Everywhere there was a noise of birds nestling amongst the leaves, of invisible streams running through the grass, of branches mysteriously cracking, and, always, in the distance some one seemed to be chopping with an axe.If you pushed a window open multitudes of little insects fell in showers about you.All the roses were eaten with green flies.
"What a place!" said Maggie; nevertheless it was rather agreeable after the sand of Skeaton.
During the first three days they preserved their attitude of friendly distance.On the fourth evening Maggie desperately flung down her challenge.They were sitting, after supper, in the wild deserted garden.It was a wonderful evening, faintly blue and dim crocus with flickering silver stars.The last birds twittered in the woods; the green arc of the hill against the evening sky had a great majesty of repose and rest."Now, Paul!" said Maggie.
"What is it, dear?" but he slowly changed colour and looked away from her, out into the wood.
"We've got to face it some time," she said."The sooner, then, the better--""Face what?" he asked, dropping his voice as though he were afraid that some one would overhear.
"You and me." Maggie gathered her resources together."Before we were married we were great friends.You were the greatest friend Iever had except Uncle Mathew.And now I don't know what we are.""Whose fault is that?" he asked huskily."You know what the matter is.You don't love me.You never have...Have you?" He suddenly ended, turning towards her.
She saw his new eagerness and she was frightened, but she looked at a little bunch of stars that twinkled at her above the dark elms and took courage.
"I'm very bad at explaining my feelings," she said."And you're not very good either, Paul.I know I am very fond of you, and I feel as though it ought to be so simple if I were wiser or kinder.I've been thinking for weeks about this, and I want to say that I'm ready to do anything that will make you happy.""You'll love me?" he asked.
"I'm very fond of you, and I always will be.""No, but love."
"A word like that isn't important.Affection--""No.It's love I want."
She turned away from him, pressing her hands together, staring into the wood that was sinking into avenues of dark.She couldn't answer him.He came over to her.He knelt on the dry grass, took her head between his hands, and kissed her again and again and again.
She heard him murmur: "Maggie...Maggie...Maggie.You must love me.You must.I've waited so long.I didn't know what love was.
God in His Mercy forgive me for the thoughts I've had this year.
You've tormented me.Tantalised me.You're a witch.A witch.You're so strange, so odd, so unlike any one.You've enchanted me.Love me.
Maggie...Love me...Love me."
She caught his words all broken and scattered.She felt his heart beating against her body, and his hands were hot to the touch of her cold cheek.She felt that he was desperate and ashamed and pitiful.
She felt, above all else, that she must respond--and she could not.
She strove to give him what he needed.She caught his hands, and then, because she knew that she was acting falsely and the whole of her nature was in rebellion, she drew back.He felt her withdraw.
His hands dropped.
She burst into tears, suddenly hiding her face in her hands as she used to do when she was a little girl.
"Oh, Paul," she wept."I'm so sorry.I'm so sorry.I'm wicked.Ican't--"
He got up and stood with his back to her, looking towards the night sky that flashed now with stars.
She controlled herself, feeling desperately that their whole future together hung on the approaching minutes.She went up to him.
standing at first timidly behind him, then putting her hand through his arm.
"Paul.It isn't so hopeless.If I can't give you that I can give you everything else.I told you from the first that I couldn't help loving Martin.All that kind of love I gave to him, but we can be friends.I want a friend so badly.If we're both lonely we can come together closer and closer, and perhaps, later on--"But she could not go on.She knew that she would never forget Martin, that she would never love Paul.These two things were so clear to her that she could not pretend.As the darkness gathered the wood into its arms and the last twitter of the birds sank into silence, she felt that she too was being caught into some silent blackness.The sky was pale green, the stars so bright that the rest of the world seemed to lie in dim shadow.She could scarcely see Paul now; when he spoke his voice came, disembodied, out of the dusk.
"You'll never forget him, then?" at last he asked.
"No."
"You're strange.You don't belong to us.I should have seen that at the beginning.I knew nothing about women and thought that all that I wanted--oh God, why should I be so tempted? I've been a good man..." Then he came close to her and put his hand on her shoulder and even drew her to him."I won't bother you any more, Maggie.I'll conquer this.We'll be friends as you want.It isn't fair to you--"She felt the control that he was keeping on himself and she admired him.Nevertheless she knew, young though she was, that if she let him go now she was losing him for ever.The strangest pang of loneliness and isolation seized her.If Paul left her and Martin wasn't there, she was lonely indeed.She saw quite clearly how his laziness would come to his aid.He would summon first his virtue and his religion, and twenty years of abstinence would soon reassert their sway; then he would slip back into the old, lazy, self-complacent being that he had been before.Staring into the dark wood she saw it all.She could completely capture him by responding to his passion.Without that she was too queer, too untidy, too undisciplined, to hold him at all.But she could not lie, she could not pretend.
She kissed him.
"Paul, let's be friends, then.Splendid friends.Oh! we will be happy!"But as he kissed her she knew that she had lost him.