Chapter X

Two figures came slowly down the hill from the heights of Belinda to the Pont St. Louis. Darkness was closing in upon them. In front, vanishing in the dusk along the white road, their donkeys, relieved of burden, jingled homewards at an irregular gait. The girl driver, her wide, conical Mentonese hat hanging over her arm, and a flower in her mouth, flicked their lean haunches with her whip. She walked, fast and erect, with a swaying of her hips, exchanging rough jests with the Gendarmes at the Customs. The basket she carried in her hand swung gently with a subdued rattle of empty bottles and plates.

Giles stopped on the bridge. He put his hand on Jocelyn’s arm, and the touch of his fingers was hot upon her flesh through her light muslin sleeve.

“There is no hurry,” he said in constrained tones which seemed to pass through rigid lips, “it will be over soon enough; let the beasts get on, they make too much noise.”

Jocelyn stopped too, looking anxiously into his face; it was set and hard. He leant against the parapet of the bridge, and his profile showed clear-cut through the dusk. One hand gripped the stone coping; she put her own gently upon it. His tall figure quivered from head to foot at the touch, but he kept his eyes away from her face. Presently he began to speak in a measured, expressionless voice.

“Nice place for the end of things, isn’t it?” he said, pointing down the precipitous drop to the dim rocks below. “I’ve known three fellows who ended there--very good chaps; one wouldn’t choose it oneself, it can’t be pretty;” and he laughed shortly.

“_Don’t_, dear!” said Jocelyn, and her hand tightened on his.

His face worked, and he turned to her.

“_Please_ take your hand away!”

She drew it away quickly, trembling.

“My God!” he said. “Are you made of ice, Jocelyn? Don’t you know what I endure by day and night? Don’t you know what a man’s love is--Great Heaven! how should you? You _can’t_ know how it tears and tortures me--” he broke off.

Each word seemed torn from him, and each had a separate, intense value in the still air. He looked down again at the shadowy rocks, then he said--

“I am sorry--there--has--been--a big--mistake--I’m not man enough; come, dear, let’s go on.”

They moved silently down the deserted road a long way. The growing darkness hid their features from each other. Now they passed through a thick grove of olives that stretched below the road, in banks, to the top of the cliff.

Giles stopped.

“Look!” he said. On the far horizon of the dark sea there was a crimson flare, as of a ship on fire.

“The moon is rising. Sit down a minute, child, and rest, you must be tired.”

She seated herself on a lower bank. The moon rose slowly, the crimson changing to yellow, the yellow to white. Giles stood beside the girl, looking down on her. The wonderful southern night throbbed around them, the still air was warm and full of scent; through the olive branches the stars gleamed, there was no sound save the faint, far-off murmur of the town, and the sough of the sea below.

The moon rose to the level of the olive bank; and Giles saw that she was crying, crying silently, pitifully.

He flung himself down at her feet, and kissed them, crying--

“Don’t, my darling, don’t! it hurts me--it hurts me.”

He clasped his hands on her knees, and she bent her head down upon them. A great trembling passed through his frame; it seemed to him an eternity that passed, while the hot moisture of her tears burned his hands. His face was close to her hair; with every noiseless sob it was the nearer to his lips. He kissed the dark head softly.

Presently she raised her eyes to his, dark and wet with tears. Her lips were trembling. The moonbeams fell upon his face, white, tense, and passionate; on hers, tender, pitiful, and tear-stained.

“I _want_ to be good to you, dearest. What does anything matter while you are so wretched? What can I do? What can I do?”

He sprang to his feet, and reeled backwards.

“Don’t torture me, my darling! You don’t know what you’re saying,” he said in a hoarse whisper, then very deliberately and aloud, “You must go home--go on alone for a minute, I’ll come.” The words sounded hollow in his own ears, he had a feeling that some one else, not himself at all, had said them. He put his hands over his eyes and muttered indistinctly, “God help me!” with a short choking gasp.

The perfume of her dress and hair was wafted to him, mingled with the night scents, in the intoxicating stillness under those dark branches; he reeled a little, then he saw that Jocelyn too was on her feet. She stood before him quite close, her figure swaying, her breast heaving. In her eyes was an infinite pity; they fastened on his, intent and searching, they seemed trying to read his soul. She put out her hands. He moved with a writhing, helpless gesture, and seized them in his own. With the touch of those burning hands, with the fastening of his eyes on hers, there came a change in the girl’s face, the strained look went out of her eyes, they seemed to swim and burn; no longer questioning, they gave him back look for look. Her lips parted slightly in a sigh.

“Sweetheart!” She leaned towards him.

In that second, with his lips almost touching hers, knowing that if they touched there could be no holding back and no recall, everything passed before him. He saw himself. He saw what he was doing. Like a drowning man he saw all that had gone before, all that was coming, stretched grimly into a dim future. He saw her mind--the pity in it, the reflection of his own passion. He saw his wife. He saw _all_ things--love, pity, and honour. He weighed them in the scales, they were all as nothing.

A short, sobbing breath of wind sighed through the olives.

Their lips met.

_PART II_