The Three Sisters Part 95

He gave her a little queer, puzzled look.

"I wouldn't think you a brute whatever you wanted. Do you mind my smoking a cigarette?"

"No."

She waited.

"Steven--

"I wish I hadn't made you stay."

"You're not making me stay."

"I mean--that time. Do you remember?"

He smiled a little smile of reminiscent tenderness.

"Yes, yes. I remember."

"I didn't understand, Steven."

"Well, well. There's no need to go back on that now. It's done, Gwenda."

"Yes. And I did it. I wouldn't have done it if I'd known what it meant. I didn't think it would have been like this."

"Like what?"

Rowcliffe's smile that had been reminiscent was now vague and obscurely speculative.

"I ought to have let you go when you wanted to," she said.

Rowcliffe looked down at the table. She sat leaning sideways against it; one thin arm was stretched out on it. The hand gripped the paper weight that he had pushed away. It was this hand, so tense and yet so helpless, that he was looking at. He laid his own over it gently. Its grip slackened then. It lay lax under the sheltering hand.

"Don't worry about that, my dear," he said. "It's been all right----"

"It hasn't. It hasn't."

Rowcliffe's nerves winced before her fierce intensity. He withdrew his sheltering hand.

"Just at first," she said, "it was all right. But you see--it's broken down. You said it would."

"You mustn't keep on bothering about what I said."

"It isn't what you said. It's what is. It's this place. We're all tied up together in it, tight. We can't get away from each other. It isn't as if I could leave. I'm stuck here with Papa."

"My dear Gwenda, did I ever say you ought to leave?"

"No. You said _you_ ought. It's the same thing."

"It isn't. And I don't say it now. What is the earthly use of going back on things? That's what makes you ill. Put it straight out of your mind. You know I can't help you if you go on like this."

"You can."

"My dear, I wish I knew how. You asked me to stay and I stayed. I can understand _that_."

"If I asked you to go, would you go, Steven? Would you understand that too?"

"My dear child, what good would that do you?"

"I want you to go, Steven."

"You want me to go?"

He screwed up his eyes as if he were trying to see the thing clearly.

"Yes," she said.

He shook his head. He had given it up.

"No, my dear, you don't want me to go. You only think you do. You don't know what you want."

"I shouldn't say it if I didn't."

"Wouldn't you! It's exactly what you would say. Do you suppose I don't know you?"

She had both her arms stretched before him on the table now. The hands were clasped. The little thin hands implored him. Her eyes implored him. In the tense clasp and in the gaze there was the pa.s.sion of entreaty that she kept out of her voice.

But Rowcliffe did not see it. He had shifted his position, sinking a little lower into his chair, and his head was bowed before her. His eyes, somberly reflective, looked straight in front of him under their bent brows.

He seemed to be really considering whether he would go or stay.

"No," he said presently. "No, I'm not going."

But he was dubious and deliberate. It was as if he still weighed it, still watched for the turning of the scale.

The clock across the market-place struck eight. He gathered himself together. And it was then as if the strokes, falling on his ear, set free some blocked movement in his brain.

"No," he said, "I don't see how I can go, as things are. Besides--it isn't necessary."

"I see," she said.

She rose. She gave him a long look. A look that was still incredulous of what it saw.

His eyes refused to meet it as he rose also.

They stood so for a moment without any speech but that of eyes lifted and eyes lowered.