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Page 35
Hitherto her voice had been hard, possibly in
self-accusation, possibly in defiance. Now it became
unmistakably sad. "Ah, the telegram! That was wrong.
Lilia there was more cowardly than I was. We should have
told the truth. It lost me my nerve, at all events. I came
to the station meaning to tell you everything then. But we
had started with a lie, and I got frightened. And at the
end, when you left, I got frightened again and came with
you."
"Did you really mean to stop?"
"For a time, at all events."
"Would that have suited a newly married pair?"
"It would have suited them. Lilia needed me. And as
for him--I can't help feeling I might have got influence over
him."
"I am ignorant of these matters," said Philip; "but I
should have thought that would have increased the difficulty
of the situation."
The crisp remark was wasted on her. She looked
hopelessly at the raw over-built country, and said, "Well, I
have explained."
"But pardon me, Miss Abbott; of most of your conduct you
have given a description rather than an explanation."
He had fairly caught her, and expected that she would
gape and collapse. To his surprise she answered with some
spirit, "An explanation may bore you, Mr. Herriton: it drags
in other topics."
"Oh, never mind."
"I hated Sawston, you see."
He was delighted. "So did and do I. That's splendid.
Go on."
"I hated the idleness, the stupidity, the
respectability, the petty unselfishness."
"Petty selfishness," he corrected. Sawston psychology
had long been his specialty.
"Petty unselfishness," she repeated. "I had got an idea
that every one here spent their lives in making little
sacrifices for objects they didn't care for, to please
people they didn't love; that they never learnt to be
sincere--and, what's as bad, never learnt how to enjoy
themselves. That's what I thought--what I thought at Monteriano."
"Why, Miss Abbott," he cried, "you should have told me
this before! Think it still! I agree with lots of it.
Magnificent!"
"Now Lilia," she went on, "though there were things
about her I didn't like, had somehow kept the power of
enjoying herself with sincerity. And Gino, I thought, was
splendid, and young, and strong not only in body, and
sincere as the day. If they wanted to marry, why shouldn't
they do so? Why shouldn't she break with the deadening life
where she had got into a groove, and would go on in it,
getting more and more--worse than unhappy--apathetic till she
died? Of course I was wrong. She only changed one groove
for another--a worse groove. And as for him--well, you know
more about him than I do. I can never trust myself to judge
characters again. But I still feel he cannot have been
quite bad when we first met him. Lilia--that I should dare
to say it! --must have been cowardly. He was only a boy--just
going to turn into something fine, I thought--and she must
have mismanaged him. So that is the one time I have gone
against what is proper, and there are the results. You have
an explanation now."
"And much of it has been most interesting, though I
don't understand everything. Did you never think of the
disparity of their social position?"
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