--for Peter"s sake. But not otherwise. She"s got some sort of fixed notion that it wouldn"t be playing fair." Penelope paused, then added wretchedly: "I feel as if our happiness had been bought at her expense!"
"Ours?" Completely mystified, Ralph looked across at her inquiringly.
"Yes, ours." And she proceeded to fill in the gaps, explaining how, when she had refused to marry him, down at Mallow the previous summer, it was Nan who had brought about his recall from London.
"I asked her if she intended to marry Roger, anyway--whether it affected my marriage or not," she said. "And she told me that she should marry him "in any case." But now, I believe it was just a splendid lie to make me happy."
"It"s done that, hasn"t it?" asked Ralph, smiling a little.
Penelope"s eyes shone softly.
"You know," she answered. "But--Nan has paid for it."
The telephone h.e.l.l buzzed suddenly into the middle of the conversation and Penelope flew to answer it. When she came back her face held a look of mingled apprehension and relief.