CHAPTER XXVII

"I hope you rested well after your excitement," said Kimberly to Alice, laughing reassuringly as he asked. It was the day following their parting at the golf grounds. He had driven over to Cedar Lodge and found Alice in the garden waiting for Dolly. The two crossed the terrace to a sheltered corner of the garden overlooking the bay where they could be alone. After Alice had seated herself Kimberly repeated his question.

She regarded him long and thoughtfully as she answered, and with a sadness that was unexpected: "I did not rest at all. I do not even yet understand--perhaps I never shall--why I let you talk to me in that wild, wild way. But if I did not rest last night, I thought. I am to blame--I know that--as much as you are. Don't tell me. I am as much to blame as you are. But this cannot go on."

His eyes were upon her hands as they lay across flowers in her lap. He took a spray from her while she spoke and bent his look upon it. She was all in white and he loved to see her in white. In it she fulfilled to him a dream of womanhood. "I ought to ask you what you mean when you say and think these fearful things," she went on, waiting for him to lift his eyes. "I ought to ask you; but you do not care what it means, at least as far as you are concerned. And you never ask yourself what it means as far as I am concerned."

He replied with no hesitation. "I began asking myself that question almost the first time I ever saw you. I have asked myself nothing else ever since. It means for both of us exactly the same thing; for you, everything you can ask that I can give you; for me, everything I can give you that you can ask."

"If there were no gulf between us--but there is. And even if what you say were true, you can see how impossible it would be for me to say those words back to you."

He looked at the spray. "Quite true; you cannot. But I shall ask so little--less of you than of any woman in the world. And you will give only what you can, and when you can. And you alone are to be the judge of what you can give and when, until our difficulties are worked out.

"I shall only show you now that I _can_ be patient. I never have been--I have confessed to that. Now I am going to the test. Meantime, you don't realize, Alice, quite, how young you are, do you? Nor how much in earnest I am. Let us turn to that for a while."

From a shrub at his side he plucked sprigs of rosemary and crushed them with the spray. "Even love never begins but once. So, for every hour that passes, a memory; for every hour that tarries, a happiness; for every hour that comes, a hope. Do you remember?"

"I read it on your sun-dial."

"Every one may read it there. Where I want you to read it is in my heart."

"I wonder whether it is most what you say, or the way in which you say it, that gets people into trouble?"

"On the contrary; my life has been spent in getting people out of trouble, and in waiting to say things to you."

"You are improving your opportunity in that respect. And you are losing a still more delightful opportunity, for you don't know how much relief you can give me by leaving most of them unsaid."

"It is impossible, of course, to embrace all of our opportunities--often impossible to embrace the cause of them."

"Don't pick me up in that way, please."

He held his hands over hers and dropped the crushed rosemary on them. "Would that I could in any way. Since I cannot, let me annoy you."

Dolly appeared at a distance, and they walked down the terrace to meet her. She kissed Alice. "What makes you look so girlish to-day? And what is all this color around your eyes? Never wear anything but white. I never should myself," sighed Dolly. "You know Alice and I are off for the seashore," she added, turning to her brother.

"So I hear."

"Come along."

"Who is going?"

"Everybody, I suppose. They all know about the trip."

"Where do you dine?"

"On the shore near the light-house. Arthur is bringing some English friends out from town; we are going to dance."

That night by the sea Kimberly and Alice danced together. He held her like a child, and his strength, which for a moment startled her, was a new charm when she glided across the long, half-lighted floor within his arm. Her grace responded perfectly to the ease with which he led, and they, stopped only when both were breathing fast, to stroll out on the dark pier and drink in the refreshment of the night wind from the ocean.

They remained out of doors a long time, talking sometimes, laughing sometimes, walking sometimes, sometimes sitting down for a moment or kneeling upon the stone parapet benches to listen to the surf pounding below them. When they went in, he begged her again to dance. Not answering in words she only lifted her arm with a smile. Making their way among those about them they glided, he in long, undulating steps, she retreating in swift, answering rhythm, touching the floor as lightly as if she trod on air.

"This plume in your hat," he said as they moved on and on to the low, sensuous strains of the music, "it nods so lightly. Where do you carry your wings?"

The very effort of speaking was exhilarating. "It is you," she answered, "who are supplying the wings."

The gayety of the others drew them more closely together. Little confidences of thought and feeling--in themselves nothing, in their unforbidden exchange everything--mutual confessions of early impressions each of the other, compliments more eagerly ventured and ignored now rather than resented. Surprise read in each other's eyes, dissent not ungracious and denial that only laughingly denied--all went to feed a secret happiness growing fearfully by leaps and bounds into ties that never could be broken.

The dance with its exhilaration, the plunging of her pulse and her quick, deep breathing, shone in Alice's cheeks and in her eyes. The two laughed at everything; everything colored their happiness because everything was colored by it.

The party drove home after a very late supper, Alice heavily wrapped and beside Dolly in Kimberly's car. Entertainments for the English party followed for a week and were wound up by Kimberly with an elaborate evening for them at The Towers. For the first time in years the big house was dressed _en fete_ and the illuminations made a picture that could be seen as far as the village.

Twenty-four sat at The Towers round table that night. Alice herself helped Dolly to pair the guests and philosophically assigned her husband to Lottie Nelson. Kimberly complimented her upon her arrangement.

"Why not?" she asked simply, though not without a certain bitterness with which she always spoke of her husband. "People with tastes in common seem to drift together whether you pair them or not."

They were standing in an arbor and Kimberly was plucking grapes for her.

"He is less than nothing to me," she continued, "as you too well know--or I should not be here now eating your grapes."

"Your grapes, Alice. Everything here is yours. I haven't spoken much about our difficulties--'our' difficulties! The sweetness of the one word blots out the annoyance of the other. But you must know I shall never rest until you are installed here with all due splendor as mistress, not alone of the grapes, but of all you survey, for this is to be wholly and simply yours. And if I dare ask you now and here, Alice--you whose every breath is more to me than the thought of all other women--I want you to be my wife."

Her lips tightened. "And I am the wife of another man--it is horrible."

He heard the tremor in her tone. "Look at me."

"I cannot look at you."

"When you are free----"

"Free!" Her voice rising in despair, fell again into despair. "I shall never be free."

"You shall, and that speedily, Alice!" She could imagine the blood surging into Kimberly's neck and face as he spoke. "I am growing fearful that I cannot longer stand the thought of his being under the same roof with you."

"He cannot even speak to me except before Annie."

Kimberly paused. "I do not like it. I want it changed."

"How can I change it?"

"We shall find a way, and that very soon, to arrange your divorce from him."

"It is the one word, the one thought that crushes me." She turned toward him as if with a hard and quick resolve. "You know I am a Catholic, and you know I am ashamed to say it."

"Ashamed?"

"I have disgraced my faith."

"Nonsense, you are an ornament to any faith."

"Do not say that!" She spoke with despairing vehemence. "You don't realize how grotesque it sounds. If what you say were true I should not be here."

He drew himself up. There was a resentful note in his tone. "I did not suppose myself such a moral leper that it would be unsafe for any one to talk to me. Other Catholics--and good ones--talk to me, and apparently without contamination."

"It is only that _I_ have no right to. Now you are going to be angry with me."

He saw her eyes quiver. "God forbid! I misunderstood. And you are sensitive, dearest."

"I am sensitive," she said reluctantly. "More than ever, perhaps, since I have ceased practising my religion."

"But why have you ceased?"

Her words came unwillingly. "I could not help it."

"Why could you not help it?"

"You ask terribly hard questions."

"You must have wanted to give it up."

"I did not want to. I was forced to."

"Who could force you?"

He saw what an effort it cost her to answer. The words were dragged from her. "I could not live with my husband and practise it."

"So much the more reason for quitting him, isn't it?"

"Oh, I want to. I want to be free. If I only could."

"Alice, you speak like one in despair. There is nothing to be so stirred about. You want to be free, I want you to be, you shall be. Don't get excited over the matter of a divorce. Your eyes are like saucers at the thought. Why?"

"Only because for me it is the final disgrace--not to be separated from him--but to marry again with him alive! It means the last step for me. And the public scandal! What will they say of me, who knew me at home?"

"Alice, this is the wildest supersensitiveness. The whole world lives in divorced marriages. Public scandal? No one will ever hear of your divorce. The courts that grant your plea will attend to suppressing everything."

"Not everything!"

"Why not? We abase them every day to so many worse things that their delicate gorges will not rise at a little favor like that."

She looked at him gravely. "What does the world say of you for doing such things?"

"I never ask. You know, of course, I never pay any attention to what the world says of anything I do. Why should I? It would be difficult for the world to despise me as much as I despise it. You don't understand the world. All you need is my strength. I felt that from the very first--that if I could give you my strength the combination would be perfect. That is why I am so helplessly in love with you--my strength must be yours. I want to put you on a throne. Then I stand by, see?--and guard your majesty with a great club. And I can do it."

They laughed together, for he spoke guardedly, as to being heard of others, but with ominous energy. "I believe you could," murmured Alice.

"Don't worry over your religion. I will make you practise it. I will make a devotee of you."

"Robert! Robert!"

He stooped for her hand and in spite of a little struggle would not release it until he had kissed it. "Do you know it is the first time my name has ever passed your lips?" he murmured.

She was silent and he went on with another thought. "Alice, I don't believe you are as bad a Catholic as you think. I'll tell you why. I have known Catholic women, and men, too, that have given up their religion. Understand, I know nothing about your religion, but I do know something about men and women. And when they begin elaborate explanations they think they deceive me. In matter of fact, they deceive only themselves. When they begin to talk about progress, freedom of thought, decay of dogmas, individual liberty and all that twaddle, and assume a distinctly high, intellectual attitude, even though I don't know what they have given up, I know what they are assuming; I get their measure instantly. I've sometimes thought that when God calls us up to speak on judgment day He will say in the most amiable manner: 'Just tell your own story in your own way.' And that our own stories, told in our own way, will be all the data He will need to go ahead on. Indeed, He would not always need divine prescience to see through them; in most cases mere human insight would be enough. Just listen to the ordinary story of the ordinary man and notice how out of his own mouth he condemns himself. I see that sort of posturing every day in weak-kneed men and women who want to enlist large sums of money to float magnificent schemes. Now you are honest with yourself and honest with me, and I see in this a vital difference."

They walked back through the garden and encountered Brother Francis who was taking the air. Kimberly stopped him. Nelson and Imogene joined the group. "Ah, Francis!" exclaimed Imogene, "have they caught you saying your beads?"

"Not this time, Mrs. Kimberly."

"Come now, confess. What were you doing?"

Brother Francis demurred and protested but there was no escape. He pointed to The Towers. "I came out to see the beautiful illumination. It is very beautiful, is it not?"

"But that isn't all, for when we came along you were looking at the sky."

"Ah, the night is so clear--the stars are so strong to-night----"

"Go on."

"I was thinking of Italy."