Archer felt that at any cost he must keep her beside him,must make her give him the rest of her evening.Ignoring her question,he continued to lean against the chimney-piece,his eyes fixed on the hand in which she held her gloves and fan,as if watching to see if he had the power to make her drop them.
"May guessed the truth," he said."There is another woman--but not the one she thinks."
Ellen Olenska made no answer, and did not move.After a moment he sat down beside her, and,taking her hand, softly unclasped it,so that the gloves and fan fell on the sofa between them.
She started up, and freeing herself from him moved away to the other side of the hearth. "Ah, don't make love to me!Too many people have done that," she said, frowning.
Archer, changing colour, stood up also:it was the bitterest rebuke she could have given him."I have never made love to you," he said,"and I never shall.But you are the woman I would have married if it had been possible for either of us."
"Possible for either of us?" She looked at him with unfeigned astonishment."And you say that--when it's you who've made it impossible?"
He stared at her, groping in a blackness through which a single arrow of light tore its blinding way.
"_I've_ made it impossible--?"
"You, you, _you_!" she cried, her lip trembling like a child's on the verge of tears."Isn't it you who made me give up divorcing--give it up because you showed me how selfish and wicked it was, how one must sacrifice one's self to preserve the dignity of marriage ... and to spare one's family the publicity, the scandal?And because my family was going to be your family--for May's sake and for yours--I did what you told me, what you proved to me that I ought to do. Ah," she broke out with a sudden laugh, "I've made no secret of having done it for you!"
She sank down on the sofa again,crouching among the festive ripples of her dress like a stricken masquerader;and the young man stood by the fireplace and continued to gaze at her without moving.
"Good God," he groaned. "When I thought--"
"You thought?"
"Ah, don't ask me what I thought!"
Still looking at her,he saw the same burning flush creep up her neck to her face.She sat upright, facing him with a rigid dignity.
"I do ask you."
"Well, then: there were things in that letter you asked me to read--"
"My husband's letter?"
"Yes."
"I had nothing to fear from that letter: absolutely nothing!All I feared was to bring notoriety, scandal,on the family--on you and May."
"Good God," he groaned again,bowing his face in his hands.
The silence that followed lay on them with the weight of things final and irrevocable. It seemed to Archer to be crushing him down like his own grave-stone; in all the wide future he saw nothing that would ever lift that load from his heart. He did not move from his place, or raise his head from his hands; his hidden eyeballs went on staring into utter darkness.
"At least I loved you--" he brought out.
On the other side of the hearth,from the sofa-corner where he supposed that she still crouched,he heard a faint stifled crying like a child's.He started up and came to her side.
"Ellen!What madness!Why are you crying?Nothing's done that can't be undone. I'm still free,and you're going to be." He had her in his arms,her face like a wet flower at his lips,and all their vain terrors shrivelling up like ghosts at sunrise.The one thing that astonished him now was that he should have stood for five minutes arguing with her across the width of the room, when just touching her made everything so simple.
She gave him back all his kiss,but after a moment he felt her stiffening in his arms,and she put him aside and stood up.
"Ah, my poor Newland--I suppose this had to be.But it doesn't in the least alter things," she said,looking down at him in her turn from the hearth.
"It alters the whole of life for me."
"No, no--it mustn't, it can't.You're engaged to May Welland; and I'm married."
He stood up too, flushed and resolute. "Nonsense!It's too late for that sort of thing.We've no right to lie to other people or to ourselves.We won't talk of your marriage;but do you see me marrying May after this?"
She stood silent, resting her thin elbows on the mantelpiece,her profile reflected in the glass behind her.One of the locks of her chignon had become loosened and hung on her neck;she looked haggard and almost old.
"I don't see you," she said at length,"putting that question to May. Do you?"
He gave a reckless shrug."It's too late to do anything else."
"You say that because it's the easiest thing to say at this moment--not because it's true. In reality it's too late to do anything but what we'd both decided on."
"Ah, I don't understand you!"
She forced a pitiful smile that pinched her face instead of smoothing it."You don't understand because you haven't yet guessed how you've changed things for me: oh, from the first--long before I knew all you'd done."
"All I'd done?"
"Yes. I was perfectly unconscious at first that people here were shy of me--that they thought I was a dreadful sort of person. It seems they had even refused to meet me at dinner. I found that out afterward; and how you'd made your mother go with you to the van der Luydens'; and how you'd insisted on announcing your engagement at the Beaufort ball, so that I might have two families to stand by me instead of one--"
At that he broke into a laugh.
"Just imagine," she said,"how stupid and unobservant I was!I knew nothing of all this till Granny blurted it out one day.New York simply meant peace and freedom to me:it was coming home.And I was so happy at being among my own people that every one I met seemed kind and good, and glad to see me. But from the very beginning," she continued, "I felt there was no one as kind as you; no one who gave me reasons that I understood for doing what at first seemed so hard and--unnecessary. The very good people didn't convince me; I felt they'd never been tempted. But you knew; you understood; you had felt the world outside tugging at one with all its golden hands--and yet you hated the things it asks of one; you hated happiness bought by disloyalty and cruelty and indifference. That was what I'd never known before--and it's better than anything I've known."
She spoke in a low even voice,without tears or visible agitation; and each word,as it dropped from her,fell into his breast like burning lead.He sat bowed over, his head between his hands,staring at the hearth rug,and at the tip of the satin shoe that showed under her dress.Suddenly he knelt down and kissed the shoe.
She bent over him, laying her hands on his shoulders,and looking at him with eyes so deep that he remained motionless under her gaze.
"Ah, don't let us undo what you've done!" she cried. "I can't go back now to that other way of thinking.I can't love you unless I give you up."
His arms were yearning up to her; but she drew away,and they remained facing each other,divided by the distance that her words had created.Then, abruptly, his anger overflowed.
"And Beaufort?Is he to replace me?"
As the words sprang out he was prepared for an answering flare of anger;and he would have welcomed it as fuel for his own.But Madame Olenska only grew a shade paler,and stood with her arms hanging down before her,and her head slightly bent,as her way was when she pondered a question.
"He's waiting for you now at Mrs. Struthers's;why don't you go to him?" Archer sneered.
She turned to ring the bell."I shall not go out this evening;tell the carriage to go and fetch the Signora Marchesa," she said when the maid came.
After the door had closed again Archer continued to look at her with bitter eyes. "Why this sacrifice?Since you tell me that you're lonely I've no right to keep you from your friends."