My resentment deepened. Fate had played me a wanton trick. Cynthia trusted me. If I were weak, I should not be the only one to suffer. And something told me that I should be weak. How could I hope to be strong, tortured by the thousand memories which the sight of her would bring back to me?
But I would fight, I told myself. I would not yield easily. I promised that to my self-respect, and was rewarded with a certain glow of excitement. I felt defiant. I wanted to test myself at once.
My opportunity came after breakfast. She was standing on the gravel in front of the house, almost, in fact, on the spot where we had met the night before. She looked up as she heard my step, and I saw that her chin had that determined tilt which, in the days of our engagement, I had noticed often without attaching any particular significance to it. Heavens, what a ghastly lump of complacency I must have been in those days! A child, I thought, if he were not wrapped up in the contemplation of his own magnificence, could read its meaning.
It meant war, and I was glad of it. I wanted war.
‘Good morning,’ I said.
‘Good morning.’
There was a pause. I took the opportunity to collect my thoughts.
I looked at her curiously. Five years had left their mark on her, but entirely for the good. She had an air of quiet strength which I had never noticed in her before. It may have been there in the old days, but I did not think so. It was, I felt certain, a later development. She gave the impression of having been through much and of being sure of herself.
In appearance she had changed amazingly little. She looked as small and slight and trim as ever she had done. She was a little paler, I thought, and the Irish eyes were older and a shade harder; but that was all.
I awoke with a start to the fact that I was staring at her. A slight flush had crept into her pale cheeks.
‘Don’t!’ she said suddenly, with a little gesture of irritation.
The word and the gesture killed, as if they had been a blow, a kind of sentimental tenderness which had been stealing over me.
‘What are you doing here?’ I asked.
She was silent.
‘Please don’t think I want to pry into your affairs,’ I said viciously. ‘I was only interested in the coincidence that we should meet here like this.’
She turned to me impulsively. Her face had lost its hard look.
‘Oh, Peter,’ she said, ‘I’m sorry. I -am- sorry.’
It was my chance, and I snatched at it with a lack of chivalry which I regretted almost immediately. But I was feeling bitter, and bitterness makes a man do cheap things.
‘Sorry?’ I said, politely puzzled. ‘Why?’
She looked taken aback, as I hoped she would.
‘For–for what happened.’
‘My dear Audrey! Anybody would have made the same mistake. I don’t wonder you took me for a burglar.’
‘I didn’t mean that. I meant–five years ago.’
I laughed. I was not feeling like laughter at the moment, but I did my best, and had the satisfaction of seeing that it jarred upon her.
‘Surely you’re not worrying yourself about that?’ I said. I laughed again. Very jovial and debonair I was that winter morning.
The brief moment in which we might have softened towards each other was over. There was a glitter in her blue eyes which told me that it was once more war between us.
‘I thought you would get over it,’ she said.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘I was only twenty-five. One’s heart doesn’t break at twenty-five.’
‘I don’t think yours would ever be likely to break, Peter.’
‘Is that a compliment, or otherwise?’
‘You would probably think it a compliment. I meant that you were not human enough to be heart-broken.’
‘So that’s your idea of a compliment!’
‘I said I thought it was probably yours.’
‘I must have been a curious sort of man five years ago, if I gave you that impression.’
‘You were.’