The Divine Fire Part 48

"All the time and I never told you. I'd _almost_ forgotten when you offered me that secretaryship, but I knew it when I let you engage me; I knew it before I came down. I never would have come if I'd realized what it meant, but when I did know, I stayed all the same."

"What do you think you ought to have done?"

"Of course--I ought to have gone away--since I couldn't be honest and tell you."

"And why" (she said it very gently but with no change in her att.i.tude), "why couldn't you be honest and tell me?"

"I'm not sure that I'd any right to tell you what I hadn't any right to know. I'm only sure of one thing--as I did know, I oughtn't to have stayed. But," he reiterated sorrowfully, "I did stay."

"You stayed to help me."

"Yes; with all my dishonesty I wouldn't have done it if I hadn't made myself believe that. As it's turned out, I've helped to ruin you."

"Please--please don't. As far as I'm concerned you've nothing to reproach yourself with. Your position was a very difficult one."

"I ought never to have got into it."

"Still, you did your best."

"My best! You can't say I did what an honourable man would have done; I mean at the beginning."

"No--no. I'm afraid I can't say that."

He did not expect anything but sincerity from her, neither did he desire that her sense of honour should be less fine than his. But he longed for some word of absolution, some look even that should reinstate him in his self-esteem; and it seemed to him that there was none.

"You can't think worse of me than I think myself," he said, and turned mournfully away.

She sat suddenly upright, with one hand on the arm of her chair, as if ready to rise and cut off his retreat.

"Wait," she said. "Have you any idea what you are going to do?"

The question held him within a foot's length of her chair, where the light fell full on his face.

"I only know I'm not going back to the shop."

"You were in earnest, then? It really has come to that?"

"It couldn't very well come to anything else."

She looked up at him gravely, realizing for the first time, through her own sorrow, the precise nature and the consequences of his action.

He had burnt his ships, parted with his means of livelihood, in a Quixotic endeavour to serve her interests, and redeem his own honour.

"Forgive my asking, but for the present this leaves you stranded?"

"It leaves me free."

She rose. "I know what that means. You won't mind my paying my debts at once, instead of later?"

He stared stupidly, as if her words had stunned him. She was seated at her writing table, and had begun filling in a cheque before he completely grasped the horrible significance of what she had said.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"I'm writing thirty instead of fifteen, because that is what you ought to have asked for in the beginning. You see I am more business-like now than I was then."

He smiled.

"And do you really suppose I am going to take it?"

He meant his smile to be bitter, but somehow it was not. After all, she was so helpless and so young.

"Of course you are going to take it."

"I needn't ask what you think of me."

This time the smile was bitterness itself.

"But it's yours--what I owe you. I'm only paying it to-day instead of some other day."

"But you have not got to pay me anything. What do you think you're paying me for?"

"For your work, for the catalogue, of course."

"That infamous catalogue ought never to have been made--not by me at any rate."

"But you made it. You made it for me. I ordered it."

"You ordered it from my father. In ordinary circ.u.mstances you would have owed him fifteen pounds. But even he wouldn't take it now. I think he considers himself quite sufficiently paid."

"You are mixing up two things that are absolutely distinct."

"No. I'm only refusing to be mixed up with them."

"But you are mixed up with them."

He laughed at that shot, as a brave man laughs at a hurt.

"You needn't remind me of that. I meant--any more than I can help; though it may seem to you that I haven't very much lower to sink."

"Believe me, I don't a.s.sociate you with this wretched business. I want you to forget it."

"I can't forget it. If I could, it would only be by refusing to degrade myself further in connection with it."

His words were clumsy and wild as the hasty terrified movements of a naked soul, trying to gather round it the last rags of decency and honour.

"There is no connection," she added, more gently than ever, seeing how she hurt him. "Don't you see that it lies between you and me?"

He saw that as she spoke she was curling the cheque into a convenient form for slipping into his hand in the moment of leave-taking.

"Indeed--indeed you must," she whispered.