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Page 49
To Carroll all roads led past Helen's studio, and during the summer,
while she had been absent in Scotland, it was one of his sad pleasures
to make a pilgrimage to her street and to pause opposite the house and
look up at the empty windows of her rooms. It was during this daily
exercise that he learned, through the arrival of her luggage, of her
return to London, and when day followed day without her having shown
any desire to see him or to tell him of her return, he denounced
himself most bitterly as a fatuous fool.
At the end of the week he sat down and considered his case quite
calmly. For three years he had loved this girl, deeply and tenderly.
He had been lover, brother, friend, and guardian. During that time,
even though she had accepted him in every capacity except as that of
the prospective husband, she had never given him any real affection,
nor sympathy, nor help; all she had done for him had been done without
her knowledge or intent. To know her, to love her, and to scheme to
give her pleasure had been its own reward, and the only one. For the
last few months he had been living like a crossing sweeper in order to
be able to stay in London until she came back to it, and that he might
still send her the gifts he had always laid on her altar. He had not
seen her in three months. Three months that had been to him a blank,
except for his work--which, like all else that he did, was inspired
and carried on for her. Now at last she had returned and had shown
that, even as a friend, he was of so little account in her thoughts,
of so little consequence in her life, that after this long absence she
had no desire to learn of his welfare or to see him--she did not even
give him the chance to see her. And so, placing these facts before him
for the first time since he had loved her, he considered what was due
to himself. "Was it good enough?" he asked. "Was it just that he
should continue to wear out his soul and body for this girl who did
not want what he had to give, who treated him less considerately than
a man whom she met for the first time at dinner?" He felt he had
reached the breaking-point; that the time had come when he must
consider what he owed to himself. There could never be any other woman
save Helen; but as it was not to be Helen, he could no longer, with
self-respect, continue to proffer his love only to see it slighted and
neglected. He was humble enough concerning himself, but of his love he
was very proud. Other men could give her more in wealth or position,
but no one could ever love her as he did. "He that hath more let him
give," he had often quoted to her defiantly, as though he were
challenging the world, and now he felt he must evolve a makeshift
world of his own--a world in which she was not his only spring of
acts; he must begin all over again and keep his love secret and sacred
until she understood it and wanted it. And if she should never want it
he would at least have saved it from many rebuffs and insults.
With this determination strong in him, the note Helen had left for him
after her talk with Marion, and the flowers, and the note with them,
saying she was coming to take tea on the morrow, failed to move him
except to make him more bitter. He saw in them only a tardy
recognition of her neglect--an effort to make up to him for
thoughtlessness which, from her, hurt him worse than studied slight.
A new _r�gime_ had begun, and he was determined to establish it
firmly and to make it impossible for himself to retreat from it; and
in the note in which he thanked Helen for the flowers and welcomed her
to tea, he declared his ultimatum.
"You know how terribly I feel," he wrote; "I don't have to tell you
that, but I cannot always go on dragging out my love and holding it up
to excite your pity as beggars show their sores. I cannot always go on
praying before your altar, cutting myself with knives and calling upon
you to listen to me. You know that there is no one else but you, and
that there never can be any one but you, and that nothing is changed
except that after this I am not going to urge and torment you. I shall
wait as I have always waited--only now I shall wait in silence. You
know just how little, in one way, I have to offer you, and you know
just how much I have in love to offer you. It is now for you to
speak--some day, or never. But you will have to speak first. You will
never hear a word of love from me again. Why should you? You know it
is always waiting for you. But if you should ever want it, you must
come to me, and take off your hat and put it on my table and say,
'Philip, I have come to stay.' Whether you can ever do that or not can
make no difference in my love for you. I shall love you always, as no
man has ever loved a woman in this world, but it is you who must speak
first; for me, the rest is silence."
The following morning as Helen was leaving the house she found this
letter lying on the hall-table, and ran back with it to her rooms. A
week before she would have let it lie on the table and read it on her
return. She was conscious that this was what she would have done, and
it pleased her to find that what concerned Philip was now to her the
thing of greatest interest. She was pleased with her own
eagerness--her own happiness was a welcome sign, and she was proud and
glad that she was learning to care.
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