CHAPTER IV

"WHAT did you and Angela have to say to one another?" Maurice asked. He and Felicia were driving down the polished sweep of Piccadilly alone, for Mr. Merrick disliked crowded hansoms, and the long silence had been unbroken. Leaning back in her corner, her cloak folded tightly around her, Felicia had gazed blankly at the powdery blue of the sky, the thickly sprinkled lights beneath it, her heart a chamber of angry misery. Maurice's question, its light curiosity like the aimless fumbling of a key, suddenly unlocked and threw open the door.

"Maurice--Maurice," she said under her breath, yet it was like a cry, "why did you talk to her about papa's essay?" Maurice's curiosity, had been a little less aimless than its lightness implied, but he felt now as if she had fired a pistol at his head.

"What did she say?" he asked quickly and sharply, revealing his fear.

"She said that she was sorry for us, and understood it--that you had told her we disliked the article."

"We did--you know," said Maurice after a moment, and, as he saw the pale oval of his wife's face turn upon him: "She spoke of it; I didn't think of concealing what we felt. I can't think that she meant to be impertinent." It struck him, even now, as odd that he should be venturing an excuse for Angela at the moment that his thoughts were assailing her with a passionate vindictiveness.

"Maurice, Maurice," Felicia repeated, in a voice empty now even of reproach. It was a deep, a weary astonishment.

"Dearest, don't misjudge me; don't make a mountain out of a mole-hill. You know how one slips into such things." He leaned forward on the apron of the cab to look his insistent supplication into her eyes, but hers refused to meet them. "And she is an old--old friend, my precious Felicia; one can't mistrust one's friends. It seemed perfectly natural to talk it over."

"Oh, Maurice, how miserable you have made me!" They were in the smaller streets nearing Chelsea, and she covered her face with her hands. In an agony of remorse he put an arm around her shoulders, beginning now to see his culpability with her eyes, exaggerating it with his magnified imagination of her contempt. He--who had encouraged his father-in-law to publish the wretched thing--he to jest about it with a woman whom he fundamentally distrusted! He could find no further words. They reached the house in silence. Mr. Merrick, who had arrived just before them, was inclined to talk, but, kissing him good-night with a certain vehemence, Felicia went at once to her own room and after a few moments Maurice followed her.

She had already taken off her dress, and, in a white dressing-gown, was hastily unpinning her wreath of hair. Maurice, in the mirror, met the deep look of her eyes. His face was pallid as he stood hesitatingly near the door, not guessing that anger was already gone and that the anguish at her heart was dread of loss of love for him, dread of some insurmountable barrier--would treacherous weakness be such a barrier?--coming between them. Now she turned, and seeing him standing there, white, not daring to supplicate, she stretched out her arms to him. He sprang to her.

"Oh, Maurice, don't--don't--don't," she stammered incoherently, not clearly knowing what she wished him not to do. She dropped her face upon his shoulder. "Don't let me ever--not love you. Hold me always."

"Felicia, you almost kill me."

His pallor, indeed, as she looked at him, shocked her. In the sudden realization of the torture he had suffered the thought of its cause grew dim and even trivial. What barrier could ever come between such a need, such love, and her?

"My poor Maurice, how unjust I have been. How hasty, how cruel. I do understand. With her one can't be straight. She led, you followed; how could you not? How could any one dear and trusting evade her? I do see it all. You are not to blame. Oh, Maurice, how pale you are!"

She sank into a chair, her arms around him, and he knelt beside her, leaning like a little child his head upon her breast.

"It is one of my horrors," he said. "For a moment I saw myself as you might see me. For a moment I thought I might lose you."

"Darling Maurice--never, never. I hated her so--that blinded me. I hate so to think that she was ever near you--has any claim. Perhaps it is almost a mean jealousy. Forgive me. Kiss me. Let us laugh at it."

In his mind a thought, almost an inarticulate sob of terror and longing, rose--rose and shook him. "Tell her now, tell her all." Terror quenched longing. How explain? How seem anything to her but unutterably base? He could never show her that craven spectre of the past. The real self that clung to her could not risk losing her. He could not smile. He kissed her, his eyes still closed, saying, "Don't take your arms away until the horror is quite passed."