Athalie

The gathering scowl faded and he forced a smile. Then the frown returned; he flung one arm around her supple waist and gathered both her hands into his, holding them closely imprisoned.

"You must love!" he said almost roughly.

"My dear! I've told you that I do love you."

"And I tell you you don't! Your calm and cheerful friendship for me isn't love!"

"Oh. What else is it, please?"

He kissed her on the mouth. She suffered his lips again without flinching, then drew back laughingly to avoid him.

"Why are you becoming so very demonstrative?" she asked. "If you are not careful it will become a horrid habit with you."

"Does it mean nothing more than a habit to you?" he asked, unsmilingly.

"It means that I care enough for you to let you do it more than once, doesn't it?"

He shrugged and turned his face toward the window:

"And you believe that you love me," he said, sullenly and partly to himself.

"You amazingly sulky man, what are you muttering to yourself?" she demanded, bending forward and across his shoulder to see his face which was still turned from her. He swung about and caught her fiercely in his arms; and the embrace left her breathless and flushed.

"Clive – please – "

"Can't you care for me! For God's sake show it if you can!"

"Please, dear – I – "

"Can't you!" he repeated unsteadily, drawing her closer. "You know what I am asking. Answer me!"

She bent her head and rested it against his shoulder a moment, considering; she then looked away from him, troubled:

"I don't want to be your – mistress," she said. Truth disconcerts the vast majority. It disconcerted him – after a ringing silence through which the beating of rain on the window came to him like the steady tattoo of his own heart.

"I did not ask that," he said, very red.

"You meant that… Because I've been everything to you except that."

"I want you for my wife," he interrupted sharply.

"But you are married, Clive. So what more can I be to you, unless I become – what I don't want to become – "

"I merely want you to love me – until I can find some way out of this hell on earth I'm living in!"

"Dear, I'm sorry! I'm sorry you are so unhappy. But you can't get free, – can you? She won't let you, will she?"

"I've got to have my freedom! I can't stand this. Good God! Must a man do life for being a fool once? Isn't there any allowance to be made for a first offence? I've always wanted to marry you. I was a miserable, crazy coward to do what I did! Haven't I paid for it? Do you know what I've been through?"

She said very sweetly and pitifully: "Dear, I know what people suffer – what lonely hearts endure. I think I understand what you have been through."

"I know you understand! Fool that I am who enlightened you. But yours was the injury of bruised faith – the suffering caused by outrage. No hell of self-contempt set you crawling about the world in agony; no despicable self-knowledge drove you out into the waste places. Yours was the sorrow of a self-respecting victim; mine the grief of the damned fool who has done to death all that he ever loved for the love of expediency and of self!"

"Clive! – "

"That's what I am!" he interrupted fiercely, "a damned fool! I don't know what else I am, but I can't live without you, and I won't!"

She said: "You told me that being in love with me would not make you unhappy. So I told you to love me. I was wrong to let you do it."

"You darling! I am more than happy!"

"It was a dreadful mistake, Clive! I shouldn't have let you."

"Do you think you could have stopped me?"

"I don't know. Couldn't I? I've stopped other men… I shouldn't have let you. But it was so delightful – to be really loved by you! All my pride responded. It seemed to dignify everything; it seemed to make me really a woman, with a place among other women – to be loved by such a man as you … and I was not selfish about it; I did ask you whether it would make you unhappy to be in love with me. Oh, I see now that I was very wrong, Clive – very foolish, very wrong! Because it is making you restless and unhappy – "

"If you could only love me a little in return!"

"I don't know how to love you except the way I am doing – "

"There is a more vital emotion – "

"It seems impossible that I could care for you more deeply than I do."

"If you could only respond with a little tenderness – "

"I do respond – as well as I know how," she said piteously.

He drew her nearer and touched her cheek with his lips:

"I know, dear. I don't mean to complain."

"Oh, Clive! I have let you fall in love with me and it is making you miserable! And now it's making me miserable, too, because you are disappointed in me."

"No – "

"You are! I'm not what you expected – not what you wanted – "

"You are everything I want! – if I could only wake your heart!" he said in a low tense voice.

"It isn't my heart that is asleep… I know what you miss in me… And I can't help it. I – I don't wish to help it – or to be different."

She dropped her head against his shoulder. After a few moments she spoke from there in a muffled, childish voice:

"What can I do about it? I don't want to be your mistress, Clive… I never wanted to do – anything – like that."

A deeper colour burnt his face. He said: "Could you love me enough to marry me if I managed to free myself?"