'He said, of course, that I had deceived you.'
'But in what?--Was there no truth in anything you said to me?'
'To you I have spoken far more truth than falsehood.'
A light shone in her eyes, and her lips quivered.
'Then,' she murmured, 'Buckland was not right in everything.'
'I understand. He wished you to believe that my love was as much a pretence as my religion?'
'He said that.'
'It was natural enough.--And you were disposed to believe it?'
'I thought it impossible. But I should have thought the same of the other things.'
Peak nodded, and moved away. Watching him, Sidwell was beset with conflicting impulses. His assurance had allayed her worst misgiving, and she approved the self-restraint with which he bore himself, but at the same time she longed for a passionate declaration. As a reasoning woman, she did her utmost to remember that Peak was on his defence before her, and that nothing could pass between them but grave discussion of the motives which had impelled him to dishonourable behaviour. As a woman in love, she would fain have obscured the moral issue by indulgence of her heart's desire. She was glad that he held aloof, but if he had taken her in his arms, she would have forgotten everything in the moment's happiness.
'Let us sit down, and tell me--tell me all you can.'
He delayed a moment, then seated himself opposite to her. She saw now that his movements were those of physical fatigue; and the full light from the window, enabling her to read his face more distinctly, revealed the impress of suffering. Instead of calling upon him to atone in such measure as was possible for the wrong he had done her, she felt ready to reproach herself for speaking coldly when his need of solace was so great.
'What can I tell you,' he said, 'that you don't know, or that you can't conjecture?'
'But you wrote that there was so much I could not be expected to understand. And I can't, can't understand you. It still seems impossible. Why did you hide the truth from me?'
'Because if I had begun by telling it, I should never have won a kind look or a kind thought from you.'
Sidwell reflected.
'But what did you care for me then--when it began?'
'Not so much as I do now, but enough to overthrow all the results of my life up to that time. Before I met you in this house I had seen you twice, and had learned who you were. I was sitting in the Cathedral when you came there with your sister and Miss Moorhouse--do you remember? I heard Fanny call you by your name, and that brought to my mind a young girl whom I had known in a slight way years before. And the next day I again saw you there, at the service; I waited about the entrance only to see you. I cared enough for you then to conceive a design which for a long time seemed too hateful really to be carried out, but--at last it was, you see.
Sidwell breathed quickly. Nothing he could have urged for himself would have affected her more deeply than this. To date back and extend the period of his love for her was a flattery more subtle than Peak imagined.
'Why didn't you tell me that the day before yesterday?' she asked, with tremulous bosom.
'I had no wish to remind myself of baseness in the midst of a pure joy.'
She was silent, then exclaimed, in accents of pain:
'Why should you have thought it necessary to be other than yourself? Couldn't you see, at first meeting with us, that we were not bigoted people? Didn't you know that Buckland had accustomed us to understand how common it is nowadays for people to throw off the old religion? Would father have looked coldly on you if he had known that you followed where so many good and thoughtful men were leading?'
He regarded her anxiously.
'I had heard from Buckland that your father was strongly prejudiced; that you also were quite out of sympathy with the new thought.'
'He exaggerated--even then.'
'Exaggerated? But on what plea could I have come to live in this neighbourhood? How could I have kept you in sight--tried to win your interest? I had no means, no position. The very thought of encouraging my love for you demanded some extraordinary step. What course was open to me?'
Sidwell let her head droop.
'I don't know. You might perhaps have discovered a way.'
'But what was the use, when the mere fact of my heresy would have forbidden hope from the outset?'
'Why should it have done so?'
'Why? You know very well that you could never even have been friendly with the man who wrote that thing in the review.'
'But here is the proof how much better it is to behave truthfully! In this last year I have changed so much that I find it difficult to understand the strength of my former prejudices. What is it to me now that you speak scornfully of attempts to reconcile things that can't be reconciled? I understand the new thought, and how natural it is for you to accept it. If only I could have come to know you well, your opinions would not have stood between us.'
Peak made a slight gesture, and smiled incredulously.
'You think so now.'
'And I have such good reason for my thought,' rejoined Sidwell, earnestly, 'that when you said you loved me, my only regret in looking to the future was--that you had resolved to be a clergyman.'
He leaned back in the chair, and let a hand fall on his knee. The gesture seemed to signify a weary relinquishment of concern in what they were discussing.
'How could I foresee that?' he uttered, in a corresponding tone.
Sidwell was made uneasy by the course upon which she had entered. To what did her words tend? If only to a demonstration that fate had used him as the plaything of its irony--if, after all, she had nothing to say to him but 'See how your own folly has ruined you', then she had better have kept silence. She not only appeared to be offering him encouragement, but was in truth doing so. She wished him to understand that his way of thinking was no obstacle to her love, and with that purpose she was even guilty of a slight misrepresentation. For it was only since the shock of this disaster that she had clearly recognised the change in her own mind. True, the regret of which she spoke had for an instant visited her, but it represented a mundane solicitude rather than an intellectual scruple. It had occurred to her how much brighter would be their prospect if Peak were but an active man of the world, with a career before him distinctly suited to his powers.
His contention was undeniably just. The influence to which she had from the first submitted was the same that her father felt so strongly. Godwin interested her as a self-reliant champion of the old faiths, and his personal characteristics would never have awakened such sympathy in her but for that initial recommendation. Natural prejudice would have prevented her from perceiving the points of kindred between his temperament and her own. His low origin, the ridiculous stories connected with his youth--why had she, in spite of likelihood, been able to disregard these things? Only because of what she then deemed his spiritual value.
But for the dishonourable part he had played, this bond of love would never have been formed between them. The thought was a new apology for his transgression; she could not but defy her conscience, and look indulgently on the evil which had borne such fruit.
Godwin had begun to speak again.
'This is quite in keeping with the tenor of my whole life. Whatever I undertake ends in frustration at a point where