Then followed the longest fifteen minutes she had ever known.She realised what a tremendous conflict was in progress in that quiet room.Garth was arriving at his decision without having heard any of her arguments.By the strange fatality of his own insistence, he had heard only two words of her letter, and those the crucial words; the two words to which the whole letter carefully led up.They must have revealed to him instantly, what the character of the letter would be; and what was the attitude of mind towards himself, of the woman who wrote them.
Jane paced the dining-room in desperation, remembering the hours of thought which had gone to the compiling of sentences, cautiously preparing his mind to the revelation of the signature.
Suddenly, in the midst of her mental perturbation, there came to her the remembrance of a conversation between Nurse Rosemary and Garth over the pictures.The former had said: "Is she a wife?" And Garth had answered: "Yes." Jane had instantly understood what that answer revealed and implied.Because Garth had so felt her his during those wonderful moments on the terrace at Shenstone, that he could look up into her face and say, "My wife"--not as an interrogation, but as an absolute statement of fact,--he still held her this, as indissolubly as if priest, and book, and ring, had gone to the wedding of their union.To him, the union of souls came before all else; and if that had taken place, all that might follow was but the outward indorsement of an accomplished fact.Owing to her fear, mistrust, and deception, nothing had followed.Their lives had been sundered;they had gone different ways.He regarded himself as being no more to her than any other man of her acquaintance.During these years he had believed, that her part in that evening's wedding of souls had existed in his imagination, only; and had no binding effect upon her.But his remained.Because those words were true to him then, he had said there; and, because he had said them, he would consider her his wife, through life,--and after.It was the intuitive understanding of this, which had emboldened Jane so to sign her letter.But how would he reconcile that signature with the view of her conduct which he had all along taken, without ever having the slightest conception that there could be any other?
Then Jane remembered, with comfort, the irresistible appeal made by Truth to the soul of the artist; truth of line; truth of colour;truth of values; and, in the realm of sound, truth of tone, of harmony, of rendering, of conception.And when Nurse Rosemary had said of his painting of "The Wife": "It is a triumph of art"; Girth had replied: "It is a triumph of truth." And Jane's own verdict on the look he had seen and depicted was: "It is true--yes, it is true!" Will he not realise now the truth of that signature; and, if he realises it, will he not be glad in his loneliness, that his wife should come to him; unless the confessions and admissions of the letter cause him to put her away as wholly unworthy?
Suddenly Jane understood the immense advantage of the fact that he would hear every word of the rest of her letter, knowing the conclusion, which she herself could not possibly have put first.She saw a Higher Hand in this arrangement; and said, as she watched the minutes slowly pass: "He hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us"; and a sense of calm assurance descended, and garrisoned her soul with peace.
The quarter of an hour was over.
Jane crossed the hall with firm, though noiseless, step; stood a moment on the threshold relegating herself completely to the background; then opened the door; and Nurse Rosemary re-entered the library.
