The Reef

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"I shall see him this evening," she said, wishing Darrow to
feel that she was not afraid of meeting her step-son.

"Yes, of course; perhaps he might dine with you."

The words struck her as strangely obtuse. Darrow was to
meet his Ambassador at the station on the latter's arrival,
and would in all probability have to spend the evening with
him, and Anna knew he had been concerned at the thought of
having to leave her alone. But how could he speak in that
careless tone of her dining with Owen? She lowered her voice
to say: "I'm afraid he's desperately unhappy."

He answered, with a tinge of impatience: "It's much the best
thing that he should travel."

"Yes--but don't you feel..." She broke off. She knew how
he disliked these idle returns on the irrevocable, and her
fear of doing or saying what he disliked was tinged by a new
instinct of subserviency against which her pride revolted.
She thought to herself: "He will see the change, and grow
indifferent to me as he did to HER..." and for a moment
it seemed to her that she was reliving the experience of
Sophy Viner.

Darrow made no attempt to learn the end of her unfinished
sentence. He handed back Owen's letter and returned to his
newspaper; and when he looked up from it a few minutes later
it was with a clear brow and a smile that irresistibly drew
her back to happier thoughts.

The train was just entering a station, and a moment later
their compartment was invaded by a commonplace couple
preoccupied with the bestowal of bulging packages. Anna, at
their approach, felt the possessive pride of the woman in
love when strangers are between herself and the man she
loves. She asked Darrow to open the window, to place her
bag in the net, to roll her rug into a cushion for her feet;
and while he was thus busied with her she was conscious of a
new devotion in his tone, in his way of bending over her and
meeting her eyes. He went back to his seat, and they looked
at each other like lovers smiling at a happy secret.

Anna, before going back to Givre, had suggested Owen's
moving into her apartment, but he had preferred to remain at
the hotel to which he had sent his luggage, and on arriving
in Paris she decided to drive there at once. She was
impatient to have the meeting over, and glad that Darrow was
obliged to leave her at the station in order to look up a
colleague at the Embassy. She dreaded his seeing Owen again,
and yet dared not tell him so, and to ensure his remaining
away she mentioned an urgent engagement with her dress-maker
and a long list of commissions to be executed for Madame de
Chantelle.

"I shall see you to-morrow morning," she said; but he
replied with a smile that he would certainly find time to
come to her for a moment on his way back from meeting the
Ambassador; and when he had put her in a cab he leaned
through the window to press his lips to hers.

She blushed like a girl, thinking, half vexed, half happy:
"Yesterday he would not have done it..." and a dozen
scarcely definable differences in his look and manner seemed
all at once to be summed up in the boyish act. "After all,
I'm engaged to him," she reflected, and then smiled at the
absurdity of the word. The next instant, with a pang of
self-reproach, she remembered Sophy Viner's cry: "I knew all
the while he didn't care..." "Poor thing, oh poor thing!"
Anna murmured...

At Owen's hotel she waited in a tremor while the porter went
in search of him. Word was presently brought back that he
was in his room and begged her to come up, and as she
crossed the hall she caught sight of his portmanteaux lying
on the floor, already labelled for departure.

Owen sat at a table writing, his back to the door; and when
he stood up the window was behind him, so that, in the rainy
afternoon light, his features were barely discernible.

"Dearest--so you're really off?" she said, hesitating a
moment on the threshold.

He pushed a chair forward, and they sat down, each waiting
for the other to speak. Finally she put some random
question about his travelling-companion, a slow shy
meditative youth whom he had once or twice brought down to
Givre. She reflected that it was natural he should have
given this uncommunicative comrade the preference over his
livelier acquaintances, and aloud she said: "I'm so glad
Fred Rempson can go with you."

Owen answered in the same tone, and for a few minutes their
talk dragged itself on over a dry waste of common-places.
Anna noticed that, though ready enough to impart his own
plans, Owen studiously abstained from putting any questions
about hers. It was evident from his allusions that he meant
to be away for some time, and he presently asked her if she
would give instructions about packing and sending after him
some winter clothes he had left at Givre. This gave her the
opportunity to say that she expected to go back within a day
or two and would attend to the matter as soon as she
returned. She added: "I came up this morning with George,
who is going on to London to-morrow," intending, by the use
of Darrow's Christian name, to give Owen the chance to speak
of her marriage. But he made no comment, and she continued
to hear the name sounding on unfamiliarly between them.

The room was almost dark, and she finally stood up and
glanced about for the light-switch, saying: "I can't see
you, dear."

"Oh, don't--I hate the light!" Owen exclaimed, catching her
by the wrist and pushing her back into her seat. He gave a
nervous laugh and added: "I'm half-blind with neuralgia. I
suppose it's this beastly rain."

"Yes; it will do you good to get down to Spain."

She asked if he had the remedies the doctor had given him
for a previous attack, and on his replying that he didn't
know what he'd done with the stuff, she sprang up, offering
to go to the chemist's. It was a relief to have something
to do for him, and she knew from his "Oh, thanks--would
you?" that it was a relief to him to have a pretext for not
detaining her. His natural impulse would have been to
declare that he didn't want any drugs, and would be all
right in no time; and his acquiescence showed her how
profoundly he felt the uselessness of their trying to
prolong their talk. His face was now no more than a white
blur in the dusk, but she felt its indistinctness as a veil
drawn over aching intensities of expression. "He knows...he
knows..." she said to herself, and wondered whether the
truth had been revealed to him by some corroborative fact or
by the sheer force of divination.

He had risen also, and was clearly waiting for her to go,
and she turned to the door, saying: "I'll be back in a
moment."

"Oh, don't come up again, please!" He paused, embarrassed.
"I mean--I may not be here. I've got to go and pick up
Rempson, and see about some final things with him."
She stopped on the threshold with a sinking heart. He meant
this to be their leave-taking, then--and he had not even
asked her when she was to be married, or spoken of seeing
her again before she set out for the other side of the
world.

"Owen!" she cried, and turned back.

He stood mutely before her in the dimness.

"You haven't told me how long you're to be gone."

"How long? Oh, you see...that's rather vague...I hate
definite dates, you know..."

He paused and she saw he did not mean to help her out. She
tried to say: "You'll be here for my wedding?" but could not
bring the words to her lips. Instead she murmured: "In six
weeks I shall be going too..." and he rejoined, as if he had
expected the announcement and prepared his answer: "Oh, by
that time, very likely..."

"At any rate, I won't say good-bye," she stammered, feeling
the tears beneath her veil.

"No, no; rather not!" he declared; but he made no movement,
and she went up and threw her arms about him. "You'll write
me, won't you?"

"Of course, of course----"

Her hands slipped down into his, and for a minute they held
each other dumbly in the darkness; then he gave a vague
laugh and said: "It's really time to light up." He pressed
the electric button with one hand while with the other he
opened the door; and she passed out without daring to turn
back, lest the light on his face should show her what she
feared to see.

XXXVIII

Anna drove to the chemist's for Owen's remedy. On the way
she stopped her cab at a book-shop, and emerged from it
laden with literature. She knew what would interest Owen,
and what he was likely to have read, and she had made her
choice among the newest publications with the promptness of
a discriminating reader. But on the way back to the hotel
she was overcome by the irony of adding this mental panacea
to the other. There was something grotesque and almost
mocking in the idea of offering a judicious selection of
literature to a man setting out on such a journey. "He
knows...he knows..." she kept on repeating; and giving the
porter the parcel from the chemist's she drove away without
leaving the books.
She went to her apartment, whither her maid had preceded
her. There was a fire in the drawing-room and the tea-table
stood ready by the hearth. The stormy rain beat against the
uncurtained windows, and she thought of Owen, who would soon
be driving through it to the station, alone with his bitter
thoughts. She had been proud of the fact that he had always
sought her help in difficult hours; and now, in the most
difficult of all, she was the one being to whom he could not
turn. Between them, henceforth, there would always be the
wall of an insurmountable silence...She strained her aching
thoughts to guess how the truth had come to him. Had he seen
the girl, and had she told him? Instinctively, Anna rejected
this conjecture. But what need was there of assuming an
explicit statement, when every breath they had drawn for the
last weeks had been charged with the immanent secret? As she
looked back over the days since Darrow's first arrival at
Givre she perceived that at no time had any one deliberately
spoken, or anything been accidentally disclosed. The truth
had come to light by the force of its irresistible pressure;
and the perception gave her a startled sense of hidden
powers, of a chaos of attractions and repulsions far beneath
the ordered surfaces of intercourse. She looked back with
melancholy derision on her old conception of life, as a kind
of well-lit and well policed suburb to dark places one need
never know about. Here they were, these dark places, in her
own bosom, and henceforth she would always have to traverse
them to reach the beings she loved best!

She was still sitting beside the untouched tea-table when
she heard Darrow's voice in the hall. She started up,
saying to herself: "I must tell him that Owen knows..." but
when the door opened and she saw his face, still lit by the
same smile of boyish triumph, she felt anew the uselessness
of speaking...Had he ever supposed that Owen would not know?
Probably, from the height of his greater experience, he had
seen long since that all that happened was inevitable; and
the thought of it, at any rate, was clearly not weighing on
him now.

He was already dressed for the evening, and as he came
toward her he said: "The Ambassador's booked for an official
dinner and I'm free after all. Where shall we dine?"

Anna had pictured herself sitting alone all the evening with
her wretched thoughts, and the fact of having to put them
out of her mind for the next few hours gave her an immediate
sensation of relief. Already her pulses were dancing to the
tune of Darrow's, and as they smiled at each other she
thought: "Nothing can ever change the fact that I belong to
him."

"Where shall we dine?" he repeated gaily, and she named a
well-known restaurant for which she had once heard him
express a preference. But as she did so she fancied she saw
a shadow on his face, and instantly she said to herself: "It
was THERE he went with her!"

"Oh, no, not there, after all!" she interrupted herself; and
now she was sure his colour deepened.

"Where shall it be, then?"

She noticed that he did not ask the reason of her change,
and this convinced her that she had guessed the truth, and
that he knew she had guessed it. "He will always know what
I am thinking, and he will never dare to ask me," she
thought; and she saw between them the same insurmountable
wall of silence as between herself and Owen, a wall of glass
through which they could watch each other's faintest motions
but which no sound could ever traverse...

They drove to a restaurant on the Boulevard, and there, in
their intimate corner of the serried scene, the sense of
what was unspoken between them gradually ceased to oppress
her. He looked so light-hearted and handsome, so
ingenuously proud of her, so openly happy at being with her,
that no other fact could seem real in his presence. He had
learned that the Ambassador was to spend two days in Paris,
and he had reason to hope that in consequence his own
departure for London would be deferred. He was exhilarated
by the prospect of being with Anna for a few hours longer,
and she did not ask herself if his exhilaration were a sign
of insensibility, for she was too conscious of his power of
swaying her moods not to be secretly proud of affecting his.

They lingered for some time over the fruit and coffee, and
when they rose to go Darrow suggested that, if she felt
disposed for the play, they were not too late for the second
part of the programme at one of the smaller theatres.

His mention of the hour recalled Owen to her thoughts. She
saw his train rushing southward through the storm, and, in a
corner of the swaying compartment, his face, white and
indistinct as it had loomed on her in the rainy twilight.
It was horrible to be thus perpetually paying for her
happiness!

Darrow had called for a theatrical journal, and he presently
looked up from it to say: "I hear the second play at the
Athenee is amusing."

It was on Anna's lips to acquiesce; but as she was about to
speak she wondered if it were not at the Athenee that Owen
had seen Darrow with Sophy Viner. She was not sure he had
even mentioned the theatre, but the mere possibility was
enough to darken her sky. It was hateful to her to think of
accompanying Darrow to places where the girl had been with
him. She tried to reason away this scruple, she even
reminded herself with a bitter irony that whenever she was
in Darrow's arms she was where the girl had been before her
--but she could not shake off her superstitious dread of
being with him in any of the scenes of the Parisian episode.
She replied that she was too tired for the play, and they
drove back to her apartment. At the foot of the stairs she
half-turned to wish him good night, but he appeared not to
notice her gesture and followed her up to her door.

"This is ever so much better than the theatre," he said as
they entered the drawing-room.

She had crossed the room and was bending over the hearth to
light the fire. She knew he was approaching her, and that
in a moment he would have drawn the cloak from her shoulders
and laid his lips on her neck, just below the gathered-up
hair. These privileges were his and, however deferently and
tenderly he claimed them, the joyous ease of his manner
marked a difference and proclaimed a right.

"After the theatre they came home like this," she thought;
and at the same instant she felt his hands on her shoulders
and shrank back.

"Don't--oh, don't!" she cried, drawing her cloak about her.
She saw from his astonished stare that her face must be
quivering with pain.

"Anna! What on earth is the matter?"

"Owen knows!" she broke out, with a confused desire to
justify herself.

Darrow's countenance changed. "Did he tell you so? What did
he say?"

"Nothing! I knew it from the things he didn't say."

"You had a talk with him this afternoon?"

"Yes: for a few minutes. I could see he didn't want me to
stay."

She had dropped into a chair, and sat there huddled, still
holding her cloak about her shoulders.

Darrow did not dispute her assumption, and she noticed that
he expressed no surprise. He sat down at a little distance
from her, turning about in his fingers the cigar-case he had
drawn out as they came in. At length he said: "Had he seen
Miss Viner?"

She shrank from the sound of the name. "No...I don't think
so...I'm sure he hadn't..."

They remained silent, looking away from one another. Finally
Darrow stood up and took a few steps across the room. He
came back and paused before her, his eyes on her face.

"I think you ought to tell me what you mean to do."
She raised her head and gave him back his look. "Nothing I
do can help Owen!"

"No; but things can't go on like this." He paused, as if to
measure his words. "I fill you with aversion," he
exclaimed.

She started up, half-sobbing. "No--oh, no!"

"Poor child--you can't see your face!"

She lifted her hands as if to hide it, and turning away from
him bowed her head upon the mantel-shelf. She felt that he
was standing a little way behind her, but he made no attempt
to touch her or come nearer.

"I know you've felt as I've felt," he said in a low voice--"
that we belong to each other and that nothing can alter
that. But other thoughts come, and you can't banish them.
Whenever you see me you remember...you associate me with
things you abhor...You've been generous--immeasurably.
You've given me all the chances a woman could; but if it's
only made you suffer, what's the use?"

She turned to him with a tear-stained face. "It hasn't only
done that."

"Oh, no! I know...There've been moments..." He took her hand
and raised it to his lips. "They'll be with me as long as I
live. But I can't see you paying such a price for them.
I'm not worth what I'm costing you."

She continued to gaze at him through tear-dilated eyes; and
suddenly she flung out the question: "Wasn't it the Athenee
you took her to that evening?"

"Anna--Anna!"

"Yes; I want to know now: to know everything. Perhaps that
will make me forget. I ought to have made you tell me
before. Wherever we go, I imagine you've been there with
her...I see you together. I want to know how it began,
where you went, why you left her...I can't go on in this
darkness any longer!"

She did not know what had prompted her passionate outburst,
but already she felt lighter, freer, as if at last the evil
spell were broken. "I want to know everything," she
repeated. "It's the only way to make me forget."

After she had ceased speaking Darrow remained where he was,
his arms folded, his eyes lowered, immovable. She waited,
her gaze on his face.

"Aren't you going to tell me?"

"No."
The blood rushed to her temples. "You won't? Why not?"

"If I did, do you suppose you'd forget THAT?"

"Oh--" she moaned, and turned away from him.

"You see it's impossible," he went on. "I've done a thing I
loathe, and to atone for it you ask me to do another. What
sort of satisfaction would that give you? It would put
something irremediable between us."

She leaned her elbow against the mantel-shelf and hid her
face in her hands. She had the sense that she was vainly
throwing away her last hope of happiness, yet she could do
nothing, think of nothing, to save it. The conjecture
flashed through her: "Should I be at peace if I gave him
up?" and she remembered the desolation of the days after she
had sent him away, and understood that that hope was vain.
The tears welled through her lids and ran slowly down
between her fingers.

"Good-bye," she heard him say, and his footsteps turned to
the door.

She tried to raise her head, but the weight of her despair
bowed it down. She said to herself: "This is the end...he
won't try to appeal to me again..." and she remained in a
sort of tranced rigidity, perceiving without feeling the
fateful lapse of the seconds. Then the cords that bound her
seemed to snap, and she lifted her head and saw him going.

"Why, he's mine--he's mine! He's no one else's!" His face
was turned to her and the look in his eyes swept away all
her terrors. She no longer understood what had prompted her
senseless outcry; and the mortal sweetness of loving him
became again the one real fact in the world.

XXXIX

Anna, the next day, woke to a humiliated memory of the
previous evening.

Darrow had been right in saying that their sacrifice would
benefit no one; yet she seemed dimly to discern that there
were obligations not to be tested by that standard. She
owed it, at any rate, as much to his pride as to hers to
abstain from the repetition of such scenes; and she had
learned that it was beyond her power to do so while they
were together. Yet when he had given her the chance to free
herself, everything had vanished from her mind but the blind
fear of losing him; and she saw that he and she were as
profoundly and inextricably bound together as two trees with
interwoven roots.
For a long time she brooded on her plight, vaguely conscious
that the only escape from it must come from some external
chance. And slowly the occasion shaped itself in her mind.
It was Sophy Viner only who could save her--Sophy Viner only
who could give her back her lost serenity. She would seek
the girl out and tell her that she had given Darrow up; and
that step once taken there would be no retracing it, and she
would perforce have to go forward alone.

Any pretext for action was a kind of anodyne, and she
despatched her maid to the Farlows' with a note asking if
Miss Viner would receive her. There was a long delay before
the maid returned, and when at last she appeared it was with
a slip of paper on which an address was written, and a
verbal message to the effect that Miss Viner had left some
days previously, and was staying with her sister in a hotel
near the Place de l'Etoile. The maid added that Mrs.
Farlow, on the plea that Miss Viner's plans were uncertain,
had at first made some difficulty about giving this
information; and Anna guessed that the girl had left her
friends' roof, and instructed them to withhold her address,
with the object of avoiding Owen. "She's kept faith with
herself and I haven't," Anna mused; and the thought was a
fresh incentive to action.

Darrow had announced his intention of coming soon after
luncheon, and the morning was already so far advanced that
Anna, still mistrustful of her strength, decided to drive
immediately to the address Mrs. Farlow had given. On the
way there she tried to recall what she had heard of Sophy
Viner's sister, but beyond the girl's enthusiastic report of
the absent Laura's loveliness she could remember only
certain vague allusions of Mrs. Farlow's to her artistic
endowments and matrimonial vicissitudes. Darrow had
mentioned her but once, and in the briefest terms, as having
apparently very little concern for Sophy's welfare, and
being, at any rate, too geographically remote to give her
any practical support; and Anna wondered what chance had
brought her to her sister's side at this conjunction. Mrs.
Farlow had spoken of her as a celebrity (in what line Anna
failed to recall); but Mrs. Farlow's celebrities were
legion, and the name on the slip of paper--Mrs. McTarvie-
Birch--did not seem to have any definite association with
fame.

While Anna waited in the dingy vestibule of the Hotel
Chicago she had so distinct a vision of what she meant to
say to Sophy Viner that the girl seemed already to be before
her; and her heart dropped from all the height of its
courage when the porter, after a long delay, returned with
the announcement that Miss Viner was no longer in the hotel.
Anna, doubtful if she understood, asked if he merely meant
that the young lady was out at the moment; but he replied
that she had gone away the day before. Beyond this he had
no information to impart, and after a moment's hesitation
Anna sent him back to enquire if Mrs. McTarvie-Birch would
receive her. She reflected that Sophy had probably pledged
her sister to the same secrecy as Mrs. Farlow, and that a
personal appeal to Mrs. Birch might lead to less negative
results.

There was another long interval of suspense before the
porter reappeared with an affirmative answer; and a third
while an exiguous and hesitating lift bore her up past a
succession of shabby landings.

When the last was reached, and her guide had directed her
down a winding passage that smelt of sea-going luggage, she
found herself before a door through which a strong odour of
tobacco reached her simultaneously with the sounds of a
suppressed altercation. Her knock was followed by a
silence, and after a minute or two the door was opened by a
handsome young man whose ruffled hair and general air of
creased disorder led her to conclude that he had just risen
from a long-limbed sprawl on a sofa strewn with tumbled
cushions. This sofa, and a grand piano bearing a basket of
faded roses, a biscuit-tin and a devastated breakfast tray,
almost filled the narrow sitting-room, in the remaining
corner of which another man, short, swarthy and humble, sat
examining the lining of his hat.

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