WAS one not, when one could make speeches like that, to be listened to as Tony had listened to him—was one not, implicitly, an accepted lover? They had hurt and misunderstood each other and their talk had left a strain; yet such hurts, in natures as intimately united as his and Tony’s, only brought one the nearer. After all, in spite of his essential failure with her, he had shown her, in a clear light, the shapes of her half-seen fears. That was all to the good. She must now, for the first time, accept such fears fully; and might she not, as a result, find herself the readier to live with them? And though she had not seen his truth, he had, through his very unkindness, what she had felt to be his gibes and taunts, made her see her own; and Tony’s truth was, simply, that she could never give him up. So he had computed and analyzed during the evening, while Tony had again sung to them and while Miss Latimer sat, her head bent beneath a lamp, and put fine darns into an embroidered tea-cloth. And what most came to him next morning, with the sense of shock, was an awareness of hidden things; of hours in which he had no part, when Tony said to him, “I talked to Cicely last night.”

They were, as usual, in the drawing-room, after breakfast, and Antonia had seated herself on the low cane settee before the fire, for the grey day was chilly and she had, to an unbecoming extent, the look of being cold. When Tony looked least beautiful, she looked most childlike, and it was for her childlike self that he felt, always, his deepest tenderness aroused. And he was aware now, as he meditated her announcement, of the curious check it gave to his tenderness. “Did you?” he said. His tone was dry. He was not glad to hear that Miss Latimer was in their counsels; but it was a more subtle disquiet than that that took his thoughts from Tony’s dear pouting lips and tightened eyelids. Miss Latimer had all sorts of chances that he didn’t have. His love was like a steady vase into which Tony’s fluidity inevitably poured and shaped itself when he was with her. But when he was not there, Miss Latimer had spells that dissolved her again into wistful, wandering water.

“I didn’t tell her, of course, that I was in love with you and was wondering whether I might marry you,” Antonia went on, “though I think she must know it. I said nothing about myself, really. What we talked of was immortality. I asked her what she believed.”

He kept his eyes upon her, though she did not meet them, standing before her, his cigarette between his teeth. And she felt his displeasure in his silence.

“She doesn’t think as you do,” Antonia went on, in a carefully steady voice. “I mean, her belief is much more definite than yours; much deeper; for she’s always believed, and you, I think, from what you told me, haven’t;—and, oh, passionate. I can’t express to you how I felt that. A white flame of certitude.”

“Ah,” Bevis murmured. He knocked the ash from his cigarette and examined the tip. “No; I’ve no white flames about me.”

She did not pause for his irony. “And we spoke of Malcolm. We never have spoken of him before. I asked her if she expected to see him again, as she knew him here; unchanged. And she does. No; expect is not the right word. She is sure of it. And she told me something else. Malcolm believed like that. He and she had talked about it; twice. Once when he was hardly more than a boy. And once before he went to France, on the last night he spent here, with her and his mother. He was sure, too. He believed that he was to see me, and her, again. Cicely cried and cried in telling me. I never saw her cry before.”

“Did Malcolm ever talk to you about it?” Bevis asked her after a moment. If he had computed and analyzed new hopes last night, how much more, this morning, he found himself analyzing and computing new difficulties. He had more than Tony’s fluidity to deal with now. Like a tragic, potent moon, Miss Latimer drew her tides away from the rest and safety of the shores he stretched for them.

“No,” she answered, still in the careful, steady voice. “Never like that. Though I remember, in looking back, things he said that meant it.”

He recognized then, and only then, when she answered with such unsuspecting candour, the treacherous suggestion that had underlain his query. Could he really have wanted to hint that Malcolm’s deepest confidence had been given to his cousin and not to her? Could he really have hoped that a touch of spiritual jealousy might help him? How complete her trust in her husband, and how justified, was further revealed to him, for his discomfiture, as she went on: “It was of me they talked that last night; of our love for each other. He wanted to thank her, again, for having helped him to win me.”

They were silent for a little after that; he cast down upon the sofa beside the fire and Antonia on her settee, her hands holding it on either side, her eyes fixed before her, a new hardness in their gaze. She was, this morning, neither the frightened child nor the helpless lover. She had withdrawn from him, and whether in coldness or control he could not tell. But it was not with her own strength she was armed. She had withdrawn in order to think, without his help, and with the help of Miss Latimer.

“Well, what does it all come to for you, now?” he asked, and he heard the coldness in his voice, a coldness not for her, but for that new opponent he had now to deal with.

“It makes it all more terrible, doesn’t it?” she said, sitting there and not looking at him.

“You mean her belief has so much more weight with you than mine?”

“Does it contradict yours?”

“You know it does; or why should things be more difficult—terrible you call them—for you this morning? You say she is more definite than I am. I think definiteness in such matters pure illusion, and I only ask you to realize that it’s easy to a simple nature like Miss Latimer’s. She is unaware of the complexity of the problem.”

“You think that Malcolm, too, was so simple?”

“I do. Not so simple as Miss Latimer; but simpler than you, and you know it; and far simpler than I am; and you know that, too, my dear.”

She sought no dispute. Almost with a hard patience she went on. “Wasn’t their definiteness intuition rather than illusion? Isn’t intuition easier for the simple than for the complex?”

“Intuition isn’t definiteness; that’s just what it isn’t. As for it’s being easier; everything is easier, of course, to simple people.” She, like himself, and she had admitted it, was complex; yet his terrible disadvantage with her was that, while too clever to be satisfied by anything she did not understand, she was too ignorant, really, to understand the cogency of what he might have found to say. Miss Latimer’s simplicities would have more weight with her.

“Something must be definite,” she said. “Immortality means nothing unless it can in some way be defined. It must mean a person, and a person means memory, feeling, will. So, if Malcolm is immortal, he exists now, as he existed here; unchanged; loving me, as he told Cicely he should always love me; and waiting for me, as he told her he would wait.” She had come back to it and Miss Latimer had fixed her in it.

“Perhaps he’s fallen in love with some one else,” Bevis suggested. “You’ve changed to that extent, after all. And you are not longing for him. Quite the contrary.”

Somehow he could not control these exhibitions of his exasperation, nor could he unsay them, ashamed of them as he immediately was.

Her dark gaze rested on him at last, unresentful still, but with, at last, an almost recognized hostility. He was ashamed, yet more exasperated than ever as he saw it.

“It’s almost as if you tried to insult me with my infidelity,” she murmured. “It’s as if, already, you had no respect for me because you know I am unfaithful. Take care, Bevis, for, after all, I may get over you.”

“And I may get over you,” he said, looking not at her, but at the fire and slightly wagging his remaining foot, crossed over the artificial knee.

She was very silent at that, and, shame deepening and anger dropping (it wasn’t anger against her; she must know that) he glanced up at her and found her gaze still on him.

“My dear,” he muttered, smiling wryly, “you stick your needles too deeply into my heart. What’s sport to you is death to me.—No; I don’t mean that.—All I really mean is that we mustn’t be like children in a nursery slapping at each other. You’re as unlikely to get over me as I am to get over you, and I ask you, in deep seriousness, to accept that fact with all its implications. There it is and what are you going to do with it and with me?”

She had now risen from her seat and walked away from him, vaguely, and she went toward the third window and stood looking out.

She stood there a long time, without moving, and, remembering what she had said to him of it the other day, and of her fear, a discomfort—yet, comparatively, it was a comfort to feel it after their personal dispute—stirred him, so that, rising, with a sigh, he followed her, and, as he had done the other day, looked out over her shoulder at the cedar, the fountain, and the white fritillaries in their narrow beds. He saw from her fixed face that she had forgotten her fear of the harmless scene. Her gaze, with its new, cold grief, was straight before her.

“Tony; dear Tony,” he said, laying his hand on her shoulder. She did not move or look at him.

“Let’s go away,” he said. “Let’s leave this place. It’s bad for us both. Sell it. Give it to Miss Latimer. Chuck it all, Tony, and start a new life with me. Chuck the whole ghoulish business of Malcolm and his feelings and your own infidelity. It has nothing to do with love and heaven; really it hasn’t. You’ll see it yourself some day. Let’s go away at once, darling, and get married.” The urgency of what he now saw as escape was suddenly so strong in him that he really meant it, really planned, while he spoke, the Southern flight; Tony deposited at her safe London house that very evening and the license bought next day. Why not? Wasn’t it the only way with her? As long as she was allowed to hesitate, her feet would remain fixed in this quagmire.

She hardly heard his words; he saw that as she turned her eyes on him; but she heard his ardour and it had broken down her withdrawal.

“I’m so frightened, Bevis,” she murmured. “You don’t understand. You are so bitter; so cruel. You frighten me more than I can tell you. I seemed to see, just now, when you said that, about getting over me, that I should lose your love, and his love, too; that that would be my punishment.”

This, after all, was a fear easy to deal with. He passed his arm in hers and drew her from the window, feeling a foretaste of the final triumph as he did so, for, child, adorable child that she was, she had forgotten already the former fear.

“But you know what a nasty, cantankerous creature I am, darling,” he said, making her walk up and down with him. “You don’t really take my flings seriously. And didn’t you begin! How like a woman! What a woman you are! You know that I shan’t get over you. And I assure you that I don’t think less well of Malcolm’s fidelity.”

“But the bitterness, Bevis. Why were you so bitter?” Her voice trembled. “I am never bitter with you.”

“And I’m never bitter with you—though I’m a bitter person, which you aren’t. You know perfectly well that it was Miss Latimer whose neck I wanted to wring.—Beastly little stone-curlew, with her stare and her wailing.”

“It felt like my neck. Was it only Cicely’s, then? Poor little Cicely.”

“Poor little Cicely as much as you please. Only I’m sick of her, and want to get away from her, and to get you away. Seriously, Tony, why shouldn’t we be off at once?”

“At once?” Her wavering smile, while her eyes dwelt on him, showed the plaintive sweetness of reviving confidence. “But that’s impossible, dear, absurd Bevis.”

“Why impossible?”

“Why I couldn’t get married like that; at a day’s notice. And I couldn’t run away. I’m not afraid of Cicely, though you seem to be. And I couldn’t leave her like that, when I’ve only just arrived. It would be too unkind.”

The fact that she felt it necessary to argue it all out was in itself a good augury. He could afford to relinquish his project, though he did so reluctantly. “I’m not afraid of her,” he said. “Except when she frightens you.”

“She doesn’t, Bevis. You are the only one who frightens me; when you tell me the truth; when you tell me that I am unfaithful and that I’ve fallen in love with you, although my husband isn’t really dead; and that perhaps, if I go on tormenting you too much, you’ll get over me.” She looked steadily at him while she spoke, though still she tried to smile.

“Do you want another truth, Tony?” he said, putting her hair back from her forehead, doting on her, in her loveliness, her foolishness, her pathos, while he drew her more closely to him; “it’s the last that frightens you most of all, and it never can come true.”

“Never? Never?” she whispered, while she, too, came closer, yielding to his arms. “Nothing can ever come between us? You will be able to take care of me, always?”

“It’s all I ask,” he assured her, with his dry, cherishing smile.