She prays God that nothing of what she is feeling shows in her face; and Gerald is far too moved, far too doubtful as to what he is to say to her, and as to the answer she will make to him, to see that she looks in any way different from what she always does look in his eyes--the most beautiful as well as the most loved and worshipped of human creatures.
"Tell me!" she gasps. "Tell me, Gerald? What is it you want to say to me? Don't keep me in suspense--" and then, as he is still dumb, she adds with a cry, "Have you come to tell me that at last you have found Jack?"
And he pulls himself together with a mighty effort. Nancy's words have rudely dispelled the hopes with which his heart has been filled ever since his father came to his room last night and told him what Mr. Stephens had suggested as a possible way out of the present, intolerable situation.
"No," he says sombrely, "no, Nancy, I have brought you no good news, and I am beginning to fear I never shall."
And he does not see even now that the long quivering sigh which escapes from her pale lips is a sigh of unutterable--if of pained and shamed--relief.
But what is this he is now saying, in a voice which is so unsteady, so oddly unlike his own?
"I think--God forgive me for thinking so if I am wrong--that I have always been right, Nancy, that your husband is dead--that he was killed two years ago, the night he disappeared--"
She bends her head. Yes, she too believes that, though there was a time when she fought, with desperate strength, against the belief.
He goes on breathlessly, hoarsely, aware that he is making what Mr. Stephens would call a bad job of it all: "I am now beginning to doubt whether we shall ever discover the truth as to what did happen. His body may still lie concealed somewhere in the Hôtel Saint Ange, and if that is so, there's but small chance indeed that we shall ever, ever learn the truth."
And again she bends her head.
"I fear the time is come, Nancy, when the search must be given up."
He utters the fateful words very quietly, very gently, but even so she feels a pang of startled fear. Does that mean--yes, of course it must mean, that Gerald is going away, back to America?
A feeling of dreadful desolation fills her heart. "Yes," she says in a low tone, "I think you are right. I think the search should be given up."
She would like to utter words of thanks, the conventional words of gratitude she has uttered innumerable times in the last two years--but now they stick in her throat.
Tears smart into her eyes, stifled sobs burst from her lips.
And Gerald again misunderstands--misunderstands her tears, the sobs which tear and shake her slender body. But he is only too familiar with the feeling which now grips him--the feeling that he must rush forward and take her in his arms. It has never gripped him quite as strongly as it does now; and so he steps abruptly back, and puts more of the stone rim of the fountain between himself and that forlorn little figure.
"Nancy?" he cries. "I was a brute to say that. Of course I will go on! Of course we won't give up hope! It's natural that I should sometimes become disheartened."
He is telling himself resolutely that never, never will he propose to her the plan his father revealed to him last night. How little either his father or Mr. Stephens had understood the relation between himself and Nancy if they supposed that he, of all men, could make to her such a suggestion.
And then he suddenly sees in Nancy's sensitive face, in her large blue eyes that unconscious beckoning, calling look every lover longs to see in the face of his beloved....
They each instinctively move towards the other, and in a flash Nancy is in his arms and he is holding her strained to his heart, while his lips seek, find, cling to her sweet, tremulous mouth.
But the moment of rapture, of almost unendurable bliss is short indeed, for suddenly he feels her shrinking from him, and though for yet another moment he holds her against her will, the struggle soon ends, and he releases her, feeling what he has never yet felt when with her, that is, bewildered, hurt, and yes, angry.
And then, when she sees that new alien glance of anger in eyes which have never looked at her but kindly, Nancy feels a dreadful pang of pain, as well as of shamed distress. She creeps up nearer to him, and puts her hand imploringly on his arm--that arm which a moment ago held her so closely to him, but which now hangs, apparently nerveless, by his side.
"Gerald!" she whispers imploringly. "Don't be angry with me," and her voice drops still lower as she adds piteously, "You see, I knew we were doing wrong. I--I felt wicked."
And then, as he still makes no answer, she grows more keenly distressed. "Gerald?" she says again. "You may kiss me if you like." And as he only looks down at her, taking no advantage of the reluctant permission, she falters out the ill-chosen words, "Don't you know how grateful I am to you?"
And then, stung past endurance, he turns on her savagely:--"Does that mean that I have bought the right to kiss you?"
But as, at this, she bursts into bitter tears, he again takes her in his arms, and he does kiss her, violently, passionately, hungrily. He is only a man after all.
But alas! These other kisses leave behind them a bitter taste. They lack the wild, exquisite flavour of the first.
At last he tells her, haltingly, slowly, of Mr. Stephens' suggestion, but carefully as he chooses his words he feels her shrinking, wincing at the images they conjure up; and he tells himself with impatient self-reproach that he has been too quick, too abrupt--that he ought to have allowed the notion to sink into her mind slowly, that he should have made Daisy, or even his father, be his ambassador.
"I couldn't do that!" she whispers at last, and he sees that she has turned very white. "I don't think I could ever do that! Think how awful it would be if--if after I had done such a thing I found that poor Jack was not dead? Some time ago--I have never told you of this--some friend, meaning to be kind, sent me a cutting from a paper telling of a foreigner who had been taken up for mad in Italy, and confined in a lunatic asylum for years and years! You don't know how that story haunted me. It haunted me for weeks. You wouldn't like me to do anything I thought wrong, Gerald?"
"No," he says moodily. "No, Nancy--I will never ask you to do anything you think wrong." He adds with an effort, "I told my father last night that I doubted if you would ever consent to such a thing."
And then she asks an imprudent question:--"And what did he say then?" she says in a troubled, unhappy voice.
"D'you really want to know what he said?"
She creeps a little nearer to him, she even takes his hand. "Yes, Gerald. Tell me."
"He said that if you wouldn't consent to do some such thing, why then I should be doing wrong to stay in Europe. He said--I little knew how true it was--that soon you would learn that I loved you, and that then--that then the situation would become intolerable."
"Intolerable?" she repeats in a low, strained tone. "Oh no, not intolerable, Gerald! Surely you don't feel that?"
And this time it is Gerald who winces, who draws back; but suddenly his heart fills up, brims over with a great, an unselfish tenderness--for Nancy, gazing up at him, looks disappointed as a child, not a woman, looks, when disappointed of a caress; and so he puts his arms round her and kisses her very gently, very softly, in what he tells himself is a kind, brotherly fashion. "You know I'll do just whatever you wish," he murmurs.
And contentedly she nestles against him. "Oh, Gerald," she whispers back, "how good you are to me! Can't we always be reasonable--like this?"
And he smiles, a little wryly.