Eileen Villiers sat at her window, looking out over the dreary square. It was summer, but even with the trees in full leaf, there was an atmosphere of weariness and hopelessness in the prospect before her. It was as if the drab respectability that hid in the blank-faced houses had crept out of the windows and infested even the gardens with a withered despair. She glanced back over her shoulder and saw the same veiled misery printed on the worn plush furniture, on the faded, ugly pictures of another generation, on faded, ugly walls.
Sir Richard sat by the fireside. The grate was empty, but that did not matter to him. Day after day he took his place there, and stared into the blankness, as if for him it were peopled with visions, and muttered to himself. Very often it was a mere name uttered in a tone of curious brooding, and with a look of pathetic helplessness. It was a living death.
In the neighboring room a child wailed.
The sound aroused Eileen from her self-absorption. She looked up at the man who stood quietly beside her.
“He often cries,” she said, almost in apology. “It's the heat and the closeness. He's not strong. A little six-months'-old baby can't bear much.”
“Least of all this.” He stood very erect, his handsome face turned to the light. “Make an end, Eileen. I've been patient. If it were only myself, I would go on being patient forever. But it's hard to see you suffer. You weren't made for suffering, dear. You can't stand it.”
“Are you sure? Perhaps things have changed; perhaps I've learned something—even the art of suffering—in these months.” She smiled wearily. “I was a child then, Oscar, but now that I have my son, I have grown up.”
“And is it easier to suffer when one is grown up?” he asked gently.
“It's harder—only one learns to understand—that other people suffer—and have suffered.”
Something like a frown gathered between his straight brows. It passed, so that she did not see it, and he laid his hand on hers.
“Then perhaps you understand that I am suffering, Eileen.”
“I can't think of you to-day, Oscar.”
“Why not, dear? You promised me that to-day you would try. I've been patient. It has not always been easy.”
She rose restlessly.
“I know—you've been very good. But it is to-day a year that it all happened. Oscar—I feel haunted—I scarcely know by what—but I am afraid. I was a child then, quick and passionate in my judgment. If I have been unjust! I can't forget his last words—'I have done my best'—and he died bravely at his post.” She turned to the man beside her and looked at him, her eyes full of an intense appeal. “Oscar, as his friend and mine, I trust you, and I trust you now to answer me honestly. If I misjudged my husband or if I, in my bitterness, hindered him or made things harder for him, then I should know what to say to you.”
His eyes met hers for an instant, then his glance shifted to the parched, stifling square, on which a drab dusk had begun to descend.
“What would you say then, Eileen?”
“That there was an insurmountable barrier between us. The knowledge that we had both failed him would stand- between us all our lives. On your honor—as his friend—did I wrong him, Oscar?”
“No,” he answered.
3etween her question and his answer the pause had been scarcely longer than the drawing of a breath, but afterward the silence lingered. The feverish flood of color that had risen to her cheeks receded slowly, leaving her very pale, for that moment almost old looking.
In the next room the child cried out again—a piteous exclamation of pain and weariness.
Delisle glanced at the woman beside him. Then, quietly, he took her hand and led her from the window to the open door. There was very little else in the poor room but the cradle. He led her to it and stood beside her. Then, as the child cried again, she moved a little to bend over it, and thereafter it chanced that the cradle was between them.
“Poor little fellow!” Delisle said gently.
He, too, bent down, and their hands touched. She drew back, and he saw something come into her face that he had not seen before.
“I love my son,” she said. “And I have just begun to understand that I love him—for Fenton's sake. The knowledge has come to me very slowly. I believe I love my husband. I believe that if he lived—and though every wrong I thought of him were true—I should go to him and stand by him. That's what I must tell you. Knowing that—do you still want me?”
He stood silent for an instant, still with bowed head, the child's tiny, helpless hand held gently in his.
“Yes,” he said doggedly. “I want you more. I will make you happy—I will make you forget.”