Chapter XXVII
Darrow had no idea how long he had sat there when he heard Anna’s hand on the door. The effort of rising, and of composing his face to meet her, gave him a factitious sense of self-control. He said to himself: “I must decide on something—-” and that lifted him a hair’s breadth above the whirling waters.
She came in with a lighter step, and he instantly perceived that something unforeseen and reassuring had happened.
“She’s been with me. She came and found me on the terrace. We’ve had a long talk and she’s explained everything. I feel as if I’d never known her before!”
Her voice was so moved and tender that it checked his start of apprehension.
“She’s explained—-?”
“It’s natural, isn’t it, that she should have felt a little sore at the kind of inspection she’s been subjected to? Oh, not from you-I don’t mean that! But Madame de Chantelle’s opposition–and her sending for Adelaide Painter! She told me frankly she didn’t care to owe her husband to Adelaide Painter…She thinks now that her annoyance at feeling herself so talked over and scrutinized may have shown itself in her manner to Owen, and set him imagining the insane things he did…I understand all she must have felt, and I agree with her that it’s best she should go away for a while. She’s made me,” Anna summed up, “feel as if I’d been dreadfully thick-skinned and obtuse!”
“YOU?”
“Yes. As if I’d treated her like the bric-a-brac that used to be sent down here ‘on approval,’ to see if it would look well with the other pieces.” She added, with a sudden flush of enthusiasm: “I’m glad she’s got it in her to make one feel like that!”
She seemed to wait for Darrow to agree with her, or to put some other question, and he finally found voice to ask: “Then you think it’s not a final break?”
“I hope not–I’ve never hoped it more! I had a word with Owen, too, after I left her, and I think he understands that he must let her go without insisting on any positive promise. She’s excited…he must let her calm down…”
Again she waited, and Darrow said: “Surely you can make him see that.”
“She’ll help me to–she’s to see him, of course, before she goes. She starts immediately, by the way, with Adelaide Painter, who is motoring over to Francheuil to catch the one o’clock express–and who, of course, knows nothing of all this, and is simply to be told that Sophy has been sent for by the Farlows.”
Darrow mutely signed his comprehension, and she went on: “Owen is particularly anxious that neither Adelaide nor his grandmother should have the least inkling of what’s happened. The need of shielding Sophy will help him to control himself. He’s coming to his senses, poor boy; he’s ashamed of his wild talk already. He asked me to tell you so; no doubt he’ll tell you so himself.”
Darrow made a movement of protest. “Oh, as to that–the thing’s not worth another word.”
“Or another thought, either?” She brightened. “Promise me you won’t even think of it–promise me you won’t be hard on him!”
He was finding it easier to smile back at her. “Why should you think it necessary to ask my indulgence for Owen?”
She hesitated a moment, her eyes wandering from him. Then they came back with a smile. “Perhaps because I need it for myself.”
“For yourself?”
“I mean, because I understand better how one can torture one’s self over unrealities.”
As Darrow listened, the tension of his nerves began to relax. Her gaze, so grave and yet so sweet, was like a deep pool into which he could plunge and hide himself from the hard glare of his misery. As this ecstatic sense enveloped him he found it more and more difficult to follow her words and to frame an answer; but what did anything matter, except that her voice should go on, and the syllables fall like soft touches on his tortured brain?
“Don’t you know,” she continued, “the bliss of waking from a bad dream in one’s own quiet room, and going slowly over all the horror without being afraid of it any more? That’s what I’m doing now. And that’s why I understand Owen…” She broke off, and he felt her touch on his arm. “Because I’d dreamed the horror too!”