The Pastor's Wife Part 58

"It's stone," she said nervously, looking up at him, for he had taken a step back and was considering her, his head on one side. "Do you think it's good for us?"

"You beautiful little thing," he murmured, considering her. "You exquisite little lover."

Her hands gripped the edge of the seat more tightly. A sudden very definite longing for Robert seized her.

"Oh, but--" she began, and faltered.

She tried again. "It's so _kind_ of you, but--you know--but I don't think--"

"What don't you think, my dear, my discoverer, my creator, my restorer--"

"Oh, I know there was Solomon," she faltered, holding on to the seat, "saying things, too, and they meant something else, but--but isn't this different? Different because--well, I suppose through my not being the Church? I'm very _sorry_," she added apologetically, "that I'm not the Church--because then I suppose nothing would really matter?"

"You mean you don't want me to call you lover?"

"Well, I am _married_," she said, in the voice of one who apologised for drawing his attention to it. "There _is_ no getting away from that."

"But we have got away from it," said Ingram, sitting down beside her and loosening the hand nearest him from its tight hold on the seat and kissing it, while she watched him in an uneasiness and dismay that now were extreme. "That's exactly what we have done. Oh," he went on, kissing her hand with what seemed to her a quite extraordinary emotion, "you brave, beautiful little thing, you must know--you can't not know--how completely and gloriously you have burned your ships!"

"Ships?" she echoed.

She stared at him a moment, then added with a catch in her breath:

"Which--ships?"

"Ingeborg, Ingeborg, my fastness, my safety, my darling, my reality, my courage--" said Ingram, kissing her hand between each word.

"Yes," she said, brushing that aside, "but which ships?"

"My strength, my helper, friend, sister, lover, unmerited mate--"

"Yes, but won't you leave off a minute? It--it would be _convenient_ if you'd leave off a minute and tell me which ships?"

He did leave off, to look into her eyes in the dusk, eyes fixed on him in a concentration of questioning that left his epithets on one side as so much irrelevant lumber.

"Little worshipful thing," he said, still gripping her hand, "did you really think you could go back? Did you really think you could?"

"Go back where?"

"To that unworthy rubbish heap, Kokensee?"

She stared at him. Their faces, close together, were white in the dusk, and their eyes looking into each other's were like glowing dark patches.

"Why should I not think so?" she said.

"Because, you little artist in recklessness, you've burned your ships."

She made an impatient movement, and he tightened his hold on her hand.

"Please," she said, "do you mind _telling_ me about the ships?"

"One of them was this."

"Was what?"

"Coming to Italy with me."

"You said heaps of people--"

"Oh, yes, I know--a man has to say things. And the other was writing that letter to Robert. If you'd left it at boots and Berlin!"

He laughed triumphantly and kissed her hand again.

"But that wouldn't have helped, either, really," he went on, "because directly the ten days were up and you hadn't come back he'd have known--"

"Hadn't come back?"

"Oh, Ingeborg--little love, little Parsifal among women, dear divine ignorance and obtuseness--I adore you for believing the picture could be done in a week!"

"But you _said_--"

"Oh, yes, yes, I know--a man has to say things at the beginning--"

"What beginning?"

"Of this--of love, happiness, all the wonders of joy we're going to have--"

"Please, do you mind not talking about those other things for a minute?

Why do you tell me I can't go back, I can't go home?"

"They wouldn't have you. Isn't it ridiculous--isn't it glorious?"

"What, not have me _home_? They wouldn't _have_ me? Who wouldn't? There isn't a they. I've only got Robert--"

"_He_ wouldn't. After that letter he couldn't. And Kokensee wouldn't and couldn't. And Glambeck wouldn't and couldn't. And Germany, if you like, wouldn't and couldn't. The whole world gives you to me. You're my mate now for ever."

She watched him kissing her hand as though it did not belong to her. She was adjusting a new thought that was pushing its way like a frozen spear into her mind, trying to let it in, seeing, she could not keep it out, among all those happy thoughts so warmly there already about Ingram and her holiday and the kindness and beauty of life, without its too cruelly killing too many of them too quickly. "Do you mean--" she began; then she stopped, because what was the use of asking him what he meant? Quite suddenly she knew.

An immense slow coldness, an icy fog, seemed to settle down on her and blot out happiness. All the dear accustomed things of life, the small warm things of quietness and security, the everyday things one nestled up to and knew, were sliding away from her. "So that," she heard herself saying in a funny clear voice, "there's only G.o.d?"

"How, only G.o.d?" he asked, looking up at her.

"Only G.o.d left who wouldn't call it adultery?"

The word in her mouth shocked him.