One Way of Love (Lee)/Chapter 11
XI.
He sought her the next day in the studio and found her occupied with a pupil. He had forgotten it was her day for pupils. She would be busy until four o'clock.
“I will come around and walk home with you—if I may.”
“Very well,” she assented.
They stood in the doorway, just out of sight of the pupil. He was watching her face anxiously. He fancied that she looked pale and worn, as if she had not slept.
“You are tired?” he questioned in a low tone.
She admitted that she was—“a little.”
“Perhaps I would better not come for you to-night.”
“No. Come. It will rest me to have someone to talk to.”
“But if I come, I shall speak,” he insisted.
She did not raise her eyes to his as he had half hoped. She hesitated for a moment, and then only said, as she turned towards the studio, “I will wait for you.”
He left the building, a tumult of joy and doubt in his heart. She had given him permission to speak, but she seemed to have refused his demand before it was made. He dared not hope. He hoped in spite of fear.
As the day wore on the fear subsided and the joy of love took possession of him. That, at least, she could not take away, no matter what she might refuse.
He found her alone, at work in the gray afternoon light.
“I am improving the last minutes,” she said, looking up as he entered and speaking lightly, as if eager to put their meeting on a commonplace footing.
He did not answer, but seated himself on the long couch opposite her. He watched her as she sketched in the outline of a still-life study. She was sitting as usual, with the light falling full upon her. Yes, he had been right. Her face was pale.
“What is it?” he asked abruptly, at last, in a low tone.
“I am afraid of it,” she answered quietly.
“Why?”
“Because things will never be the same again.”
“I hope not,” he responded quickly.
“I want them to be. I don't want them to change,” she replied as quickly.
“Then they shall not. I won't say anything more.”
A silence fell on the studio. The shadows in the corners grew darker and lengthened softly towards the centre of the room. The light suited the room, Derring thought, as he sat waiting for her to speak. The harmonious tones and subdued colors seemed to gather and centre in the quiet figure under the skylight. It was always so. She would always gather the light and life in everything and transmute it to something softened and human.
She was trying the colors on the edge of her block, making ready to wash in the sketch. She spoke slowly, without looking up. “But you know that I love you?”
Derring started suddenly. “No, I didn't know—you hadn't told me”
Their eyes met, and they broke into a laugh.
“You will marry me?” he said bluntly.
“No.”
“Why not?”
She had become absorbed in the edge of her sketch and was drawing futile, ineffective lines.
“Why not?” he repeated.
“It's so selfish”—after a pause.
“Selfish?”—blankly.
“Yes, two people fall in love and they forget everything else and marry. They seem to think that love justifies everything.”
“It does.”
“But there are other claims.”
He was looking at her intently.
“Grace must be sent to school and the boys are hardly able to take care of themselves; and there is mother. They all depend on me. Don't you see that it would be selfish?” She was leaning forward and looking at him, impersonally, with the old air of comradeship.
“But I would help.”
“I know. But you have no right to marry yet. There would be children, and the children of Bohemia are not always so happy as their parents. It is not fair that two people should be happy at the expense of so much. Probably marriage was meant to be right; but it is all wrong as things are now.”
Spoken with quiet conviction, rapidly. Whatever she decided must be right. But one phrase stirred his pulses.
“That two people should be happy,” he repeated. “You think”
“I think that most marriages are mistakes,” she replied, taking up her brush again and sketching rapidly. “People are madly in love. They marry. And then apparently the love dies. I should die myself,” she said quickly. “I could not bear that.”
He had risen and was standing, one. hand raised and resting on the easel, looking down:at her.
She lifted her face to his, smiling at him a little wistfully. “I had not hoped that you would understand. I thought there would be an explanation—and parting.”
“Not that—never!”
“But there are no promises,” she said quickly. “No,” holding up her hand as he would have interrupted her, “I am older than you, you know. You may outgrow me. You must not be bound even by a promise. If we are made for each other, we shall find it out, as time goes on, without them; and if we are not, we shall only drift farther apart and there will be no pain for what never really existed. But if we were bound by marriage” She broke off, looking straight before her.
“You have loved before.” He was looking down at her. “You would not reason so clearly”
“I thought once—that I loved.” Her eyes were on her work.
The question sprang to his lips, “And he is dead?”
“Thank God—yes.”
He stared at her blankly.
“I should not have found out in time. We should have been miserable. I thought I loved him. I mourned a long time. But lately—I have known” Her head bent lower over her work.
His face deepened. He started towards her. “Ah, you have learned”
“I have learned that I dare not trust myself,” she said. She began to gather up her materials and put them away.
Presently she stood beside him. She had put on the long gray cloak. “I am going now,” she said.
He looked about for his hat and found it still in his hand. He held it out with a whimsical gesture. “I have been eminently proper,” he said.
With a laugh of the old comradeship she held out her hand and he covered it with his own.
“It is a compact?” he said.
“That there are no promises,” she replied.