Chapter VI: Part 6

I am going to write to Ruddington. Not a reply on behalf of Susan. Not a letter that will ever be posted. Not a letter that any eye save mine shall ever see. Once, just this once, because I am sleepless, and shaken, and worn, and unhappy, I will let myself go. For half an hour, he shall be mine. His rose-leaf, my stolen rose-leaf, shall lie by my hand. To-morrow ... the fire for what I write to-night. And for me--to-morrow and all the morrows after it--no looking back to this hour, no brooding, no idle regret, nothing save the quest of forgetfulness.

This is what I write--the first and last love-letter of my life:

SAINT VERONICA'S, _at dead of night_.

BELOVED,--You bid me write to you just once without distrust either of myself or of you. You bid me pour out all my heart.

I obey. Once--this once--I will speak to you as I have never spoken before, as I can never speak again.

You have seen me, in the flesh, three times, treading the solid ground, breathing the summer air. Yet you do not love me. I have seen you only in a portrait: and I love you as wildly, as eternally, as immeasurably as you believe you love poor Susan. I know it all through my soul: and, as you wrote in your first letter, there can never be any one in the world for me save you.

Your portrait was the beginning. How I can have been near your own very self those three times in England without turning to you as a flower turns to the sun, without answering you as deep answers deep, I do not know. Perhaps my heart did turn, my soul did answer. But, for my consciousness, the portrait was the beginning. And what your portrait began your letters have carried on.

You say that poor Susan's mind is even more beautiful and wonderful than poor Susan's face. Alas, how cruelly you are deceived, how rudely you must be awakened. But with Thee, beloved, it is thy mind that makes me love Thee most. Although I have wandered only a few steps along its margin, I know that a long lifetime would not suffice me to explore that goodly land with its sunny fields, its merry brooks, its great deeps, its peaks piercing the clouds of heaven.

Yes, Beloved, thy mind is beautiful and wonderful. And yet it has deceived you. At the sight of a pretty face, you bent like a reed under an immense infatuation which you think is love. It is the tragedy of your life and mine, Beloved, that we, whom God made one for another, must go our separate ways, you with your infatuation, I with my love.

Doubtless, before long, we shall meet. You will feel the delicacy of my position, you will be considerate, grateful, kind. And I must sit and smile and put you at your ease, while all the time my heart will be crying: This is the man who should have loved me!

To-morrow all will be changed. This hour of self-revelation will belong to the past, never to have a successor. But to-night I have let myself go. If you were here at this moment, your infatuation should melt and vanish before my love, like hoarfrost before a raging fire. You should go down on your knees, you should prostrate yourself at my feet, imploring pardon for your ignoble truancy and for your treason against love. But I would make haste to forgive you, Beloved, and to raise you up, and to throw myself against your heart into your arms.

I send you back your rose-leaf. It has lain by me as I have written, and I will keep nothing to remind me of this hour. So I send it back--not as it came, for it is heavy with a kiss.

The sand has run out in the glass. My hour is ended. When I have laid down my pen, I shall weep. And, when I have wept, perchance I shall sleep and love you dreaming as you will never love me waking. Farewell.

I laid down my pen five minutes ago. I take it up again to say that I have not wept and that I cannot sleep.

What a letter I have written--what a slow-footed, cold-blooded, low-pulsed, nerveless, schoolgirlish scribble! Will the fire be able to burn it, I wonder, or will it put the fire out like an armful of damp green boughs?

No, I can't sleep. My very contempt for what I have written has awakened me in every fibre.

I am not ill now. I have never been so well before in my life. A moment ago I looked at myself in the glass. The picture enchained me. I stood with the torch-like brass candlestick held high. My uplifted arm was bare as far as the deep lace at my elbow. My eyes shone, my hair fell all about me, almost to my knees. In contrast, my feet were like two lilies, my neck was like a swan's. And, as I gazed, another veil was withdrawn from the mystery of life. By the light of the candle I saw my own cheeks glow red, as it was revealed to me what it will mean to live without love. What Fate denies me is not only communion with a kindred spirit. I, too, am flesh and blood.

Let Susan and Ruddington thank their stars that I was brought up gently, christianly, instead of wickedly, selfishly, in the passion-fraught air of a worldly home. Let them thank their stars that the devil in me has been laid, that the tigress in me has been tamed. If Ruddington were here to-night, if Susan came running hither through that door, how small a thing could sting me past control and rouse me to overwhelm them under my proud anger and pitiless love! I could dash his china shepherdess into a thousand pieces. I could compel him to forsake all and follow me to the end of the world.

A memory rises up suddenly and makes me laugh bitterly. Susan at Traxelby. How I smiled at her melodramatics when she knelt down in an agony of fear and made me swear that I would not take him away from her! But I have sworn, and I may not repent.

Enough, far more than enough, of this. It is mad, it is sickly, it is contemptible. No more of it, to-night or ever. I will get back into bed, and lie snug, and read till morning.

_Wednesday, noon: in bed_.

I feel bruised all over, strengthless, stunned. Susan woke me at ten o'clock. _Les Chouans_ had fallen to the floor and the candle at my bedside had burned down to its socket.

Susan says that she came in at seven with no less noise than usual. But I was sleeping so soundly that she didn't like to wake me before ten.

While she was propping me up with pillows and pouring out the coffee, I looked round the room and my heart stood still.

The letter to Ruddington was gone.

My cheeks turned whiter than the sheets. Susan caught me in her arms.

"Oh, Miss Gertrude, no, no!" she wailed, "I couldn't bear it."

She thought I was going to die. I opened my eyes and tried to speak. But Susan wailed on.

"It's my fault, Miss, all mine. You're so good to me, Miss, I ought to have known. I ought to have said, 'Don't bother about his lordship, Miss, till you're well and strong.' But I didn't think. I'm too selfish, Miss. Oh, Miss Gertrude, to think you were sitting up writing and writing all that, and me snug and warm in bed!"

"Susan," I said feebly, asking the question in terror, "What have you done with it?"

"It's gone, Miss," answered Susan, with the prompt heartiness of one who breaks good news and administers consolation. "So you don't need to worry your head about it any more."

"Gone?" I echoed, in a voice as thin as a ghost's.

"Yes, Miss. Madame was going to Grandpont in the omnibus. She asked me if we had any letters for the early post. And oh, Miss Gertrude, it was perfectly lovely! I can't never thank you enough. I couldn't understand it all through; but it was so lovely, it made me cry."

I lay still with closed eyes. When Susan held the coffee to my lips, I drank. When she drew away the extra pillows and settled the bedclothes cosily round me, I did not resist. Indeed, I did not say another word. Susan thinks I am asleep.

I ought to be up and doing. But doing what? I ought to be hot, angry, ashamed, full of resolves and plans. But I am lying here, despite the shocks and bruises, subdued, at rest, strangely imperturbable. Can it be that I am happy because, while I have played fair with Susan, I have been suffered once, just once, to speak in his ear and to send him a rose-leaf with a kiss?

I have thought it all out. Did Susan sign the letter? Even if it has gone without her name, it doesn't matter. He cannot guess that it is mine.

At first I shuddered at recollecting the bits about "poor Susan." But, again, it doesn't matter. He will take it that Susan has written "poor Susan" instead of "I," just as he himself writes "prudent Suzanne" instead of you.

He will read it to-morrow morning. It will puzzle him. But the task of interpreting it will delight his fanciful, super-subtle mind. I can predict his reading of the riddle. He will take it that Susan, in her wonderful, beautiful soul, is comparing her angelic love with his very human infatuation. He will picture her more exquisite and spiritual and poetical than ever. But it is my kiss that he will cull from the curling lip of that pale rose.

*BOOK IV*

*LA VILLA DE LA MER*

*BOOK IV*

_Thursday night_.

I am not Number 3 at Dupoirier's hotel any more. I am a householder; and mistress, until Sunday morning, of the Villa de la Mer.

I am writing in my new bedroom. The French windows open on a broad wooden balcony facing the sea. The furniture is brand new--as new as the villa garden, with its glaring paths of chalk-chippings bordering an oblong of wiry grass and lean, shivery shrubs.

If Ruddington rode into Derlingham, he would get the letter this morning, about a quarter to ten. At half-past two a telegram arrived at the Hotel du Dauphin, addressed to Susan. Happily, he had the tact to hand it in at Miller's Bridge where Susan isn't known. Susan brought the unopened message to me with a scared face. I took it, and this is what I read aloud:--

TO MISS BRIGGS,
HOTEL DU DAUPHIN,
SAINTE VERONIQUE,
FRANCE.

I am crossing to-night, and shall reach Sainte Veronique to-morrow at 6 p.m.

RUDDINGTON.

Susan snatched the paper out of my hand with a cry of dismay.

"Oh, Miss!" she moaned, letting it fall on the grass, "whatever shall we do?"

I was struck dumb.

"Whatever shall we do?" she cried again. "Oh, Miss Gertrude, he mustn't come! I can't bear it. I must send him a telegram at once. I must!"

Too much staggered to answer, I looked at her blankly. She collapsed on the rustic seat by my side, covered her face with her pretty new French apron, and went off into an old-fashioned, uncontrollable fit of weeping.

To the sound of her sobs, I tried to decide what course was best. Susan's plan of an immediate telegram commanding him to stop at home seemed good at first. But I glanced at his words again, and all doubt vanished. I knew that Susan might as well tell to-morrow's sun not to rise, to-morrow's tides not to flow, as tell Ruddington that to-morrow he must not invade Sainte Veronique. Nor could I blame him, or wonder at him. With such a letter as mine in his hand, I should have despised him if he had not flown on the wings of the wind.

"Stop crying, Susan," I said. And, with a bitterness which she did not understand, I added, "It is I who should be upset, not you."

"Yes, Miss, I know, Miss," sobbed Susan. "With you so ill and weak, it's horrible, it's dreadful!"

"I don't mean that, Susan," I said. "But do you think I like his coming here? First it was Gibson, and now it's Lord Ruddington."

She turned on me white with terror.

"I know, I know, oh, I know, Miss Gertrude!" she crooned, wringing her hands. "What if Gibson meets him, Miss? They'll fight, and they'll both be killed!"

"Don't talk nonsense," I said irritably; "if they killed each other, at least we should have some peace. As for sending a telegram, what's the good? He's made up his mind. Very likely he has started. If so, no power on earth will turn him back again."

"Do you think, Miss----?" began Susan.

"Think what?"

"Your letter, Miss ... my letter. Do you think that perhaps it was too ... loving?"

"And what if it was?" I retorted. "He's got the letter by now, hasn't he? He's got it, and it can't be altered."

Susan wept afresh.

"Oh, Miss!" she moaned. "If only we was at Traxelby I wouldn't mind. But it's dreadful!"

A plan occurred to me.

"Wait here," I said, "while I go and speak to Madame."

Within a quarter of an hour it was all arranged. I told Madame that an Englishman from the next parish to my own would arrive to-morrow night. Madame is the pink of propriety; and she had nothing but approval for my scheme of taking Susan and Georgette to the Villa de la Mer for the time of Ruddington's stay. I took it upon myself to declare that the newcomer will go away again on Sunday; and I am not sure that I shall allow him to remain so long.

The Dupoiriers had made the villa beautifully sweet and clean in the hope of attracting one more end-of-the-season tenant. There was hardly anything that needed to be done. Madame has sent down a great hamper of linen, and two baskets of provisions, and a pudgy little baby cask of cider. And here we are.

Already the change has done me good. Sitting on the broad balcony, between two tubs of bushy, bright-leaved euonymus, I am so near the sea that, at the top of the tide, the spray kisses my cheeks. To come here was an inspiration, every way. From a house of my own, I can manage to-morrow's happenings. To be mistress of a house helps me to be once more mistress of myself. These wholesome, hearty breezes will blow away the morbid nightmares of yesterday and the days before. I mean to go back to where I stood a week ago. That is to say, having done my duty by Susan, I mean to stand aloof and look on at the last act of the comedy.

All this afternoon I have been healthily awake, and now I am healthily drowsy. To-night I shall be like a child in a cradle, with the big soft sea cooing me to sleep.

_Friday morning_.

If ever I cross to Sainte Veronique again, I shall come to the Villa and not to the hotel. Last year, I hated the sight of the Villa standing up gaunt and shadeless, with raw red walls, and a cold muddy-blue slate roof. But, once inside, you are cheerfuller than in the hotel.

There's another and a stronger reason. What was it that demoralized me at the hotel and made me such an easy prey to mawkish fancies? It was because I had nothing to do, nothing to supervise. The Villa is only a big doll's-house; but its toy duties and its miniature responsibilities have stiffened my backbone already.

I have settled everything about Ruddington. When he reaches the hotel, he will find a note from Susan. I can't have him worrying us to-night. He must cool his ardour till to-morrow. And he mustn't stay longer than Sunday, Thirty-six hours of it will be a long enough ordeal for poor Susan. All that is needed at this stage is that they should come face to face, and, as Susan says, decide whether they can put up with one another. If he stays more than one clear day, they'll be getting to explanations and confidences, and it will all come out about my letters.

Unless there is mutual disenchantment (in which event Susan will send him off at once) I will see him to-morrow, after lunch. As Susan's guardian, I shall have to sit in state and give him a gracious audience, while he shyly unfolds his tale of love and proves the honourableness of his intentions.

I am glad that he is coming. It's far better to get it over at Sainte Veronique than to have to go through it all at Traxelby. Besides, it's better that I should meet him without any more delay. Distance and mystery have lent enchantment to my view of him, and they are to blame for my three silly nights and days. If there are any germs of love-sickness still lurking in my veins, I expect a talk with him will kill them. He will be unlike his portrait and far more unlike his letters, he is just an ordinary male person, gone mad over a pretty face. The only uncommon thing about him, is that his letters strive, by an ecstatic _tour de force_, to lift an everyday masculine passion up to supra-mundane regions. Through a sequence of galling accidents, I have bolstered up his illusion. That is why, for a few days, there really was a spiritual bond between us. But to-morrow will snap it. There is sure to be a something. Perhaps he will have a weak voice. I could no more endure him with a weak voice than I could endure Susan with a gruff one. This is the note he will find awaiting him:--

You ought not to come here. But I received your telegram too late to stop you.

I showed the telegram to Miss Langley and she was angry. Not angry because you want me. Indeed, so soon as she is satisfied that all is as it should be, she will help me as much as lies in her power. But she was angry that you should come here.

I have promised to ask you, imperatively, not to remain after Sunday. Until that day we shall be at the Villa de la Mer, a chalet about a mile from here.

Do not try to see me to-night. I agree with Miss Langley that it will be best if we meet to-morrow morning on the beach at eleven o'clock. I shall expect you at the end of the path down from the hotel, where the beck is lost in the shingle.

I can be with you for an hour. If we do not find that we are making a mistake, Miss Langley will be glad to see you at the Villa at half-past two.

S.B.

That is as far ahead as I mean to look. If Susan and he strike a bargain at once, I may have to consider what unbendings I must make, and what little honours I must render to-morrow night, and Sunday, to my noble neighbour, and to my Lady Ruddington of the very near future.

I have kept faith with Gibson. To-morrow morning he will have a discreet letter, telling him that the unknown is coming for a few hours: that he is an honourable man; and that Gibson will best serve himself and everybody else by keeping out of the way.

_Noon_.

Susan is alternately beaming and weeping like an April day.

Before she carried the note up to the hotel to leave it for Ruddington, she was all bright excitement and chattering importance. We had quite a gay quarter of an hour settling what she should wear on the beach. She is going to meet him in her navy-blue serge which she has hardly worn, with white gloves and quite a Parisian hat which she has taken over from Georgette. It is of soft, fine, blue straw, made cocked-hat-shape, with two downy, snow-white wings.

"What must I do, Miss, when he comes up to me?" she asked.

I didn't ask what she meant. Perhaps she thinks she ought to bob a curtsy.

"You won't do anything," I answered. "He will come up saying he got your note, or how good it is of you to come, or something like that. Don't be too stiff. Hold out your hand simply and easily."

"I was wondering, Miss..." began Susan. But she cut herself short, blushing violently.

"You were wondering...?" I echoed.

"I was wondering, Miss ... will he want to kiss me?"

I blushed with her.

"Really, Susan," I said, "you must look after yourself."

"My last letter was so loving, Miss," said Susan doggedly.

"It was, and it wasn't," I answered with cunning. "The point is this. You've refused Gibson."

Susan winced. But I went on.

"You've refused Gibson. And you've made up your mind that you will marry Lord Ruddington--if you like the look of him when you see him in real life. It's your affair, Susan, not mine. But, as for kisses ... well, surely, he won't offer them and you won't take them till you are both decided what you are going to do."

"Then I'll tell him he mustn't, Miss," said dutiful Susan.

Later on, she asked:

"Please, Miss Gertrude, what will he say to me?"

"Dear me, Susan, I might be a witch. How do I know what he'll say to you?"

She endured my sarcasm. But Susan still believes that I know everything. It has never entered her head why I wrote that fatal love-letter to Ruddington on Tuesday. She accepts it simply as one more proof of my all-round efficiency. She wonders at it no more than she wonders at my writing adequate letters to my solicitor, or banker, or to a tenant. She thinks I know all about love, just as I know about law and business--as part of a liberal education.

"I don't mean his very words, Miss," she said. "I mean, Miss, what will he talk about?"

"For one thing," I replied, glad of the chance, "he'll talk about your letters. And that's a point I want to mention. Some day a way will be found of making a clean breast of everything. But, until I have seen him, and he is safely back in England, you mustn't give him the faintest shadow of a hint that any of those letters were mine. If you do, there'll be such a muddle that I don't see how we can get out of it."

"I know, Miss, I know!" said Susan alarmed. "I sha'n't breathe a single word."

"Don't be too confident," I answered, warming up to the business. "You may find it hard work keeping it in. He's bound to say a lot of things that you won't very well understand. For instance, take that letter I wrote on Tuesday night--the loving one, as you call it--the one you posted when I was ill. It's too late to scold you over it now, Susan; but you oughtn't to have rushed it off. We could have written something much more suitable."

"But it was lovely, Miss."

"It was a great deal too lovely," I said. "He'll say all kinds of fanciful, clever, difficult things to you about it. My advice, Susan, is this. Don't be stiff; but be shy. Don't go out of your depth in talking to him. So long as he speaks about things you understand, answer him freely. Be as natural and simple as you can. He'll like you all the better. But, if he goes too deep, don't try to follow. Just hold your tongue. If he bothers you and presses you, say you would rather talk about it some other time."

"But he'll find me out some day, Miss," said Susan doubtfully.

"How do you know there's going to be a some day? Perhaps you won't like him. If so, you'll part, and there's an end of it. The great thing, Susan, is not to worry yourself into a fright. If you're scared and nervous, you won't look nice. And if you don't look nice, he'll be far more disappointed than if you're not clever. Now run up to the hotel with this note."

She departed in good spirits, treading jauntily. But when she came back she was limp, hopeless, tearful. It has called for all my strategy to elude a scene. I'm so glad Georgette is here! She and Susan get on together like a house on fire. Georgette is all ears and sympathy for every word Susan says, though Susan might as well be talking Coptic five-sixths of the time. At this minute they are laying the table under the balcony, and Susan is in full flow with her tale of hopes and fears.

_Sunset_.

The gold is tarnishing in the sky, and a cold, bitter wind is blowing from the sea.

It has struck six. He will be just arriving at Madame's.

The Villa is sunnier and freer than the hotel by day. But it is eerie with the fall of night. I will have a fire and an extra lamp.

Oh that it were Monday morning, with it all over, and Ruddington gone! How can I be sure that I have mother-wit, and force, and pride enough to scrape through? What if the sight of him fans Tuesday's flame instead of quenching the embers? What if I do truly love him, after all? What if I break down while he is asking me for Susan?

This useless, restless, shameless pen of mine is my ruin. Why do I never learn? Why did I not burn this book, days ago, to ashes? Even as I have sat writing these so few lines, the truth has darted out of its hiding-place. I can cheat myself no more.

God has marked me down to receive through my heart the sharpest, most venomous arrow of His cruelty. I am the chosen vessel of His wrath. I love Ruddington; and he is close at hand, while the light is dying out of heaven, and I am so cold and lonely. He has sped over land and sea, on fire with love: and the love is not for me.

The last of the red is gone from the sky. Twelve hours before to-morrow's dawn. Twelve hours of sleepless darkness. Twelve hours of solitary vigil to prepare me for meeting him to-morrow in the merry sunlight, and for draining my cup of bitterness to its black dregs.

I could almost laugh--a laugh as hard as iron, as bitter as a black frost. If there be saints in heaven I challenge them to look at me now. Come, good people, I pray you of your charity: a De Profundis, if you please!

_Seven o'clock_.

No need to wait for to-morrow. It is to be to-night. It is to be now.

I shall write this short page to steady my nerves, to rally my wits, to cool my blood.

Something is in the wind. Twenty minutes ago, when I told Susan that I should not need her again till dinner-time, she made pretence of tidying the room, as I was staring into the fire. She did not know that she was reflected in the glass.

I saw her stand stock still and gaze at my face with the gaze of one who gazes for the last time. She could not have gazed at me more desperately, if there had been a hangman waiting at the door to take one of us away. Suddenly her cheeks shone with a drench of tears. She covered her face with her hands, and stumbled through the doorway.

I was sick of scenes. And, with such an anguish as mine, I felt a contempt for Susan's mere ups and downs. So I pretended not to see or hear, and I didn't follow till ten minutes ago.

Susan is not in the house.

Georgette says she went out as soon as she came downstairs. She thinks Susan has only gone for a breath of sea air before dinner.

It is outrageous, it is unendurable, it is wicked, it is cruel. They are meeting now.

What note or what message did Susan leave this morning at the hotel? Not mine! I am a fool, a simpleton, I have less sense than a little child.

I can guess the place. It will be on the beach between here and the beck. They are meeting now. He is holding her in his arms. She will be like potter's clay in his hands. His ardent masterfulness will flick aside her doubts and fears like grains of sand. Her wits will fly away from her like chaff before the wind. There will be no Susan there save a girlish form for him to hold, a burning face for him to kiss, and a childish voice to tell him about me and my letters. And to-morrow----

Unendurable is the word. Endure it I will not. I refuse to be flouted, and disobeyed, and made a fool of, and shamed.

Susan is my maid. I don't allow followers, whoever they may be. Or, rather, I allow them in honest daylight, and at times appointed. Not on the sly. Not in the dark.

I am going out.

_Some time or other_.

I am glad I did not burn this book. It shall stand as my golden legend.

The fire is still lively in the grate, and the two lamps are beaming softly. I don't know whether it is Friday night or Saturday morning. Saturday morning, I suppose. But no going to bed till all is written down.

I stepped out of the Villa about a quarter past seven, and began crunching westward along the stones. Rage and hatred were in my heart. I almost understood those men and women who make haste on such errands as mine, grasping pistols or cold steel. The wind was in my face, but I bent into it and sped on. I was not cold. It made me glow to think how I would burst upon them, cover them with shame, fling them apart, humiliate them a thousand times more than they should ever humiliate me.

But rage and hatred did not last. Under the lee of a great black boat drawn up on the shingle, I paused to take breath. It was warm and still in that little patch of shelter, out of the nipping bluster of the wind.

While I was standing there, looking over the faintly gleaming water, a black mantle of cloud fell away from the moon. The sea became a far-spreading shimmer of silver. The little clouds sailed as curly and white as feathers from a great sea-bird's breast across the soft blue heaven. A single chime of the Berigny church bell fell from the cliff--a single, silvery chime as if the moonlight had spoken.

At that holy call, I was born again. Rage and hatred had been strong, but I had not rage enough or hatred enough to go on standing up stubbornly against all that graciousness and beauty. It melted my heart of stone; and I knew it for an impossibility that God should be otherwise than beautiful and good. For a moment, Ruddington and Susan receded from my mind. Or, rather, I thought of them only along with all the millions of happy lovers upon whom the same sweet moon was smiling. And I blessed them unaware.

My mind came back to my errand. And then I fought the battle. Along the beach I could see the trees which shade the path; and, above the swish of the small waves, I could hear the beck humming loudly in its ravine. I was sure that they were there, under that green roof, close to that music, in this moonlight made for love. The thought burnt me like hot irons, and I could have cried aloud. Then the agony was over. I had resolved to let them be, to leave them alone with their happiness. Rage was tamed, hatred was changed to a sad, world-wide pity. But, as I turned wearily back to the clouded east, I ached and tingled all over like a beaten child.

At the first crunch of my foot on the pebbles as I turned round, some one sprang towards me from the foot of the cliff.

I cried out in terror.

He faced me in the moonlight. We were only a step or two apart. It was Ruddington.

We looked full at one another without speaking. And, as I looked, I knew that, though he could not be mine in this world, I must be his for ever and ever. Then the enormous whiteness of the cliff seemed to rock before my eyes, and the humming of the beck swelled to thunder in my ears. But he caught me before I fell.

"Susan!" he said softly in my ear. His voice was warmer and brighter than gold, as he repeated: "Susan!"

I lay helpless in his arms. All strength had gone from me, just as it had gone when I half swooned in the sea. I could not struggle. I could only let myself sink more wholly against his heart, just as I had so willingly sunk down, down, down through the cool green water to the deep, strong peace of Death. But, though Death's caress had been sweet, it was sweeter to rest against the warm heart of Love.

I don't know how long that perfect happiness endured before a stab of anguish pierced me through. It seemed an hour; it may have been a minute; perhaps it was less than half a second before full consciousness returned. Then a voice within me cried shame. I remembered that, although I had gazed at his face in the broad light of the moon, he had only seen mine in the shadow. Bitterest of all, it was not my name he had murmured in that voice brighter and warmer than gold. He had hailed Susan. I was a cheat, a changeling, lying shameless in Susan's place.

I knew it. But, for a moment longer, I rested at peace in the soft nest of his arms. With all the grey years of the future to be lived through in loveless loneliness, I deliberately gave myself that one long moment. As if he knew that the warmth and sweetness of it must last me all my life long, he held me closer to his heart. I wished, then, that I could have died.

Life, harsh Life, cried aloud. I called up some sudden strength and tore myself free.

"I am not Susan," I said.

He gave the slightest cry, made the slightest retreat in the world. Then, before I knew, he enfolded me once more.

"No," he said proudly. "Not Susan. Suzanne--_ma petite Suzanne_. But I frightened her. She is trembling. Suzanne, forgive me! I must have been mad to leap out upon you like that. But how could she walk along the beach to-night and not expect me to be here?"

I heard him vaguely. He was too strong for me. My will, my moral energy as well as my bodily strength, refused to return at my command. I could hardly open my eyes to look up at the mild moon, so like the cool, round sun which I had seen from under the water.

"Say you forgive me, Suzanne," he murmured. "You are angry with me for coming to France. How could I wait, Suzanne, when you had confessed that you love me?"

I wrenched myself roughly free. With a frenzied effort of will, I rallied back all my allies of conventionality and of pride.

"You have made a mistake," I said curtly, stepping away two or three paces. "I am not Susan."

This time he started violently. But he recovered himself in an instant and came towards me with outstretched hands. I sprang back.

"Susan," he said gravely, "don't jest. For heaven's sake, not now. This is some quaint fancy. You say you are not Susan, just as you said my infatuation was not love. Forgive me, Susan; but this isn't a time for subtleties. You love me; and you know I love you more than life. Don't refine or jest now. This moment of our first meeting is too great, too sacred. Let us be clear and simple, like the moon and the sea."

"No!" I cried, as he advanced. "How dare you touch me again? It's all a mistake. No doubt, this is Lord Ruddington. You are speaking to Miss Langley."

His arms dropped to his side, and he fell back as if I had struck him in the face. I steadied myself with one hand against the side of the boat. It was a long time before he spoke.

"Miss Langley!" he said at last, in tones as cold and dull as lead. "What can I say?" Then his voice quickened and brightened, and he cried: "No, Susan, you shall elude me no more!"

"Stand back, please," I said icily and decisively. "There has been enough of this. I understand you are to see Susan to-morrow, at eleven o'clock."

Before I could move, he leapt to my side.

"Miss Langley," he said rapidly but firmly. "Miss Langley--if you are truly Miss Langley--if this isn't some ill-timed joke--hear me for one moment. Heaven knows I did not mean to insult you. But this is a terrible thing. I have laid on you one indignity; but I beg you to endure another. You have answered me from the shadow. I ask you--for heaven's sake I implore you--to show me your face one moment in the light."

He had pressed so near that his shoulder touched mine. I leaned against the boat counting the cost. Had I the strength, to stand out sheer in the pitiless light and biting air? To watch his face--its lightning-flash of passionate eagerness, its following gloom of disenchantment and chagrin? To listen to his stammering apologies? To bestow pardons, revise arrangements? And, last of all, to stumble back over the stones alone--I, who had just known the support of his breast? Had I the strength? What if I should break down, as the light of love died out of his eyes, and weep bitterly? But there was no choice. My heart bled as I schooled myself once more to the haughtiness of artificial pride, and I said:

"This is monstrous. But as you please."

He made way for me with old-fashioned reverence as I stepped out into the moonshine. With all that was left of my shattered will, I strove to offer for his scrutiny a face hardened by haughtiness, lips curling with disdain, eyes alight with annoyance. But how could I hate him while I loved him? How could my eyes, that were so hungry, stab him? And how could my lips scorn him when they were aching to tell him all?

The eager lightning flashed in his face. But I waited in vain for the dull thunder of despair, for the fall of the gloom. No, it was not lightning. With my heart standing still, I saw that the light abode in his eyes, that it waxed fuller and more radiant as he gazed intently into mine. But suddenly, he quenched it.

"One second more," he commanded abruptly, dryly, almost harshly. "Simply and literally, without any paradoxes or ruses whatever, are you Susan?"

"I am not Susan," I said, beginning to turn away.

"Simply, and literally and truly, you are indeed Miss Langley?"

"I am Miss Langley."

Something chained me to the spot. I saw him go pale as death, and I heard him groan in anguish:

"Then may God help us all!"

"What do you mean?" I demanded. We seemed to be so mysteriously one, that the strength which deserted him passed into me. "Are you not satisfied?" I added. "I must go."

In a flash, he was master again. He flung himself across my path.

"No!" he cried. "You shall not go! Some meddling idiot has deceived me. There has been a horrible, an unspeakable mistake. Gertrude Langley, it was you I met in Derlingham. It was you I watched in Traxelby church. Gertrude Langley, it is you I love with my whole soul. It is you, it is you, it is you! I shall not let you go!"

His words sang all round me like birds. My battle-worn, enfeebled spirit reeled under such bursts of music, such flashes of glory. I made one last agonizing effort to play the conventional part: to rebuke and repel him, to parade amazement, shame, and a dishonest show of anger. But he was too strong. He dominated me so, that I could not even pause to marvel at the miracle, or to ask myself if it could be true. I could only totter towards him in dumb, unconditional surrender, and burst into a torrent of thankful tears.

This third time, he held me, not as he had held me before. Then, he had strained me to him like a lover; now, he supported me gravely, reverentially, as any man would support any woman who has half-fainted away. But, by swift degrees, he guessed the truth. He held me closer, he bent his lips to my ear, and he asked, with a grave wonder, in his voice of gold:

"You do not mean ... this?"

"Yes," I whispered, with my eyes closed, "I mean ... this."

For two or three seconds we were content to have it so. Then his clasp weakened. I knew what he meant, and I drew myself free.

"We forgot Susan," I said.

"Yes," he said slowly. "We forgot Susan."

He stood beside me in silence, looking at the sea. Then, without warning, he broke out with terrible words of anger. Not to me. It was as though he arraigned the universe and shook his fist at the stars.

"A thousand curses!" he cried; "a thousand curses on their heads who have brought us all to this! It is not to be borne! It is a tangle of fiends. Great God! To be loved by the two best women on earth, and then, instead of happiness, to find it end in misery all round! It is the work of devils! It is not to be borne!"

He remembered me at his side, and fought down his wrath. At last he turned to me an ashen face, and began:

"There is much to say. Where will you sit down?"

"Nowhere," I answered. "No, do not touch me again. What there is to be said ... say."

We stood an arm's-length apart on the stones, and he spoke:

"Gertrude Langley," he said, "for five weeks I have loved you, and there is no woman in the world, save you, that I ever did love or ever shall. But, through a string of ghastly blunders hardly to be explained or even believed, I have loved you under another name, and amid wildly false notions of your station. Be hurt at nothing I shall say. I believed, on twofold testimony, that you were Susan, your maid. Do not be galled or insulted till you have heard me out."

"You cannot insult me," I said. "Besides, I know all."

"No!" he cried, "you do not know. You know that I have written Susan letters, that I have badgered her to marry me, that I have followed her to Sainte Veronique, and that I am to set eyes upon her to-morrow. But, listen. I will tell you what you do not know. You don't know that this poor girl has a heart of gold, a soul of fire, a mind that is a fountain of gems. Did you know that?"

"No," I said, "I did not."

He mistook my ghost of a smile. It stung him.

"Miss Langley," he said, "we have been wrong; you, and I, and all who have been born, like you and me, to rank and wealth and leisure. Because the novels are nearly all written round such lives as ours, we think that the poor and the servile are without romance, without spirituality. We are not quite sure that they have minds and hearts and souls of their own. I say, we have been wrong. All Susan's few letters to me, save one, have been shy and hurried. But--though I say it in the ears of the only woman I can ever love--there isn't, there can't be in all the world, a nobler mind than this poor Susan's, a sweeter heart, a purer soul."

I did not answer. His calmness left him.

"You don't see, you won't see, you can't see!" he cried. "Why will you make me put it into words? You are shutting your eyes to the tragedy of it all. Gertrude Langley, what would you have me do?"

I was given some dim sense of the greatness of his soul. Almost mechanically, I replied:

"I would have you do only what is right."

"God bless you for that!" he murmured, and took my hand. "Only what is right! But, tell me, which is the right? I love you, and you love me. When and where you saw me, where and when and why and how your love for me began, I cannot guess. All that matters is ... you love me! Beautiful Gertrude, answer me. You love me and I love you ... but which way lies the right?"

"You mean," I said slowly, disengaging my hand, "that there is Susan?"

"Yes," he said gently. "There is Susan. Which way lies the right? For all I know, I shall find Susan ugly, and she is a lady's-maid. But the point is, I have forced her to love me, with such a love as I did not expect to find in this world. Do not smile, do not imagine I think myself handsome, or in the least adorable. But I have read her last letter fifty times, and I know, if I draw back, if I tell Susan of this cruel tangle, it will break her heart. No, do not interrupt me! In such a case, I know how hard it is for you to believe that I am not mad. Dearest, help me, for God's sake! It's hard enough, God knows!"

I ought to have thrust in words boldly, refusing to be denied. I ought to have told him everything. But he silenced me with one gesture and finished.

"Yet after all," he said, "what is there to discuss or to decide? Haven't you told me already to do the right? And the right is ... to keep faith with Susan. Oh, I know, I know!" he cried out bitterly, "it will wound your heart, it will break mine. But, dearest, we have so much. We have books, we have friends, we have a hundred occupations. But this poor Susan--what has she? She has nothing, except love."

"If she has love," I said, "and we have all else in the world beside; then Susan is rich and we are poor."

He turned away. When he looked at me again, he said:

"It is simply a choice which of us must be robbed of happiness, and burdened with life-long sorrow, and filled with bitterness. You and I are two, and Susan is one. They say minorities must suffer."

He smiled a sad smile, and watched me narrowly. And, at the same moment, a coldness numbed my heart. While he had been extolling Susan, I had drunk in his words deliciously, biding my time to laugh out merrily and prick the shining bubble. But suddenly, all things stood out in a different light. I remembered my oath to Susan at Traxelby. I remembered that she had given up Gibson. I recalled, with anger, that at this very moment she was prowling about to catch some secret glimpse of her lover.

"Yes," he repeated. "Minorities suffer. It is the way of the world. I renounce Susan, and what does it amount to? A mere lady's-maid sees me break faith and drop her in favour of wealth and beauty. She loses her faith in God and man. Possibly, she even has the bad taste to go and die. Meanwhile I, having always had all I want, go and get a great deal more. Natural, isn't it?"

He laughed a bitter laugh.

"Don't talk again like that," I said, as bitterly as he.

He was silent while I thought my thoughts. I knew full well in the depths of my soul, that to suffer anything to thrust itself between him and me, would be a crime and a blasphemy. Yet I knew it might come to pass. If I told him all about Susan, all about Gibson, all about the letters, he would still have only my word for it that she did not love him in her own way. He would seek Susan to-morrow morning, as appointed, to hear Susan's own words. And, under the glamour of his presence, what might not Susan say?

But light blazed through my brain. I had found the key. I must go back to the Villa. I must track Susan at all costs. I must tell her the whole story of Ruddington's mistake. Probably she had already come back.

I turned to him and said:

"Why be ironical and bitter? You have spoken truly. You have to do what is right."

He seized both my hands. To him it was the end.

"Gertrude," he said, "for the first and last time, my own Gertrude ... so this is Good-bye! Our first meeting is our last. To-morrow ... after it is over ... I shall go straight away. To-morrow is hers. But to-night is ours. Beloved, this is not the end. There are more worlds than this one--this world which some one has cursed for us. For ever, I am all thine. But the waiting will be so long. Beloved, do not say that I may not bid thee Good-bye!"

I restrained him gently, for my mind had clouded again with thronging fears.

"No," I said; "let us not make the future harder by any weakness in the present."

He bowed his head and obeyed. When he looked up, he said quietly:

"One practical point before I go. She will not ... I will not, ever be at Ruddington Towers. Traxelby is your old home. The Towers shall be shut up."

My eyes filled with tears.

"Beloved," I said softly, "good-bye."

I gave him my hand, and he held it to his lips. Then I broke from him and fled home.

Georgette received me with a volley of outcries about the spoilt dinner.

"Where is Susan?" I asked.

"She is not come back," said Georgette, retreating towards the kitchen. And then I saw that Georgette was in the secret.

"Georgette," I said peremptorily in French, "I insist that you tell me this instant where Susan has gone."

Her brow darkened. She looked at me defiantly, and tossed her head.

"Come," I commanded, with a rap on the table. "I insist. This moment."

"Pardon, Madame," retorted Georgette with Republican spirit, "I am the servant of Madame Dupoirier and the friend of Susan."

There was no time to argue. I shifted my ground, and coaxed.

"If you are the friend of Susan," I said, "you will answer at once. Something very important has happened. We must find her at once."

Georgette hesitated suspiciously before she asked:

"Is it about the milord from England, Madame--the milord with all the money?"

"Yes, yes, yes!" I said. "It is most important."

"Then he may take his money back again," said Georgette with a fine flourish. "Susan, she will only marry for love. She has gone away."

"Gone away?" I echoed, sinking down on a chair.

"Yes, Madame. Susan said, if she didn't run away, the milord would make her marry him."

"Georgette," I cried, springing up, "I give you my word that the milord shall not mention marriage to Susan again. If you are her friend, tell me where to find her. I swear that I am thinking only of her good."

Georgette was silent. The truth rushed in upon me. I said:

"She has run away with Gibson?"

"Yes, Madame," said Georgette tranquilly, "with Monsieur Geebson."

"Georgette!" I cried, "help me to find them, and I'll give you fifty francs. No, don't pout. If I can stop them, Susan and Gibson will be grateful to you as long as they live, on my word of honour."

At last Georgette said: "Susan went out too soon for fear that Madame would stop her. She attends Monsieur Geebson at the bottom of the beck at half-past eight."

I snatched a roll from the table and rushed out again to the beach. Berigny clock struck eight. There would be six or seven minutes to spare.

As I sped along, a sickening fear seized me. What if Ruddington and Susan, by another of the ghastly mishaps which kept dogging us all along, had run into one another on the beach?

No. As I neared the big boat, I saw him standing there alone. He strode out to meet me eagerly and wonderingly.