The Romantic Part 7

He had listened with a gentle, mute attention, as you listen to a story about something that you remember, that interests you still, his eyes fixed on his own hands, his clear, beautiful face dreamy and inert.

"You see," he said, "you did trust me. You wouldn't tell me all that if you didn't."

"Of course I trust you. I told you because you trusted me. I thought--I thought you ought to know. I daresay you did know--all the time."

"No. No, I didn't. I shouldn't have believed it was in you."

"It isn't in me now. It's gone clean out of me. I shall never want that sort of thing again."

"I know _that_." He said it almost irritably. "I mean I shouldn't have thought you could have cared for a brute like that.... But the brutes women _do_ care for ..."

"I suppose I did care. But I don't feel as if I'd cared. I don't feel as if it had ever really happened. I can't believe it did. You see, I've forgotten such a lot of it. I couldn't have believed that once, that you could go and do a thing like that and forget about it. You'd have thought you'd remember it as long as you lived."

"You couldn't live if you remembered...."

"Oh, John, do you think it was as horrible as all that?"

His face moved, flashed into sudden pa.s.sion.

"I think _he_ was as horrible as that. He makes it horrible--inconceivably horrible."

"But--he wasn't."

"You've told me. He was cruel to you. And he lied and funked."

"It wasn't like him--it wasn't _like_ him to lie and funk. It was my fault. I made the poor thing jumpy. I let him run such whopping risks.

_The_ horrible thing is thinking what I made him."

"He was a liar and a coward, Charlotte; a swine."

"I tell you he _wasn't_. Oh, why are we so beastly hard on each other?

Everybody's got their breaking-point. I don't lie about the things he lied about; I don't funk the things he funked. But when my time comes I daresay I shall funk and lie."

"Charlotte--are you sure you don't care for him?"

"Of course I'm sure. I told you I'd forgotten all about it. _This_ is what I shall remember all my life. Your being here, my being with you.

It's the _real_ thing."

"You wouldn't want to go back?"

"To him?"

"No. To that sort of thing."

"You mean with--just anybody?"

"I mean with--somebody you cared about. Could you do without it and go on caring?"

"Yes. If _he_ could. If he could go on. But he wouldn't."

"'He' wouldn't, Charlotte. But _I_ would.... You know I _do_ care for you?"

"I thought you _did_--I mean I thought you were beginning to. That's why I told you what happened, though I knew you'd loathe me."

"I don't. I'm glad you told me. I'm glad it happened. I mean I'm glad you worked it off on him.... You got it over; you've had your experience; you know all about it; you know how long that sort of thing lasts and how it ends. The baseness, the cruelty of it ... I'm like you, Charlotte, I don't want any more of it.... When I say I care for you I mean I want to be with you, to be with you _always_. I'm not happy when you're not there....

"... I say, I wish you'd leave this place and come away and live with me somewhere."

"Where?"

"There's my farm. My father's going to give me one if I stick to this job. We could run it together. There are all sorts of jolly things we could do together.... Would you like to live with me, Charlotte, on my farm?"

"Yes."

"I mean--live with me without _that_."

"Yes; without that."

"It isn't that I don't care for you. It's because I care so awfully, so much more than anybody else could. I want to go on caring, and it's the only way. People don't know that. They don't know what they're destroying with their blind rushing together. All the delicate, exquisite sensations. Charlotte, I can get all the ecstasy I want by just sitting here and looking at you, hearing your voice, touching you--like this." His finger-tips brushed the bare skin of her arm. "Even thinking of you ...

"... And all that would go. Everything would go....

"... But our way--nothing could end it."

"I can see one thing that would end it. If you found somebody you really cared about."

"Oh _that_--You mean if I--It wouldn't happen, and if it did, what difference would it make?"

"You mean you'd come back?"

"I mean I shouldn't have left you."

"Still, you'd have gone to her. John, I don't think I could bear it."

"You wouldn't have to bear it long. It wouldn't last."

"Why shouldn't it?"

"Because--You don't understand, Charlotte--if I know a woman wants me, it makes me loathe her."

"It wouldn't, if you wanted _her_."

"That would be worse. I should _hate_ her then if she made me go to her."

"You don't know."

"Oh, don't I!"