She had one moment of furious indignation with him for even letting her know that he knew all. But he came a step nearer and held out both hands to her.
“Oh, you poor dear! you poor dear!” he said. “Without a thought of any possible gain, I would give my right hand to spare you this. It is much worse for you than for me.”
The shadow of convention which had stood between them sank away into nothingness, for convention is born of the head, not of the heart, and when heart meets heart, there is no place for head. Maud took his two outstretched hands and pressed them.
“You are a man,” she said, “and that is the highest praise of all. I have tried very hard to be a woman, but I have not succeeded so well.”
“You have succeeded very well,” he said. “No one has guessed it.”
Pride is not a dominant emotion, and is driven off the field as soon as the greater magnates appear.
“After all,” she thought wearily, “what does it matter?” And then because her passion was strong and she was young, she broke down utterly. “My God, what shall I do?” she cried, “and what are you to think of me? I have thrown overboard self-respect, and reticence, and decency. I have nothing left but the hope that he knows nothing of it.”
“I am sure he has never had an inkling of it,” he said. “It has been hard for you.”
“And all the time there is the horrible consciousness that one may break down.”
“You will not break down. When one has great physical pain, one thinks one cannot endure it a moment longer. But as a matter of fact one can and does. One endures it until it stops.”
“But who is to assure me of that? Not you, of all men, who have guessed my secret.”
“It was no fault of yours that I guessed it. It was because I fell in love with you myself.”
His voice assumed its usual tone of gentler cynicism.
“And love,” he added, “which is usually considered blind, is on the contrary extremely clear sighted. Man is a wonderful creature, as one of Tom’s Greek poets says, and we are beautifully adapted for bearing things without breaking. There is no last straw for us. We go on hoping that each straw is going to be the last, that we shall break, but we can always bear some more. And there usually are some more.”
“Don’t say bitter things, Mr. Manvers. One may say bitter things to strangers, but never to friends. There’s father’s carriage; I must go upstairs. I told mother I should go to bed early. You leave us to-morrow, don’t you? I needn’t tell you how sorry I am.”