Murder in Any Degree Part 22

She continued to speak, in a low unvarying voice. He felt his mind clear and his doubts dissipate, and impatiently he waited for her to end, to show her that his weakness of the moment was gone and that he was still the man of big vision who had awakened her.

"There are people who can put in order their love as they put in order their house. We are not of that kind, Ben. I am a woman who has lived on sensations. You, too, are a dreamer and a poet at the bottom. If I should give up the opera and become to you simply a housewife, if there was no longer any difficulty in our having each other, you would still love me--yes, because you are loyal--but the romanticism, the mystery, the longing we both need would vanish. Oh, I know. Well, you and I, we are the same. We can only live on a great pa.s.sion, and to have fierce, unutterable joys we must suffer also--the suffering of separation. Do you understand?"

"Yes, I do."

"That is why I shall never give up my career. That is why I can bear the sadness of leaving you. I want you to be proud of me, Ben. I want you to think of me as some one whom thousands desire and only you can have. I want our love to be so intense that every day spent apart is heavy with the longing for each other; every day together precious because it will be a day nearer the awful coming of another separation.

Believe me, I am right. I have thought much about it. You have your diplomatic career and your ambitions. You are proud. I have never asked you to give that up to follow me. I would not insult you. In January you will have a leave of absence, and we will be together for a few wonderful weeks, and in May I shall return here. Nothing will be changed." She extended her arm to where a faint red point still showed on the unseen water. "And each night we will wait, as we have waited, side by side, the coming of our little boat,--_notre p't.i.t bateau_"

"You are right," he said, placing his lips to her forehead. "I was jealous. I am sorry. It is over."

"But I, too, am jealous," she said, smiling.

"You?"

"Of course--no one can love without being jealous. Oh, I shall be afraid of every woman who comes near you. It will be an agony," she said, and the fire in her eyes brought him more healing happiness than all her words.

"You are right," he repeated.

He left her with a little pressure of the hand, and walked to the edge of the veranda. A nervous, sighing breeze had come with the full coming of the moon, and underneath him he heard the troubled rustle of leaves in the obscurity, the sifting and drifting of tired, loose things, the stir of the night which awakened a restless mood in his soul. He had listened to her as she had proclaimed her love, and yet this love, without illusions, sharply recalled to him other pa.s.sions. He remembered his first love, a boy-and-girl affair, and sharply contrasting it with a sudden ache to this absence of impulse and illusions, of phrases, vows, without logic, thrown out in the sweet madness of the moment. Why had she not cried out something impulsive, promised things that could not be. Then he realized, standing there in the harvest moonlight, in the breaking up of summer, that he was no longer a youth, that certain things could not be lived over, and that, as she had said, he too felt that this was the great love, the last that he would share; that if it ended, his youth ended and with his youth all that in him clung to life.

He turned and saw her, chin in the flat of her palm, steadily following his mood. He had taken but a dozen steps, and yet he had placed a thousand miles between them. He had almost a feeling of treachery, and to dispel these new unquiet thoughts he repeated to himself again:

"She is right."

But he did not immediately return. The memory of other loves, faint as they had been in comparison with this all-absorbing impulse, had yet given him a certain objective point of view. He saw himself clearly, and he understood what of pain the future had in store for him.

"How I shall suffer!" he said to himself.

"You are going so far away from me," she said suddenly, warned by some woman's instinct.

He was startled at the conjunction of her words and his moods. He returned hastily, and sat down beside her. She took his head in her hands and looked anxiously into his eyes.

"What is it?" she said. "You are afraid?"

"A little," he said reluctantly.

"Of what--of the months that will come?"

"Of the past."

"What do you mean?" she said, withdrawing a little as though disturbed by the thought.

"When I am with you I know there is not a corner of your heart that I do not possess," he began evasively.

"Well?"

"Only it's the past--the habits of the past," he murmured. "I know you so well, Madeleine, you have need of strength, you don't go on alone.

That is the genius of women like you--to reach out and attach to themselves men who will strengthen them, compel them on."

"Ah, I understand," she said slowly.

"Yes, that is what I'm afraid of," he said rapidly.

"You are thinking of the artist, not the woman."

"Ah, there is no difference--not to a man who loves," he said impulsively. "I know how great your love is for me, and I believe in it.

I know nothing will come to efface it. Only you will be lonely, you'll have your trials and annoyances, days of depression, of doubt, when you will need some one to restore your faith in yourself, your courage in your work, and then, I don't say you will love any one else, but you will need some one near you who loves you, always at your service--"

"If you could only understand me," she said, interrupting him. "Men, other men, are like actors to me. When I am on the stage, when I am playing Manon, do you think I see who is playing Des Grieux? Not at all.

He is there, he gives me my _replique_, he excites my nerves, I say a thousand things under my breath, when I am in his arms I adore him, but when the curtain goes down, I go off the stage and don't even say good night to him."

"But he, he doesn't know that."

"Of course not; tenors never do. Well, that is just the way I have lived, that is just what men have meant to me. They give the _replique_ to my moods, to my needs, and when I have no longer need of them, I go off tranquilly. That is all there is to it. I take from them what I want. Of course they will be around me, but they will be nothing to me.

They will be like managers, press-agents, actors. Don't you understand that?"

"Yes, yes, I understand," he said without sincerity. Then he blurted out, "I wish you had not said it, all the same."

"Why?"

"I cannot see it as you see it, and besides, you put a doubt in my mind that I never wish to feel."

"What doubt?"

"Do I really have you, or only a mood of yours?"

"Ben!"

"I know. I know. No, I am not going to think such things. That would be unworthy of what we have felt." He paused a moment, and when he spoke again his voice was under control. "Madeleine, remember well what I say to you now. I shall probably never again speak to you with such absolute truth, or even acknowledge it to myself. I accept the necessity of separation. I know all the sufferings it will bring, all the doubts, the unreasoning jealousies. I am big enough in experience to understand what you have just suggested to me, but as a man who loves you, Madeleine, I will never understand it. I know that a dozen men may come into your life, interest you intensely, even absorb you for a while, and that they would still mean nothing to you the moment I come. Well, I am different. A man is different. While you are away, I shall not see a woman without resentment; I shall not think of any one but you, and if I did, I would cease to love you."

"But why?"

"Because I cannot share anything of what belongs to you. That is my nature. There is no use in pretending the contrary. Yours is different, and I understand why it is so. I have listened to many confidences, understood many lives that others would not understand. I have always maintained that it is the natural thing for a human being to love many times--even that there might he in the same heart a great, overpowering love and a little one. I still believe it--with my mind. I know it is so. These are the things we like to a.n.a.lyze in human nature together. I know it is true, but it is not true for me. No, I would never understand it in you. I know myself too well, I am jealous of everything of the past--oh, insanely jealous. I know that no sooner are you gone than I will be tortured by the most ridiculous doubts. I will see you in the moonlight all across that endless sea with other men near you. I will dream of other men with millions, ready to give you everything your eyes adore. I will imagine men of big minds that will fascinate you. I will even say to myself that now that you have known what a great love can mean you will all the more be likely to need it, to seek something to counterfeit it--"

"Ben, my poor Ben--frightful," she murmured.

"That is how it is. Shall I tell you something else?"

"What?"

"I wish devoutly you had never told me a word of--of the past."

"But how can you say such things? We have been honest with each other.

You yourself--"

"I know, I know, I have no right myself, and yet there it is. It is something fearful, this madness of possession that comes to me. No, I have no fear that I will not always be first in your heart, only I understand the needs, the habits, of your nature. I understand myself now as I have not before, and that's why I say to you solemnly, Madeleine, if ever for a moment another man should come into your life--never, never, let me know."

"But--"