Part 59 (1/2)
She said, still gazing absently into the darkness: ”Yes. But I am just beginning to wonder what it is that _I_ may have lost,--what it is that I have never known.”
”Don't think of it! Don't permit anything I have said or done to trouble you or stir you toward such an awakening.... I don't want to stand charged with that. You are tranquil, now--”
”I--_was_.”
”You are still!” he said in quick concern. ”Listen, Athalie--the majority of men lose their grip at moments; men as irresolute as I lose it oftener. Don't waste sympathy on me; it was nothing but a whine born of a lesser impulse--born of emotions less decent than you could comprehend--”
”Maybe I am beginning to comprehend.”
”You shall not! You shall remain as you are! Dear, don't you realise that I can't steady myself unless I can look up to you? You've raised yourself to where you stand; you've made your own pedestal. Look down at me from it; don't ever _step_ down; don't ever condescend; don't ever let me think you mortal. You are not, now. Don't ever descend entirely to my level--even if we marry.”
She turned, smiling too wisely, yet adorably: ”What endless romance there is in that boy's heart of yours! There always was,--when you came running back to me where I stood alone by the closed door,--when you found me living as all women who work live, and made a beautiful home for me and gave me more than I wished to take, asking nothing of me in return. Oh, Clive, you were chivalrous and romantic, too, when you listened to your mother's wishes and gave me up. I understand it so much better, now. I know how it was--with your father dead and your beautiful mother, broken, desolate, confiding to your keeping all her hope and pride and future happiness,--all the traditions of the family, and its dignity and honour!
”In the light of a clearer knowledge, do you suppose I blame you now?
Do you suppose I blame you for anything?--for your long and broken-hearted and bitter silence?--for the quick resurgence of your affection for me--for your love--Oh, Clive!--for your pa.s.sion?
”Do you suppose I think less of you because you love me--care for me in the many and inexplicable ways that a man cares for a woman?--because you want me as a man wants the woman he loves, as his wife if it may be so, as his _own_, anyhow?”
She let her eyes rest on him in a new and fearless comprehension, tender, curious, sad by turns.
”It is the romance of pa.s.sion in you that has been fighting to awaken the Sleeping Princess of a legend,” she said with a slight smile; ”it is the same illogical, impulsive romance that draws back just as her closed lids tremble, fearing to awaken her to the sorrows and temptations of a world which, after all, G.o.d made for us to wake in.”
”Athalie! I am a scoundrel if I have--”
”Oh, Clive!” she laughed, mocking the solemn measure of her own words; ”adorable boy of impulse and romance, never to outgrow its magic armour, destined always to be ruled by dreams through the sweetest and most generous of hearts, you need not fear for me. I am already awake--at least I am sufficiently aroused to understand you--and something, too, of my own self which I have never hitherto understood.”
For a second, lightly, she rested her warm, fresh cheek against his.
When it was burning she disengaged her fingers from his and leaned aside against the rain-swept window.
”You see?” she said calmly but with heightened colour.... ”I am very human after all.... But it is still my mind that rules, not my emotions.”
She turned to him in her old sweetly humorous and mocking manner:
”That is all the romance of which I am capable, Clive--if there be any real romance in a very clear mind. For it is my intellect that must lead me to salvation or to destruction. If I am to come cras.h.i.+ng down at your feet, I shall have already planned the fall. If I am to be destroyed, it will not be by any accident of romantic emotion, of unconsidered impulse, or sudden blindness of pa.s.sion; it will be because my intelligence coolly courted destruction, and accepted every chance, every hazard.”
So spoke Athalie, smiling, in the full confidence and pride of her superb youth, certain of the mind's autocracy over matter, lightly defying within herself the latent tempest, of which she as yet divined no more than the first exquisitely disturbing breeze;--deriding, too, the as yet unloosened bolts of the old G.o.ds themselves,--the white lightning of desire.
”Come,” she said, half mockingly, half seriously, pa.s.sing her arm through Clive's;--”we are quite safe together in this safe and sane old world--unless _I_ choose--otherwise.”
She turned and touched her lips lightly to his hair:
”So you may safely behave as irrationally, irresponsibly, and romantically as you choose.... As long as I now am wide awake.”
And then, for the first time, he realised his utter responsibility to this girl who so gaily and audaciously relieved him of it. And he understood how pitifully unarmed she really stood, and how imminent the necessity for him to forge for himself the armour of character, and to wear it eternally for his own safety as well as hers.
”Good night, dear,” he said.
In her new and magnificent self-confidence she turned and put both arms around his neck, drawing his lips against hers.