Well,well,he murmured cynically;I wont say it is your fault:it is my ill-luck,I suppose.I had no real right to question you--everybody would say it was presuming.But when we have misunderstood,we feel injured by the subject of our misunderstanding.You never said you had had nobody else here making love to you,so why should I blame you?Elfride,I beg your pardon.
No,no!I would rather have your anger than that cool aggrieved politeness.Do drop that,Harry!Why should you inflict that upon me?It reduces me to the level of a mere acquaintance.
You do that with me.Why not confidence for confidence?
Yes;but I didnt ask you a single question with regard to your past:I didnt wish to know about it.All I cared for was that,wherever you came from,whatever you had done,whoever you had loved,you were mine at last.Harry,if originally you had known I had loved,would you never have cared for me?
I wont quite say that.Though I own that the idea of your inexperienced state had a great charm for me.But I think this:that if I had known there was any phase of your past love you would refuse to reveal if I asked to know it,I should never have loved you.
Elfride sobbed bitterly.Am I such a--mere characterless toy--as to have no attrac--tion in me,apart from--freshness?Havent I brains?You said--I was clever and ingenious in my thoughts,and--
isnt that anything?Have I not some beauty?I think I have a little--and I know I have--yes,I do!You have praised my voice,and my manner,and my accomplishments.Yet all these together are so much rubbish because I--accidentally saw a man before you!
Oh,come,Elfride."Accidentally saw a man"is very cool.You loved him,remember.
--And loved him a little!
And refuse now to answer the simple question how it ended.Do you refuse still,Elfride?
You have no right to question me so--you said so.It is unfair.
Trust me as I trust you.
Thats not at all.
I shall not love you if you are so cruel.It is cruel to me to argue like this.
Perhaps it is.Yes,it is.I was carried away by my feeling for you.Heaven knows that I didnt mean to;but I have loved you so that I have used you badly.
I dont mind it,Harry!she instantly answered,creeping up and nestling against him;and I will not think at all that you used me harshly if you will forgive me,and not be vexed with me any more?I do wish I had been exactly as you thought I was,but I could not help it,you know.If I had only known you had been coming,what a nunnery I would have lived in to have been good enough for you!
Well,never mind,said Knight;and he turned to go.He endeavoured to speak sportively as they went on.Diogenes Laertius says that philosophers used voluntarily to deprive themselves of sight to be uninterrupted in their meditations.
Men,becoming lovers,ought to do the same thing.
Why?--but never mind--I dont want to know.Dont speak laconically to me,she said with deprecation.
Why?Because they would never then be distracted by discovering their idol was second-hand.
She looked down and sighed;and they passed out of the crumbling old place,and slowly crossed to the churchyard entrance.Knight was not himself,and he could not pretend to be.She had not told all.
He supported her lightly over the stile,and was practically as attentive as a lover could be.But there had passed away a glory,and the dream was not as it had been of yore.Perhaps Knight was not shaped by Nature for a marrying man.Perhaps his lifelong constraint towards women,which he had attributed to accident,was not chance after all,but the natural result of instinctive acts so minute as to be undiscernible even by himself.Or whether the rough dispelling of any bright illusion,however imaginative,depreciates the real and unexaggerated brightness which appertains to its basis,one cannot say.Certain it was that Knights disappointment at finding himself second or third in the field,at Elfrides momentary equivoque,and at her reluctance to be candid,brought him to the verge of cynicism.
