The Convert Part 82

'I see! she couldn't help telling you about Allen Trent--Lady John couldn't!'

He ignored the interpretation.

'You're one of the people the years have not taken from, but given more to. You are more than ever----You haven't lost your beauty.'

'The G.o.ds saw it was so little effectual, it wasn't worth taking away.'

She stood staring out into the void. 'One woman's mishap--what is that?

A thing as trivial to the great world as it's sordid in most eyes. But the time has come when a woman may look about her and say, What general significance has my secret pain? Does it "join on" to anything? And I find it _does_. I'm no longer simply a woman who has stumbled on the way.' With difficulty she controlled the shake in her voice. 'I'm one who has got up bruised and bleeding, wiped the dust from her hands and the tears from her face--and said to herself not merely: Here's one luckless woman! but--here is a stone of stumbling to many. Let's see if it can't be moved out of other women's way. And she calls people to come and help. No mortal man, let alone a woman, _by herself_, can move that rock of offence. But,' she ended with a sudden sombre flare of enthusiasm, 'if _many_ help, Geoffrey, the thing can be done.'

He looked down on her from his height with a wondering pity.

'Lord! how you care!' he said, while the mist deepened before his eyes.

'Don't be so sad,' she said--not seeming to see his sadness was not for himself. It was as if she could not turn her back on him this last time without leaving him comforted. 'Shall I tell you a secret? Jean's ardent dreams needn't frighten you, if she has a child. _That_--from the beginning it was not the strong arm--it was the weakest, the little, little arms that subdued the fiercest of us.'

He held out a shaking hand, so uncertain, that it might have been begging pity, or it might have been bestowing it. Even then she did not take it, but a great gentleness was in her face as she said--

'You will have other children, Geoffrey; for me there was to be only one. Well, well,' she brushed the tears away, 'since men have tried, and failed to make a decent world for the little children to live in, it's as well some of us are childless. Yes,' she said quietly, taking up the hat and cloak, '_we_ are the ones who have no excuse for standing aloof from the fight!'

Her hand was on the door.

'Vida!'

'What?'

'You forgot something.'

She looked back.

He was signing the message. '_This_,' he said.

She went out with the paper in her hand.

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