The hand crept round the clock, the swift November twilight fell, and still she did not move; only her clasped hands stretched themselves out as if in prayer. She was not praying though. The attitude was instinctive and unconscious; a blind, mute appeal. She was simply stunned. The room grew darker and darker until its only light was a ray from the street-lamp outside falling straight across the bowed head; and then there was a ring at the bell and a slow step upon the stairs. Clemence knew the step well, though she had never before heard it fall like that. As it fell upon her ear now, a strong shiver ran all through her, and her hands were drawn sharply to cover her face. The door was opened, and her face was pressed down still more tightly.

“Clemence! What, all in the dark? Why, Clemence——” The masterful, rather aggressively cheerful young voice stopped abruptly, and Julian Romayne stood still against the door he had closed behind him, listening; listening to a low, pitiful sound, which seemed to fill the very air—the sound of a woman’s heart-broken crying. At the first tone of his voice great, scalding tears had started to Clemence’s eyes suddenly and without warning; a low, choking sob had shaken her from head to foot, and she was crying now with the hopeless abandonment of suddenly loosened grief.

There was a moment during which the only sound in the room was the sound of her quivering sobs. Julian stood quite still; on the first instant there leapt into his face such a look of fierce, vindictive anger as absolutely transformed it. The look faded slowly into a kind of bitter background, and a hard sullenness settled itself upon it—settled with some difficulty as it seemed, for his lips twitched a little. Then he advanced into the room and broke the silence, and the roughness in his tone seemed to defy something within himself. He made no attempt to light the gas. The lamp outside made it possible to move about, and apparently he did not care for further illumination.

“Come, Clemence,” he said, “what’s the matter?”

He had not approached her; on the contrary, he was on the other side of the room looking down at her across the lodging-house table. She did not raise her head or move as she replied; indeed, the choked, broken words were rather the expression of the mingled shame and pity with which she was crushed than a definite answer to his words.

“Oh! Julian! Julian! Julian!”

Apparently the tone of her voice affected him in spite of himself, for his face twitched again, and he spoke more harshly still.

“What’s the matter, I say?”

She stretched her hands out to him across the table, still without lifting her face, in an unconscious gesture of appeal.

“Oh, don’t!” she cried beseechingly and piteously. “Don’t, dear! Don’t pretend any more. I—I know!”

The hands thrust deep down into Julian’s pockets were clenched fiercely, and his teeth were set together, as a look rose in his eyes which they had never held before.

“My mother?” he said.

She answered only with a slight shivering gesture, but it was enough. With his young face white to the lips with passionate resentment, Julian turned brusquely away and took two blind strides to the window, with a muttered oath.

There was a long silence. Julian stood at the window, staring blankly out into the darkness with hard eyes. Clemence was indeed, as she believed herself to be, his wife. How it had come about, how he had drifted into anything so far from his vague thoughts in his first meetings with her, he could not have said. What it was that had shaped and moulded his intention into something so much purer and more manly than his own nature, he only now and then felt faintly and indefinitely when he touched it, as he could touch it rarely and densely, in the woman from whose higher nature it emanated. He had married her with that reckless carelessness for the future which seems almost abnormal, but which is not an uncommon characteristic of weakness; and now he was quite incapable of facing and enduring the legitimate consequences of his action. He had lied to his mother to save himself from the heavier penalty with which she threatened him, and his suggestion as to the possibility of his marrying the girl she believed him to have ruined, had been a miserable, consciously degraded attempt at cutting the Gordian knot. He had lied to his mother again, deliberately and without compunction, at their second interview, giving her a promise which he knew to be an empty form, in his word to break with the girl who was his wife. He had come to Clemence to-day, intending to arrange for that temporary suspension of intercourse with her, which was inevitable as a blind to his mother, by telling her that he was obliged to go abroad immediately for an indefinite period.

Now as he stood there in the dark little room, with his eyes fixed on the solitary gas-lamp outside, he was gradually realising that it was all over. His mother had sent, had possibly come herself, to Clemence, he supposed, and Clemence had, of course, declared herself his wife. His plans were all upset. His carefully made calculations were no longer of any avail. It was all over. His brain gradually ceased to busy itself; he was staring darkly at penury, humiliation, ostracism—not thinking of them or feeling them, but just contemplating them with a stupid, mental gaze.

Gradually a sense of his surroundings began to return to him. He became conscious that it was a street-lamp at which he was looking; that there was a dark little street before him; that there was a dim room behind him; and then from that room a low sound came to him—faint, exhausted, long-drawn sobs, as of a woman who has wept herself into quiet. He began to listen for them and count them involuntarily. Then they began to hurt him; each one seemed to stick something into his heart. At last he walked across almost mechanically, and laid his hand tentatively on her shoulder.

“It’s all right, Clemence!” he said huskily. “It’s all right, dear. After all, you know, you are my wife all right!” He was conscious of a vague idea that it was the supposition he had allowed that had cut her so cruelly.

There was another moment’s pause, and then Clemence slowly lifted her head and looked at him for the first time. Her face was white and exhausted-looking with her tears, and her eyes, luminous and inexpressibly mournful, seemed to look through the pale, good-looking young features above her into the poor cramped soul they hid.

“I?” she said. “What does it matter about me, Julian? It’s you! Oh, my dear, my dear, it’s you!”

“It—it’s awkward!” returned Julian gloomily; his consciousness of the prospect before him seemed to quicken and writhe at what he supposed to be her realisation of it. “It’s loss of everything practically, of course. One will be cut right and left, and where money is to come from——”

He was interrupted by a low cry. Clemence had drawn a little back as though to see him better, and was looking up at him with her delicate eyebrows drawn together in intense, painful perplexity and wonder.

“Oh, Julian!” she said, and her low voice had for the first time a ring of reproach in it. “Oh, Julian, it isn’t that, dear! It isn’t that! What does that matter?”

“What does it matter?” echoed Julian with an angry laugh. Her words, in the total want of comprehension, the total incapacity for sympathy with his position, to which they witnessed, seemed to him to throw into sudden, glaring relief the class distinction which lay between them; and the sense of it came upon him, jarring and overwhelming, like an earnest of all he had done for himself. “It matters a good deal, let me tell you, Clemence. It matters—as you can’t understand, you know! It matters just everything!”

“But—compared!” she said in a low, quick tone, a bright, pained light in her eyes. “I know—I know, of course, that there is a great deal I can’t understand. But—compared!”

“Compared with what, in Heaven’s name?” said Julian angrily.

“Compared with—yourself, Julian!” she cried, laying a tender, clinging touch on his arm. “Compared with your own truth! Oh, don’t you know it’s that, it’s only that that has been so dreadful to me—that made me feel as if my heart was breaking! It’s thinking that you’ve been false, dear! That you’ve said what’s not true, acted what’s not true! Oh, it’s that that I can’t bear for you, my dear, my dear!”

He stood looking down, not at her face, but at the worn, trembling hand holding his in such a clasp of love and shame—shame for him as he vaguely felt; suspended between wrath and a certain cold, creeping feeling which he could not analyse, but which seemed to be gradually turning him into a horrible shadow. It was an involuntary, unwilling concession to this feeling, as one might throw a sop to an on-coming, all-threatening monster, that he muttered awkwardly:

“I—I’m sorry I deceived you, Clemence.”

“Deceived me!” There was an emphasis on the pronoun which seemed to lift her far above him in its absolute, unconscious, self-abnegation. “Me! Oh, it isn’t that! It doesn’t matter who it is or how many people it is! It’s the thing itself. It’s the meaning to yourself, and—and Heaven above! Julian, dear, you believe in Heaven above, don’t you?” Clemence’s creed was very simple; the attitude of the spirit which “Heaven above” had given her was not an affair of many words. “You know it’s oneself that matters. It isn’t what one has or the friends one has that make the difference—they’re not anything really. It’s oneself!”

She paused a moment, but he did not speak. He was still looking heavily down at the hand on his arm, and she went on again, her voice trembling with earnestness.

“Julian, there’s that at the bottom of everything in all kinds of life! It doesn’t matter whether one’s rich or poor, it doesn’t matter whether people think well of us—we can’t always make them, and we can’t all be rich. But we can all be good, dear. Heaven means us all to be good, don’t you think? Oh, if it didn’t, if it wasn’t that that mattered most of all down at the bottom, what would the world come to be like? And why should anybody go on living!”

Julian Romayne was very young. Far down in his nature; in that awful inextricable tangle which, because it is so awful and so far beyond his reach, man struggles so insanely to reduce to his poor little level, to define, and label, and explain away, but which remains in spite of him a mystery of God; there was that strange affinity for noble thoughts and things which is the sign manual of His part in man, never wholly withdrawn by its Creator from the earth. It is in the young that that instinctive affinity is most easily reached and touched; and the simple, ignorant, unworldly words—words which could have touched in Julian no reasoning powers—were the medium which reached it now. Clemence had reached it more than once or twice before, and its feeble stirring in response had quickened it, and rendered it, in some poor and infinitesimal degree, sensitive to her touch.

He drew his arm sharply from those clinging, pleading hands, and turned away, leaning his arm on the mantelpiece so that she could not see his face. That cold, creeping feeling which seemed to sap all his reality had stolen over his whole personality, and he was held numb and paralysed in the clutch of an all-dominating question. Was it really as she said? His own life, his own world had faded into shadows as of a very dream. Strange, distorted shapes, conceptions so new to him that they wore a weird and ghostly air of unreality, seemed to be rising round him, pressing him into nothingness. Was it as she said? He did not speak, and after a moment Clemence went on; very tenderly, very delicately, as though in her intense sympathy and feeling for the suffering she ascribed to him by intuition, she dreaded to hurt him further; diffidently and with difficulty, because she was so little used to clothing in words all that to her was most real and vital in life.

“You—you must think of the future, dear. I know—I know that you can hardly bear to look at the past, but it—it is past! It hasn’t been you, really! I know it can’t have been! And—it will wear out of your life at last, dear, by—by truth. You will tell your mother that we are married”—a scarlet, agonising colour dyed her face for an instant—“perhaps you have told her already? And perhaps, perhaps she will forgive you! If not—why if not, perhaps the—the pain will help to wear it out, my dearest.”

Her voice and the expression of the sweet, white face she lifted to him had changed subtly as she spoke. Her great pity and sorrow for him had developed a strange, new phase in her love for him. It had become tenderer, deeper. She had lost her reverence for him, but her love had triumphed over the loss, and through the pain and victory it had won higher ground, and become the love of sympathy and consolation.

But Julian hardly heard her last words. His attention had stopped, as it were, at those preceding them:

“You will tell your mother that we are married!”

Had Clemence not told, then? Was it possible that she had not mentioned it; that his mother did not know even now; that there was still hope?

The thought arrested the current of his thoughts in an instant. The possibilities the thought suggested; all the tangible, definite advantages it held; swept over those faintly quickened perceptions in a sudden wave of excitement, numbing them on the instant. The things which had been realities to him as long as he had had any consciousness, took to themselves substance once again and pressed about him. Life and the world resumed their normal complexion, and he lifted his head quickly and turned.

“Do you mean—have you seen my mother? Whom have you seen? Do you mean that you have said nothing?”

There was a pause as Clemence looked at him for a moment confused and startled, it seemed, by his manner. There was a wonderful, unconscious touch of dignity in her gentle manner as she answered:

“I never thought of it!”

“Was it my mother?”

“No; a gentleman.”

Julian moved abruptly with a low exclamation, and began to walk rapidly up and down the little room absorbed in eager thought. Clemence watched him with a puzzled, surprised look in her eyes, and a little touch of reserve creeping over her face. At last he stopped suddenly and began to speak, looking anywhere but on her face.

“Look here, Clemence, I’m afraid this sounds an awfully blackguardly thing to suggest, but you’ll see it’s necessary. It won’t do for me to tell my mother just yet. To tell you the truth she is frightfully set against my marrying. I am done for all round as soon as she knows, and it would be just cutting our own throats to tell her—yet, you know. You see,” he went on hurriedly, evidently anxious to prevent her speaking, “you see, as I am I’ve got very good prospects. In a few years, if all goes well, I shall be making heaps of money at the bar—a fellow that is well known, you know, can always get on—and then it will be all right and simple. Meanwhile, you see, I have plenty of money, and we can be together almost as much as we like, quietly, you know. Whereas if we burst it all up now we shall just starve and be out of it all our lives. Don’t you see?”

He stopped awkwardly, but for the moment he had no answer. Clemence had listened to him, the expression of her face changing from wonder to incredulity, from incredulity to agony, from agony to the look of a creature stricken to death. She lifted her hand in the silence slowly and heavily to her head. Julian saw the gesture, though he could not see her face, and its heaviness somehow increased his discomfort.

“You see it’s only common sense!” he said impatiently.

“You mean that you want to go on living a double life—that you don’t want, don’t mean to try, to do right!” The voice was not like the voice of the Clemence he knew. It was low, distinct, and stern, and she spoke very slowly.

“I mean that I don’t want to ruin myself out of hand!” he said harshly. “Don’t be foolish, Clemence!”

“Ruin!” she said in the same tone. “You don’t know what real ruin means! I don’t know how to make you understand; I’m not clever enough. But I can tell you just this! I would rather die than have it as you say. For your sake, not for my own only, I would rather die. Until your mother knows the truth I won’t even see you or speak to you again. As to taking a penny of your money, I would starve first.”

Her tone, vibrating with intensity of meaning, was quite low. She was not declaiming or protesting. She was simply making her stand at a proposition so terrible to her that it had carried her beyond the bounds of emotion. For the moment Julian was startled and aghast.

“You don’t mean that!” he said. “Clemence, that’s nonsense!”

“It’s truth!” she said steadily. “You must choose!”

She was standing facing him, her slight figure erect and straight as he had never seen it. Her face was white as death, and set into strange, fine lines quite new to it; all the softness about her mouth was being gradually pressed out as the latent strength developed, as it seemed, with every breath she drew. It was as though the crisis, in its sudden demand upon her forces, was transforming her as she grappled with it; transforming her into a woman before whom Julian felt himself shrink into utter contemptibility. He took the only means he knew to reassert himself, and lost his temper deliberately.

“Well, then, I do choose!” he cried violently. “You’re a foolish girl, who doesn’t understand, Clemence, and by-and-by you’ll own I was right! As to not taking my money, that’s absurd, you know! You must! But I’m not going to ruin both of us for absurd fancies!”

He stopped, hoping she would answer and give him some advantage, but she stood silent, gazing at him with stern, searching eyes, as though she were trying in vain to reconcile the man before her with the man she loved. Julian felt her gaze though he could not see it, and he went on hotly, trying, as it were, to gather round him the rags of his old authority and superiority.

“You don’t suppose, Clemence,” he said, “that I propose this because I like it? It’s not a nice thing for a man to propose to his wife, I can tell you. I should have hoped you would have understood that. But after all it’s only for a time, and it won’t make any real difference to you—things will be just as they have been. And if you can’t feel about it as I do, you must remember it’s because you’ve got a great deal to learn still, and you must believe that what I say is right. Anyway, you’re my wife, you know, and you’re bound to obey me!”

“I’m bound to obey you in all things that it’s right you should ask. But I’m not bound to do what would be dragging you down and me too. I can’t make you do what’s right; it wouldn’t do you any good for me to tell your mother; but until you do, it will be as I said.”

“Then it’s you who part us,” he cried passionately. “You don’t love me, Clemence! You can’t ever have loved me!”

There was a moment’s pause, and then her answer came in a strange, still voice.

“I do love you!” she said. “I love you so that I would give my life to blot out what you’ve said!”

A dead silence—a silence in which Julian Romayne seemed to feel something pulling and straining at his heart-strings. Then with a reckless, desperate effort he tore himself away from its influence and spoke.

“It can’t be helped, then,” he said fiercely and defiantly. “You must go your own way until you come to your senses! Some day, perhaps, you’ll be grateful to me for refusing to make fools of us! I wouldn’t have believed it of you, Clemence! You make me almost sorry that I ever saw you. Now, look here; I’ve put it to you from every point of view; I’ve tried as hard as ever I can to make you understand, and if you won’t, you won’t! As to the money, of course, I can’t hear of your not taking that. I shall send you so much regularly every month—it won’t be very much either, but it’ll be enough to keep you—and, of course, you’ll have to spend it. But you need not be afraid that I shall want to see you again until you come to a more sensible frame of mind.”

He waited, but again there was no answer, and again some influence from her still presence discomfited him, and made him hurry on.

“I’m going now!” he said roughly. “Good-bye, Clemence!” He made a movement as though to go, without a tenderer farewell, but quite suddenly his heart failed him. He turned again and took her into his arms impulsively and tenderly. “Clemmie!” he said brokenly. “I say—Clemmie!”

Her arms were round his neck pressing him closely and more closely, with a desperate, agonised pressure, and a long, clinging kiss was on his cheek.

“Don’t keep me waiting long,” she whispered hoarsely. “You will do it at last. I know, I know you will. But—don’t keep me waiting long!”

She released him and drew herself gently out of his arms, and Julian turned and stumbled out of the room and down the stairs, the most consciously contemptible young man in London, and with no strength to act upon his consciousness.