CAMELIA galloped home furiously. The tragedy was then to be consummated. He would not put out a finger to avert it. Mary would go down into the pit of nothingness, and her love, her agony, her strivings after good, would be as though they had never been.

“And I live,” thought Camelia, as she galloped, and her thoughts seemed to gallop beside her; they were like phantom shapes pressing on her from without, for she did not want to think. “I, thick-skinned, dull-souled I. Yes, materialism wins the day. Morality is a lie, evolved for the carpeting of lives like mine, for the preservation of the fittest!—I being fittest! To those that have shall be given, and from those who have not shall be taken away—the law of evolution. Oh! hideous, hideous! Oh, horror!—not even the ethical straw of development to grasp at; Mary’s suffering has warped her, lowered her. She has been tortured into rebellion against her own sweet rectitude; she, who only asked to love—hates; she, who lived in a peaceful renunciation, now struggles, thinks only of herself.”

It was this last thought that seemed to lean beside her, look into her eyes with the most intolerable look. Mary—inevitably lowered. The blackness shuddered through her. Camelia on that ride tasted the very dregs of doubt and despair, and knew the helplessness of man before them. She could have killed herself, had not a sullen spark, the last smouldering from the fire of resolution that had burned in her as she rode to Perior, still lit one path through the darkness. She must throw herself at Mary’s feet, seek and give comfort through her own extreme abasement. She must cling to Mary, supplicating her to believe in her infinite love and pity. Could not that love, when all errors were explained, reach and hold her? Camelia felt her defiance of eternity clasp Mary forever. But when she reached home Mary was not there. Camelia panted as she ran from room to room; her desire, thrown back, rose stiflingly. She was afraid of seeing her mother, for at a look, a question, she felt that her suspense of hard self-control would break down; she might scream and rave. She sent a few words to Lady Paton by a servant; she was tired and was going to rest—must not be disturbed—then she locked herself into her own room.

Some hours passed before she heard Mary’s voice outside demanding entrance, hours that Camelia was to look back on as the blackest of her life, so black that all in them, every thought and impulse, made an indistinguishable chaos, where only her suffering, a trembling leaf tossing on deepest waters, knew itself. In looking back, she remembered that she had not once moved until the knock came, and that, on going to open the door, her hand had so shaken that it fumbled for some moments with the key.

Mary stood on the threshold. She was splashed with mud. Beside the whiteness of her face, Camelia’s was passive in its pain. Mary closed the door, and, as Camelia retreated a little before her, leaned back against it. Her eyes went at once over Camelia’s wet habit and dishevelled hair; she had expected a careful effacement of all signs of the guilty errand; Camelia could not now deny the ride. The thought of a brazen avowal made Mary close her eyes for a moment. She had to struggle with a sick faintness, as she leaned against the door, before she could put that monstrous thought aside and say, returning to her first impulse, and opening her eyes as she spoke—

“I know where you have been.”

Camelia stood still. This unexpected blow confused the direct vision of appeal and abasement that upheld her. She must face an unlooked-for contingency, and her mind seemed to reel a little as she faced it.

“You followed me, Mary?” she asked, with a gentleness bewildered.

“Yes, I followed you.”

Camelia was now becoming conscious of the definiteness of Mary’s heavy stare. It was like a stone, and under the weight of it she groped, staggering, in a wilderness of formless conjectures. Mary could not know why she had gone. A pang of terror shot through her. Mary’s next words riveted the terror.

“I saw you. I know why you went. I know everything,” said Mary. Camelia’s horror kept silence, though the room seemed to whirl round with her. Had Mary by some unknown means reached the Grange before she did? Had she been hidden near the laboratory? Had she heard? Were all merciful lies impossible? She felt her very lips freeze in a rigid powerlessness.

“You went to tell him that I loved him?” Mary’s eyes opened widely as she spoke, and she walked up to her cousin, close to her.

“You told him that I loved him,” she repeated, and Camelia in her nightmare horror felt the hatred of the pale eyes.

“You don’t dare deny that you told him.” No, Camelia did not dare deny. She looked down spellbound at Mary. She was afraid of her, horribly afraid of her. It was like the approach of a nightmare animal, its familiar seeming making its strangeness the more awful. She did not dare deny. She could not move away from her; she was paralyzed in her dread. Mary looked at her as though conscious of her own power.

“You told him, so that he might comfort you, tell you he had never loved me, never could have loved me. You betrayed me to save yourself from that reproach of robbing me.” It was like awakening with a gasp that Camelia now cried—

“No, no, Mary! Oh no.”

She could speak. She could clasp her hands. “No, no, no,” she repeated almost with joy.

“You lie. You are lying. What is the good of lying to me now? It is easy for you to lie. You went to ask him the truth, and he gave it to you. For he would never have loved me, whatever I may have hoped—even believed at moments.”

“No, Mary; no, no!” Mary’s dreadful supposition made Camelia feel the reality as a peace, a refuge. That world of black cruelty where Mary wandered, that at least was untrue, an illusion. Not hatred, not deceit surrounded her, but love, and pity, and tenderness.

“I did not go for that, Mary,” she cried. “Listen, Mary, you are wrong; thank God, you are wrong. I did not go because I was sorry for myself; I did not go basely. I was so sorry for you,” said Camelia, sobbing and speaking brokenly, while Mary looked at her in a stern tearless silence, “I knew he would be sorry. I knew we both loved you, and I wanted him to marry you, Mary.”

“What!” Mary’s voice was terrible; yet Camelia clung to the courage of her love, confident that the truth alone could now reveal it—all the truth.

“Yes, dearest Mary, yes. There was no hatred, only a longing to make you happy—to help atone; only love, not hatred.”

“You are telling me the truth?”

They were standing still before each other. Camelia could not interpret the pale eyes.

“Mary, I swear it before God.”

“And he will not marry me!”

“He loves you, as I do.”

“He will not marry me!”

“Let me only tell you—everything; it is not you only——”

“You tossed me to him—and he refused me! How dare you! How dare you! How dare you!” And Mary, a revelation of rage and detestation flaming up in her eyes, distorting her face, struck her cousin violently on the cheek.

Camelia stood dazed. The blow interpreted, too well, Mary’s attitude. She could not resent, nor even wonder, could only accept the retribution of cruel misunderstanding and bow her head. She covered her face with her hands and wept. Except for this sound of weeping the room was still. In the darkness of her humiliation—shut in behind her hands—Camelia felt, at last, the silence. She looked up. Mary was once more leaning against the door. Her eyes were closed. Camelia went to her, took her hand, and Mary made no motion. Raising the hand to her lips Camelia kissed it; its coldness chilled the smarting of the blow. Mastering her terror Camelia put her arms around her, and, Mary sinking forward into them, she gathered up the piteously light figure and carried it to the bed.

“Mary—Mary—Mary,” she murmured, staring at the head which lay so still, so solemnly. Was she dead? Camelia struck aside the thought of a so cruel finality. Strengthened by her rebellion she sprang to open the door, and the house resounded with her cries for help.