The Fruit of the Tree Part 59

"I only thought...he told me he would keep straight...if he only had a chance," she faltered out.

Amherst lifted his head slowly, and looked at her. "You mean--I am to do nothing? Is that it?"

She moved nearer to him with beseeching eyes. "I can't bear it.... I can't bear that others should come between us," she broke out pa.s.sionately.

He made no answer, but she could see a look of suffering cross his face, and coming still closer, she sank down on the ottoman, laying her hand on his. "John...oh, John, spare me," she whispered.

For a moment his hand lay quiet under hers; then he drew it out, and enclosed her trembling fingers.

"Very well--I'll give him a chance--I'll do nothing," he said, suddenly putting his other arm about her.

The reaction caught her by the throat, forcing out a dry sob or two; and as she pressed her face against him he raised it up and gently kissed her.

But even as their lips met she felt that they were sealing a treaty with dishonour. That his kiss should come to mean that to her! It was unbearable--worse than any personal pain--the thought of dragging him down to falsehood through her weakness.

She drew back and rose to her feet, putting aside his detaining hand.

"No--no! What am I saying? It can't be--you must tell the truth." Her voice gathered strength as she spoke. "Oh, forget what I said--I didn't mean it!"

But again he seemed sunk in inaction, like a man over whom some baneful lethargy is stealing.

"John--John--forget!" she repeated urgently.

He looked up at her. "You realize what it will mean?"

"Yes--I realize.... But it must be.... And it will make no difference between us...will it?"

"No--no. Why should it?" he answered apathetically.

"Then write--tell Mr. Langhope not to give him the place. I want it over."

He rose slowly to his feet, without looking at her again, and walked over to the desk. She sank down on the ottoman and watched him with burning eyes while he drew forth a sheet of note-paper and began to write.

But after he had written a few words he laid down his pen, and swung his chair about so that he faced her.

"I can't do it in this way," he exclaimed.

"How then? What do you mean?" she said, starting up.

He looked at her. "Do you want the story to come from Wyant?"

"Oh----" She looked back at him with sudden insight. "You mean to tell Mr. Langhope yourself?"

"Yes. I mean to take the next train to town and tell him."

Her trembling increased so much that she had to rest her hands against the edge of the ottoman to steady herself. "But if...if after all...Wyant should not speak?"

"Well--if he shouldn't? Could you bear to owe our safety to _him_?"

"Safety!"

"It comes to that, doesn't it, if _we're_ afraid to speak?"

She sat silent, letting the bitter truth of this sink into her till it poured courage into her veins.

"Yes--it comes to that," she confessed.

"Then you feel as I do?"

"That you must go----?"

"That this is intolerable!"

The words struck down her last illusion, and she rose and went over to the writing-table. "Yes--go," she said.

He stood up also, and took both her hands, not in a caress, but gravely, almost severely.

"Listen, Justine. You must understand exactly what this means--may mean.

I am willing to go on as we are now...as long as we can...because I love you...because I would do anything to spare you pain. But if I speak I must say everything--I must follow this thing up to its uttermost consequences. That's what I want to make clear to you."

Her heart sank with a foreboding of new peril. "What consequences?"

"Can't you see for yourself--when you look about this house?"

"This house----?"

He dropped her hands and took an abrupt turn across the room.

"I owe everything to her," he broke out, "all I am, all I have, all I have been able to give you--and I must go and tell her father that you...."

"Stop--stop!" she cried, lifting her hands as if to keep off a blow.

"No--don't make me stop. We must face it," he said doggedly.

"But this--this isn't the truth! You put it as if--almost as if----"

"Yes--don't finish.--Has it occurred to you that _he_ may think that?"

Amherst asked with a terrible laugh. But at that she recovered her courage, as she always did when an extreme call was made on it.

"No--I don't believe it! If he _does_, it will be because you think it yourself...." Her voice sank, and she lifted her hands and pressed them to her temples. "And if you think it, nothing matters...one way or the other...." She paused, and her voice regained its strength. "That is what I must face before you go: what _you_ think, what _you_ believe of me. You've never told me that."

Amherst, at the challenge, remained silent, while a slow red crept to his cheek-bones.

"Haven't I told you by--by what I've done?" he said slowly.

"No--what you've done has covered up what you thought; and I've helped you cover it--I'm to blame too! But it was not for this that we...that we had that half-year together...not to sink into connivance and evasion! I don't want another hour of sham happiness. I want the truth from you, whatever it is."

He stood motionless, staring moodily at the floor. "Don't you see that's my misery--that I don't know myself?"