"Ah, Simon, you too have a tongue! Can you also lure women? I think you could. But keep it, Simon, keep it for your wife. There's many a maid would gladly take the t.i.tle, for you're a fine figure, and I think that you know the way to a woman's heart."

Standing above me (for I had sunk back in my chair) she caressed my cheek gently with her hand. I was checked, but not beaten. My madness, as she called it (as must not I also call it?), was still in me, hot and surging. Hope was yet alive, for she had shown me tenderness, and once it had seemed as though a pa.s.sing shadow of remorse had shot across her brightness. Putting out my hands, I took both of hers again, and so looked up in her face, dumbly beseeching her; a smile quivered on her lips as she shook her head at me.

"Heaven keeps you for better things," she said.

"I'd be the judge of them myself," I cried, and I sought to carry her hands to my lips.

"Let me go," she said; "Simon, you must let me go. Nay, you must. So!

Sit there, and I'll sit opposite to you."

She did as she said, seating herself over against me, although quite close. She looked me in the face. Presently she gave a little sigh.

"Won't you leave me now?" she asked with a plaintive smile.

I shook my head, but made no other answer.

"I'm sorry," she went on softly, "that I came to Hatchstead; I'm sorry that I brought you to London, that I met you in the Lane, that I brought you here to-day. I didn't guess your folly. I've lived with players, and with courtiers, and with--with one other; so I didn't dream of such folly as yours. Yes, I'm sorry."

"You can give me joy infinitely greater than any sorrow I've had by you," said I in a low voice.

On this she sat silent for a full minute, seeming to study my face. Then she looked to right and left, as though she would fain have escaped. She laughed a little, but grew grave again, saying, "I don't know why I laughed," and sighing heavily. I watched every motion and change in her, waiting for her to speak again. At last she spoke.

"You won't be angry with me, Simon?" she asked coaxingly.

"Why, no," I answered, wondering.

"Nor run quite mad, nor talk of death, nor any horrors?"

"I'll hear all you say calmly," I answered.

She sat looking at me in a whimsical distress, seeming to deprecate wrath and to pray my pardon yet still to hint amus.e.m.e.nt deep-hidden in her mind. Then she drew herself up, and a strange and most pitiful pride appeared on her face. I did not know the meaning of it. She leant forward towards me, blushing a little, and whispered my name.

"I'm waiting to hear you," said I; my voice came hard, stern, and cold.

"You'll be cruel to me, I know you will," she cried petulantly.

"On my life, no," said I. "What is it you want to say?"

She was like a child who shows you some loved forbidden toy that she should not have, but prizes above all her trifles; there was that sly joy, that ashamed exultation in her face.

"I have promises," she whispered, clasping her hands and nodding her head at me. "Ah, they make songs on me, and laugh at me, and Castlemaine looks at me as though I were the street-dirt under her feet. But they shall see! Ay, they shall see that I can match them!" She sprang to her feet in reckless merriment, crying, "Shall I make a pretty countess, Simon?" She came near to me and whispered with a mysterious air, "Simon, Simon!"

I looked up at her sparkling eyes.

"Simon, what's he whom you serve, whom you're proud to serve? Who is he, I say?" She broke into a laugh of triumph.

But I, hearing her laugh, and finding my heart filled with a sudden terror, spread my hands over my eyes and fell back heavily in my chair, like a sick man or a drunken. For now, indeed, I saw that my gem was but a pebble. And the echo of her laugh rang in my ears.

"So I can't come, Simon," I heard her say. "You see that I can't come.

No, no, I can't come"; and again she laughed.

I sat where I was, hearing nothing but the echo of her laugh, unable to think save of the truth that was driven so cruelly into my mind. The first realising of things that cannot be undone brings to a young man a fierce impotent resentment; that was in my heart, and with it a sudden revulsion from what I had desired, as intemperate as the desire, as cruel, it may be, as the thing which gave it birth. Nell's laughter died away, and she was silent. Presently I felt a hand rest on my hands as though seeking to convey sympathy in a grief but half-understood. I shrank away, moving my hands till hers no longer touched them. There are little acts, small matters often, on which remorse attends while life lasts. Even now my heart is sore that I shrank away from her; she was different now in nothing from what I had known of her; but I who had desired pa.s.sionately now shunned her; the thing had come home to me, plain, close, in an odious intimacy. Yet I wish I had not shrunk away; before I could think I had done it; and I found no words; better perhaps that I attempted none.

I looked up; she was holding out the hand before her; there was a puzzled smile on her lips.

"Does it burn, does it p.r.i.c.k, does it soil, Simon?" she asked. "See, touch it, touch it. It is as it was, isn't it?" She put it close by my hand, waiting for me to take it, but I did not take it. "As it was when you kissed it," said she; but still I did not take it.

I rose to my feet slowly and heavily, like a tired man whose legs are reluctant to resume their load. She stood quite still, regarding me now with alarmed and wondering eyes.

"It's nothing," I stammered. "Indeed it's nothing; only I hadn't thought of it."

Scarcely knowing what I did, I began to move towards the door. An unreasoned instinct impelled me to get away from her. Yet my gaze was drawn to her face; I saw her lips pouting and her cheek flushed, the brightness of her eyes grew clouded. She loved me enough to be hurt by me, if no more. A pity seized me; turning, I fell on my knee, and, seizing the hand whose touch I had refused, I kissed it.

"Ah, you kiss my hand now!" she cried, breaking into smiles again.

"I kiss Cydaria's hand," said I. "For in truth I'm sorry for my Cydaria."

"She was no other than I am," she whispered, and now with a touch of shame; for she saw that I felt shame for her.

"Not what is hurts us, but what we know," said I. "Good-bye, Cydaria,"

and again I kissed her hand. She drew it away from me and tossed her head, crying angrily:

"I wish I hadn't told you."

"In G.o.d's name don't wish that," said I, and drew her gaze on me again in surprise. I moved on my way, the only way my feet could tread. But she darted after me, and laid her hand on my arm. I looked at her in amazed questioning.

"You'll come again, Simon, when--?" The smile would not be denied though it came timidly, afraid for its welcome and distrustful of its right.

"When you're better, Simon?"

I longed--with all my heart I longed--to be kind to her. How could the thing be to her what it was to me? She could not understand why I was aghast; extravagant despair, all in the style of a vanquished rival, would have been easy for her to meet, to ridicule, to comfort. I knew all this, but I could not find the means to affect it or to cover my own distress.

"You'll come again then?" she insisted pleadingly.

"No," said I, bluntly, and cruelly with unwilling cruelty.

At that a sudden gust of pa.s.sion seized her and she turned on me, denouncing me fiercely, in terms she took no care to measure, for a prudish virtue that for good or evil was not mine, and for a narrowness of which my reason was not guilty. I stood defenceless in the storm, crying at the end no more than, "I don't think thus of you."

"You treat me as though you thought thus," she cried. Yet her manner softened and she came across to me, seeming now as if she might fall to weeping. But at the instant the door opened and the saucy maid who had ushered me in entered, running hastily to her mistress, in whose ears she whispered, nodding and glancing the while at me.

"The King!" cried Nell, and, turning to me, she added hastily: "He'd best not find you here."

"I ask no better than to be gone," said I.

"I know, I know," she cried. "We're not disturbed! The King's coming interrupts nothing, for all's finished. Go then, go, out of my sight."

Her anger seemed to rise again, while the serving-girl stared back astonished as she pa.s.sed out. But if she went to stay the King's coming, she was too late. For he was in the doorway the instant she had pa.s.sed through; he had heard Nell's last speech, and now he showed himself, asking easily,

"Who's the gentleman of whose society you are so ready to be relieved?"