He was ashamed of his own folly in another moment, ashamed of an insight distorted and distorting, so he told himself. Over and above all such morbidities was the fact that Kitty was looking at him with the eyes of a frightened child—a real child.
The reaction from his fear, the recognition of her fear, stirred in him a love more personal than any of the vast benevolences that he had felt. He went to her and led her to the window-seat where, sitting down himself, holding both her hands in his and looking up at her standing before him, he said with the quiet of long-prepared words: "Kitty, dear, I have something that I want to tell you and that will make you, I think, a little sad. We have had happy times together, haven't we? It isn't all regret. You and I are going to part, Kitty."
She gazed at him and terror widened her eyes. She could not speak. She did not move. Her hands in his hands seemed dead.
He saw in a moment what the fear was that showed itself in this torpor of apprehension, and he hastened on so that she should not, in her dread, reveal the secret that need never be spoken.
"I'm going to die, Kitty," he said, "I had my sentence yesterday, from Dr. Farebrother. I never dreamed that it was anything serious, that complaint of mine, you know—never dreamed it even when it began to trouble me a good deal, as it has of late. But it's not what I thought. It's fatal; and it will gallop now. He gives me one month—at the very most, two months." He spoke deliberately, though swiftly, and, as he finished, he smiled up at her, a reassuring smile. His wife's dilated eyes, fixed on him, made him flush a little in the ensuing pause. He felt that the smile had been inept. He had spoken too much from the height of his detachment, and the placidity of his words might well seem horrible to her.
She was finding it horrible. She seemed to be breathing the icy air of a vault that he had opened before her; heavy, slow, painful breaths, those of a sleeper oppressed by nightmare; the sound of them, the sight of her labouring breast hurt him. He put his arms around her and smiled now, as one smiles at a child to console it. "I've frightened you," he said; "forgive me. You see, one gets used to it, so soon, for oneself. Dear little Kitty, I'm so sorry."
Still she did not speak. Still it was that torpid terror that gazed at him. And the terror was not for what he had thought it was; it was for what he had said. It was a contagious terror. She cared. In some unexplained, unforeseen way she cared terribly; and his projects crumbled beneath her gaze; bewilderment drifted in his mind; her fear gained him.
"What is the matter? What is it?" he asked.
The change and sharpness in his voice brought them near at last. Kitty seized his hands and lifted them from her; yet grasping, clinging as she held him off. He would not have thought her face capable of such fierceness and demand. She was hardly recognisable as she said: "Do you want to die? Don't you mind dying?"
"Mind?—I should rather not, of course. I care for my life. But one must face it; what else is there to do?—And—what is it Kitty? What have I done to you?"
And now, her head fallen back, her eyes closed, tears ran down her face, as piteously, agonised and stricken, she asked:
"Don't you love me at all? Don't you mind leaving me at all?"
His astonishment was so great that for a moment it bereft him of words. He had risen and was holding her; her eyes were closed and she sobbed and sobbed, her head fallen back. And her passion of sorrow and despair, her loveliness, too, and youth, seized and shook him; so that all the things he had not felt yet, all the hovering, dreadful things, the dark forms of the cavern, encompassed, pressed upon him; despair and longing, the horror of annihilation, the agonising sweetness of life. It was as if a hidden wound had been opened and that his blood was gushing forth, not to peace, but to pain and torment. He felt his own sobs rising; she cared; how much she cared. It was as if her caring gave him back the self that yesterday had blotted out; in her pain he knew his own; in her self he saw and mourned his own doomed and piteous self. His head leaned to hers and his lips sought hers, when, suddenly, a furious memory came, and indignation suffocated him.
He thrust her violently away, holding her by the shoulders. "How dare you! how dare you!" he cried. "You don't love me. You don't mind my dying. How dare you torture me like this—when it's not real—when I was at peace."
It was like a wild, impossible dream. Their faces stared at each other; their hands seized each other; they spoke, their voices clashing, and shaken by strangling sobs.
"How dare you say that to me! You have broken my heart! You haven't cared for years—for years!" Kitty cried. "I've longed—longed. It is too horrible. How dare you come and tell me that you are going to die and that it will make me a little sad. Oh! I love you—and you are horrible to me."
"You are lying, Kitty—you are lying!"
"That too! You can say that! To me! To me!"
"It's true. You know you lie. I haven't loved you as I did. But I've cared—good God! I see now how much.—It is you who have ceased to care."
At these words Kitty was transfigured. Joy, joy unmistakable, flamed up in her. It mounted to her eyes and lips, revivifying her ravaged face, beaming forth, inundating him, unfaltering, assured, absolute. "Darling—darling—you love me? you do love me?—Oh, you shan't die—I won't let you die. My love will keep you with me. We will forget all these years when we haven't understood—when we've forgotten. We will forget everything—except that we love each other and that that is all there is to live for in the world."
"And—Sir Walter?—" he said, simply and helplessly.
Kitty's arms were about his neck, her transfigured face was upturned to him. Worshipped by those eyes, held in that embrace, his words, in his own ears, were absurd. Yet he hadn't been dreaming yesterday. Kitty might make the words seem absurd; but even Kitty's eyes and Kitty's arms could not conjure away the facts of the sunlit summer-house, the tears, the parting kiss. What of Sir Walter? What else was there left to say?
But after he had said them, and stood looking at her, it was as if his words released the last depths of her rapture. She did not flush or falter or show, even, any shock or surprise. Her arms about him, her eyes on his, it was a stiller, a more solemn joy that dwelt on him and enfolded him.
"You know?" she said.
"I heard you last evening," Holland answered. "I was sitting outside the summer-house. You said you loved him. You let him kiss you."
"You will forgive me," said Kitty. They were looking at each other like two children. "I thought I loved him, because I was so unhappy, and he is so dear and kind and loves me so much. I must love some one. I must be loved. I was so lonely. And you seemed not to care at all any more. You were only my husband, you weren't my lover.—And you don't know all. He doesn't know it. But I know it now. And I must tell you everything—all the dreadful weakness—you must understand it all. Perhaps, if this hadn't come, perhaps, if you hadn't been given back to me like this, I might have gone away with him, Nicholas. It wasn't that I had ceased to love you; it was that I had to be loved and was weak before love. It is dreadful;—I believe all women are like that. And I did struggle, oh, I did. Nicholas, you will forgive me?"
"I knew it, dear, and I forgave you."
"You knew it? You loved me so much that you forgave?"
"That was why I told you, Kitty. I hadn't meant to tell you; I had meant to keep it from you, this sadness, and to make our last month together a happy one for you. I was coming back to you with such longing, dear. And then I heard; and then I was afraid that you might go away before you would be free."
"You loved me so much? You did it because you loved me so much?—Oh! Nicholas—Nicholas!"
"That was why I said those horrible things.