Merivale smiled still, rocking forward in his chair with his hands clasped round his knee.
“That is possible,” he said, “and I recognise that. But I don’t think I am frightened at it If it is to be so, it is to be so. Though I suppose one won’t live after it. Well?”
“And the second question. You think, then, it is our duty to seek happiness and joy and forget the sorrow of the world?”
“I think it is so for me,” said he, “though I do think that there are many people, most, I suppose, that realise themselves through sorrow and suffering. I can only say that I believe I am not one of those. The way does not lie for me there.”
Evelyn got up, and stood leaning on the balustrade of the verandah. This was beginning to touch him more closely now; his own threads were beginning to interweave in the scheme Merivale drew.
“And for me,” he said. “What is your diagnosis of me? Am I one of those who will find themselves through sorrow or through joy?”
Merivale turned to him with almost the same eagerness in his face as Evelyn himself showed.
“Ah, how can I tell you that?” he said, “beyond telling you at least that in my opinion, which after all is only my opinion, it is in joy that you, almost above everyone I know, will ripen and bear fruit. Sorrow, asceticism is the road by which some approach happiness, but I do not see you on that road. Renunciation for you – ”
Evelyn got up and came a step closer.
“Yes? Yes?” he cried.
Merivale answered him by another question.
“Something has happened to you,” he said. “What is it?”
“I have fallen in love,” said the other. “I only knew it to-day. Yes, her, Madge Ellington. Good God, man, I love her! And I am painting her – I see her nearly daily alone; it is my business to study her face and get to know her – ”
His voice dropped suddenly.
“What am I to do?” he said after a moment. “Philip, the whole thing – ”
“Ah, you can’t go on,” said Merivale quickly. “You must see that. Wherever our paths lie, there is honour – ”
“Honour?” cried Evelyn almost savagely. “Have I not as good a right to love her as Philip has? You can’t tie one down like that! Besides, how can I help loving her? Night and day are not less in my control. Besides, I have no reason to suppose that she loves me, so what harm is done? But if she does or should – ”
Again he stopped, for there was no need to go on; the conclusion of the sentence was not less clear because it was unspoken. After a moment he continued.
“And what was your view just now about renunciation for me?” he asked.
Merivale got up.
“I don’t know what to say to you,” he said. “What do you propose, you yourself?”
“I propose to tell her what I know – that I love her,” said he.
There was a long pause; Merivale was looking out over the dusky garden, and his lips moved as if he was trying to frame some sentence, yet no words came. In the East the moon was soon to rise behind the wedge of beech-wood which came diagonally across the heath, and though it was not yet visible, the sky was changing from the dark velvet blue which had succeeded sunset to the mysterious dove colour which heralds the moon. A night breeze stirred among the shrubs, and the scent of the stocks was wafted into the verandah, twined, as it were, with the swooning fragrance of the syringa. But for once Merivale was unconscious of the witchery of the hour; in spite of himself, the interests, the problems, the suffering and renunciation of human life, from which he had thought he had weaned himself, claimed him again. He had tried, and in great measure succeeded, in detaching himself from them, but he had not completely broken away from them yet. He had enlisted under the banner of joy, but now from the opposing hosts there came a cry to him, and he could not shut his ears to it. Here was the necessity for suffering, it could not but be that of these two friends of his, suffering poignant and cruel lay before one of them, though which that one should be he did not know. But the necessity was dragged before his notice.
Then from the garden his eyes rested on Evelyn again, as he stood close to him with his keen, beautiful face, his eyes in which burned the wonder of his love, his long, slim limbs and hands that trembled, all so astonishingly alive, and all so instinct with the raptures and the rewards of living, and he could not say “Your duty lies here,” even had he been certain that it was so, so grey and toneless, so utterly at variance with the whole gospel of his own life would the advice have been. Yet neither, for his detachment from human affairs was not, nor could it be, complete, could he say to him “Yes, all the joy you can lay hands on is yours,” for on the other side stood Philip. But his sympathies were not there.
He spread out his hands with a sort of hopeless gesture.
“I don’t know what to say: I don’t even know what I think,” he said. “It is one of those things that is without solution, or rather there are two solutions, both of which are inevitably right, and utterly opposed. But you have as yet no reason to think that she loves you; all goes to show otherwise.”
“Yes, all,” said Evelyn softly, “but somehow I don’t believe it. I can’t help that either.”
Then suddenly he took hold of Merivale’s shoulders with both hands.
“Ah, you don’t understand,” he said. “You were saying just now that you and the river were indivisibly one. That is a mere figure of speech, though I understand what you mean by it. But with me it is sober truth; I am Madge. I have no existence apart from her. Some door has been opened, I have passed through it into her. Half oneself! Someone says man alone is only half himself. What nonsense! Till he loves he is complete in himself, but then he ceases to be himself at all.”
Wild as were his words, so utterly was he in the grip of his newly-awakened passion that possessed him, there was something convincing to Merivale about it. He might as well have tied a piece of string across a line to stop a runaway locomotive as hope to influence Evelyn by words or advice, especially since he at heart pulled in the opposite way to the advice he might thus give. The matter was beyond control; it must work itself out to its inevitable end.
“And when will you tell her?” he asked.
“I don’t know. The moment I see she loves me, if that moment comes.”
“And if it does not?”
Again his passion shook him like some great wave combing the weeds of the sea.
“It must,” he said.
That clearly was the last word on the subject, and even as he spoke the rim of the moon a week from full topped the beech-wood, and flooded the garden with silver, and both watched in silence till the three-quarter circle swung clear of the trees. Just a month ago Evelyn had watched it rising with Madge on the terrace of Philip’s house, and the sight of it now made the last month pass in review before him like some scene that moved behind the actors, as in the first act in Parsifal. The light it shed to-day seemed to flash back and illumine the whole of those weeks, and showed him how in darkness that plant had grown which to-day had flowered rose-coloured and perfect. Every day since then, when the seed had first been planted in his soul, had it shot up towards the light; there had been no day, so he felt now, on which the growth had stood still; it had been uninterrupted from the first germination to this its full flower. But the last word had been spoken, and when the moon had cleared the tree-tops, Merivale turned to him.
“I seldom sleep in the house,” he said, “and I certainly shall not to-night.”
“Where