Berenice Part 14

"He is a bad man! He has spoken ill of you! He has already a wife!"

"I am glad of it. I can obey my instincts now, and see him no more.

Personally he is distasteful to me! I had an idea he was honest! It is nothing!"

She dismissed the subject with a wave of the hand. To her it was altogether a minor matter. Then she looked at him.

"Well!"

"You never answered my letter."

"No, there was no answer. I came back."

"You did not let me know."

"You will find a message at your rooms when you get back."

He walked up and down the room. He knew at once that all he had done hitherto had been in vain. The battle was still before him. She sat and watched him with an inscrutable smile. Once as he pa.s.sed her, she laid her hand upon his arm. He stopped at once.

"Your white flower was born to die and to wither," she said. "A night's frost would have killed it as surely as the lowland air. It is like these violets." She took a bunch from her bosom. "This morning they were fresh and beautiful. Now they are crushed and faded! Yet they have lived their life."

She threw them down upon the floor.

"Do you think a woman is like that?" she said softly. "You are very, very ignorant! She has a soul."

He held out his hand.

"A soul to keep white and pure. A soul to give back--to G.o.d!"

Again she smiled at him slowly, and shook her dark head. "You are like a child in some things! You have lived so long amongst the dry bones of scholarship, that you have lost your touch upon humanity. And of us women, you know--so very little. You have tried to understand us from books. How foolish! You must be my disciple, and I will teach you."

"It is not teaching," he cried; "it is temptation."

She turned upon him with a gleam of pa.s.sion in her eyes.

"Temptation!" she cried. "There spoke the whole selfishness of the philosopher, the dilettante in morals! What is it that you fear? It is the besmirchment of your own ideals, your own little code framed and moulded with your own hands. What do you know of sin or of purity, you, who have held yourself aloof from the world with a sort of delicate care, as though you, forsooth, were too precious a thing to be soiled with the dust of human pa.s.sion and human love! That is where you are all wrong. That is where you make your great mistake. You have judged without experience. You speak of a soul which may be stained with sin; you have no more knowledge than the Pharisees of old what const.i.tutes sin. Love can never stain anything! Love that is constant and true and pure is above the marriage laws of men; it is above your little self-constructed ideals; it is a thing of Heaven and of G.o.d! You wrote to me like a child,--and you are a child, for until you have learnt what love is, you are without understanding."

Suddenly her outstretched hands dropped to her side. Her voice became soft and low; her dark eyes were dimmed.

"Come to me, and you shall know. I will show you in what narrow paths you have been wandering. I will show you how beautiful a woman's love can make your life!"

"If we can love and be pure," he said hoa.r.s.ely, "what is sin? What is that?"

He was standing by the window, and he pointed westwards with shaking finger. The roar of Piccadilly and Regent Street came faintly into the little room. She understood him.

"You have a great deal to learn, dear," she whispered softly.

"Remember this first, and before all, Love can sanctify everything."

"But they too loved in the beginning!"

She shook her head.

"That they never could have done. Love is eternal. If it fades or dies, then it never was love. Then it was sin."

"But those poor creatures! How are they to tell between the true love and the false?"

She stamped her foot, and a quiver of pa.s.sion shook her frame.

"We are not talking about them. We are talking about ourselves! Do you doubt your love or mine?"

"I cannot," he answered. "Berenice!"

"Yes!"

"Did you ever tell--your husband that you loved him?"

"Never!"

"Did he love you?"

"I believe, so far as he knew how to love anything,--he did."

"And now?"

She waved her hand impatiently.

"He has forgotten. He was shallow, and he was fond of life. He has found consolation long ago. Do not talk of him. Do not dare to speak of him again! Oh, why do you make me humble myself so?"

"He may not have forgotten. He may have repented. He may be longing for you now,--and suffering. Should we be sinless then?"

She swept from her place, and stood before him with flashing eyes.

"I forbid you to remind me of my shame. I forbid you to remind me that I, too, like those poor women on the street, have been bought and sold for money! I have worked out my own emanc.i.p.ation. I am free. It was while I was living with him as his wife that I sinned,--for I hated him! Speak to me no more of that time! If you cannot forget it, you had better go!"

He stretched out his hands and held hers tightly.

"Berenice, if you were alone in the world, and there was some great barrier to our marriage, I would not hesitate any longer. I would take you to myself. Don't think too hardly of me. I am like a man who is denying himself heaven. But your husband lives. You belong to him. You do not know whether he is in prosperity, or whether he has forgotten.

You do not know whether he has repented, or whether his life is still such as to justify your taking the law into your own hands, and forsaking him for ever. Listen to me, dear! If you will find out these things, if you can say to yourself and to me, and to your conscience, 'he has found happiness without me, he has ignored and forgotten the tie between us, he does not need my sympathy, or my care, or my companionship,' then I will have no more scruples. Only let us be sure that you are morally free from that man."

She wrenched her hands away from his. There was a bright, red spot of colour flaring on her cheeks. Her eyes were on fire.

"You are mad!" she cried; "you do not love me! No man can know what love is who talks about doubts and scruples like you do! You are too cold and too selfish to realize what love can be! And to think that I have stopped to reason, to reason with you! Oh! my G.o.d! What have I done to be humbled like this?"

"Berenice!"

"Leave me! Don't come near me any more! I shall thrust you out of my life! You never loved me! I could not have loved you! Go away! It has been a hideous mistake!"

"Berenice!"

"My G.o.d! Will you leave me?" she moaned. "You are driving me mad! I hate you!"