Chapter XII: Part 12

"Most things are hard."--She spoke with recovered firmness.--"Life is hard, but one must--bear it. At least I'll try to bear it--alone. The only amends I can make to you"--she clasped her hands suddenly in a passionate gesture of renunciation--"the only atonement is to efface myself, to sink out of your life as if I had never--been in it." She paused, her breath came in convulsive gasps, but still she faced him resolute, the look in her eyes with which some penitent of the early church might have welcomed lifelong immolation. "To efface myself," she repeated, dwelling upon the words as if they held some painful satisfaction, "to sink out of your life--it is the only atonement I can make."

"You can't make it." Gerard's words rang out clearly. He took her hands again resolutely in his. "You can't efface yourself," he said. "It's beyond your power." A smile flickered across his face, his eyes looked into hers with an imperious tenderness, before which they fell abashed. "Do you know," he said, "why I went off in that idiotic fashion into the wilds, tried to cut myself off from the world? I was bitter, angry--I wanted to forget you; I thought, if there were nothing to remind me of you, I might. And then day and night I thought of you, day and night your face haunted me.... Ah, Elizabeth"--his voice broke--"ask me to do anything except--forget you."

There was again silence. Elizabeth's lips parted, her breath fluttered, a warm, lovely color flooded her face. He thought she had yielded. But almost instantly the color faded, she drew her hands from his grasp and shrank away, as if under the weight of some painful memory. "And,--and that deception," she gasped out. "What has happened to change that? You said--don't you remember?--that you could never"--her voice quivered--"never trust me again." She lifted her head suddenly, she looked him firmly, steadily, in the face, with eyes that seemed the index to her soul. "I did deceive you," she said. "Nothing can change that fact. Why should you trust me now?"

"Ah, it would be hard on most of us"--the words sprung impetuously to his lips--"if there were no forgiveness, if strict justice were always meted out." He put out his hand in a passionate gesture, a rush of feeling thrilled his voice. "Elizabeth," he cried, "don't bring up words which I said that night in anger, which I have repented--God knows!--ever since. You had done an heroic thing in telling me the truth at last, just when it was hardest--I--brute that I was--could only think of my own misery. But let the past go--it shall not ruin our lives any longer." He put his arm around her and drew her towards him. He felt her heart beat, her pulses throb; his voice took on a deeper note of tenderness. "The future is ours, and love is ours--my darling, does anything else matter?"

The argument may not have been a wise one, but it has gained more victories than all the logic in the world. Elizabeth, weary of struggling, resigned herself to her defeat....

Later she looked up, gave a little, fluttering sigh, and her eyes sought his with a wistful sweetness. "Dear, I'm not worth it," she murmured, "but I will try--oh, I will try so hard." ... Gerard, smiling, cut the sentence short.

They walked on homeward through the fragrant lanes, in which they two seemed the only wanderers. The Misses Van Vorst, sitting by the drawing-room windows, saw them come with a little thrill of anxiety. Miss Joanna dropped a stitch in her knitting, and Miss Cornelia's thin, silvery curls fluttered, as if stirred by some intangible wave of sympathy.

Elizabeth crossed the flower-studded lawn and came towards them, her white skirts swaying about her in the gentle summer wind. She held her head erect, her color was brilliant, her eyes lustrous. The setting sun shone on her hair and lit it up into a vivid glory. Elizabeth's aunts stole a glance at her, at the look on Gerard's face. Then their eyes met and they smiled softly at each other through a mist of tears.

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End of Project Gutenberg's The Ordeal of Elizabeth, by Elizabeth Von Arnim