The Creators Part 118

"You know what you'd have thought of me if I had."

"You shouldn't have cared what I thought. You should have risked it."

"Risked it?"

"Risked it."

"But I risked losing you altogether. What did _you_ risk?"

He was silent.

"Why do you blame me? It was your fault, your choice."

"Was it really mine? Was it I who went wrong?"

"Yes," she said. "In the beginning. You knew I cared for you."

"If you'd let me see it."

"Oh, you saw it. I didn't tell you in as many words. But I let you see it. _That_ was where I went wrong."

"Yes, yes." He a.s.sented, for it was truth's hour. "You should have made me _feel_ it."

"How could I?"

"That was it. You couldn't."

"I couldn't when I knew you'd seen it."

"How did you know?"

"Oh--_you_ took good care of that."

"Was I a brute? Was I a brute to you, Jinny?"

She smiled.

"Not as men go. You couldn't help it. There was no deceiving me."

"Why, after all, shouldn't you have told me?"

"Why indeed?"

"It's a preposterous convention that leaves all the truth-telling to the unhappy man."

"Still--there it is. We can't get over it."

"_You_ could have got over it. It wasn't made for you."

"It was made for all women. And for one who has been wrecked by it there are millions who have been saved. It was made for me more than any of them."

"If you prefer other women's conventions to your own happiness."

"Would it have been happiness to have given my heart and my soul to somebody who had no use for them and showed it?"

"You insist that I showed it?"

"You showed me plainly that it wasn't my heart and my soul you wanted."

"There you're wrong. There was a moment--if you'd only known it."

"I did know."

"What did you know?"

"I knew there was some power I had, if I had known how to use it."

"And didn't you?"

"I don't know. You see, I didn't try."

"You know how to use it now, I can tell you, with a vengeance."

"No. It isn't the same power, I think."

"At any rate you knew that it was touch and go with me? That if _you_'d chosen you might have done anything with me?"

"I knew that any other woman could have done the same."

"Then why not you?"

"I? I didn't want to hold you that way. I had some decency. I loved my poor friend too much to take him at a disadvantage."

"Good G.o.d! So _that_ was your view of it? I was sacrificed to your invincible ignorance."

"Oh no, to my knowledge. Or shall we say to an honourable scruple?"

"Honourable?"

"Yes. The whole honour of women lies in that."

"I hope you see where the whole honour of women has landed us at last."

They had reached the lane leading to their farm. Its depth held them closer than the twilight held. The trees guarded them. Every green branch roofed a hollow deep with haze.

"If you were a cold woman I could understand it."

"_I_ couldn't. It's because I was anything but cold."