She freed herself and went and sat on a sofa at the other end of the room. A mirror between the shrouded window- curtains showed her crumpled travelling dress and the white face under her disordered hair
She found her voice, and asked him how he had been able to leave London. He answered that he had managed–he’d arranged it; and she saw he hardly heard what she was saying.
“I had to see you,” he went on, and moved nearer, sitting down at her side.
“Yes; we must think of Owen—-”
“Oh, Owen–!”
Her mind had flown back to Sophy Viner’s plea that she should let Darrow return to Givre in order that Owen might be persuaded of the folly of his suspicions. The suggestion was absurd, of course. She could not ask Darrow to lend himself to such a fraud, even had she had the inhuman courage to play her part in it. She was suddenly overwhelmed by the futility of every attempt to reconstruct her ruined world. No, it was useless; and since it was useless, every moment with Darrow was pure pain…
“I’ve come to talk of myself, not of Owen,” she heard him saying. “When you sent me away the other day I understood that it couldn’t be otherwise–then. But it’s not possible that you and I should part like that. If I’m to lose you, it must be for a better reason.”
“A better reason?”
“Yes: a deeper one. One that means a fundamental disaccord between us. This one doesn’t–in spite of everything it doesn’t. That’s what I want you to see, and have the courage to acknowledge.”
“If I saw it I should have the courage!”
“Yes: courage was the wrong word. You have that. That’s why I’m here.”
“But I don’t see it,” she continued sadly. “So it’s useless, isn’t it?–and so cruel…” He was about to speak, but she went on: “I shall never understand it–never!”
He looked at her. “You will some day: you were made to feel everything”
“I should have thought this was a case of not feeling—-”
“On my part, you mean?” He faced her resolutely. “Yes, it was: to my shame…What I meant was that when you’ve lived a little longer you’ll see what complex blunderers we all are: how we’re struck blind sometimes, and mad sometimes–and then, when our sight and our senses come back, how we have to set to work, and build up, little by little, bit by bit, the precious things we’d smashed to atoms without knowing it. Life’s just a perpetual piecing together of broken bits.”
She looked up quickly. “That’s what I feel: that you ought to—-”
He stood up, interrupting her with a gesture. “Oh, don’t– don’t say what you’re going to! Men don’t give their lives away like that. If you won’t have mine, it’s at least my own, to do the best I can with.”
“The best you can–that’s what I mean! How can there be a ‘best’ for you that’s made of some one else’s worst?”
He sat down again with a groan. “I don’t know! It seemed such a slight thing–all on the surface–and I’ve gone aground on it because it was on the surface. I see the horror of it just as you do. But I see, a little more clearly, the extent, and the limits, of my wrong. It’s not as black as you imagine.”
She lowered her voice to say: “I suppose I shall never understand; but she seems to love you…”
“There’s my shame! That I didn’t guess it, didn’t fly from it. You say you’ll never understand: but why shouldn’t you? Is it anything to be proud of, to know so little of the strings that pull us? If you knew a little more, I could tell you how such things happen without offending you; and perhaps you’d listen without condemning me.”
“I don’t condemn you.” She was dizzy with struggling impulses. She longed to cry out: “I do understand! I’ve understood ever since you’ve been here!” For she was aware, in her own bosom, of sensations so separate from her romantic thoughts of him that she saw her body and soul divided against themselves. She recalled having read somewhere that in ancient Rome the slaves were not allowed to wear a distinctive dress lest they should recognize each other and learn their numbers and their power. So, in herself, she discerned for the first time instincts and desires, which, mute and unmarked, had gone to and fro in the dim passages of her mind, and now hailed each other with a cry of mutiny.