The Rosary

CHAPTER XXIV

THE MAN’S POINT OF VIEW

A deep peace reigned in the li­brary at Gle­neesh. Garth and Deryck sat to­geth­er and smoked in com­plete fel­low­ship, en­joy­ing that sense of calm con­tent which fol­lows an ex­cel­lent din­ner and a day spent in moor­land air.

Jane, sit­ting up­stairs in her self-​im­posed dark­ness, with noth­ing to do but lis­ten, fan­cied she could hear the low hum of qui­et voic­es in the room be­neath, car­ry­ing on a more or less con­tin­uous con­ver­sa­tion.

It was a pity she could not see them as they sat to­geth­er, each look­ing his very best,–Garth in the din­ner jack­et which suit­ed his slight up­right fig­ure so well; the doc­tor in im­mac­ulate evening clothes of the lat­est cut and fash­ion, which he had tak­en the trou­ble to bring, know­ing Jane ex­pect­ed the men of her ac­quain­tance to be punc­til­ious in the mat­ter of evening dress, and lit­tle dream­ing she would have, lit­er­al­ly, no eyes for him.

And in­deed the doc­tor him­self was fas­tid­ious to a de­gree where clothes were con­cerned, and al­ways well groomed and un­ques­tion­ably cor­rect in cut and fash­ion, ex­cept­ing in the case of his favourite old Nor­folk jack­et. This he kept for oc­ca­sions when he in­tend­ed to be what he called “hap­py and glo­ri­ous,” though La­dy Brand made gen­tle but per­sis­tent at­tempts to dis­pose of it.

The old Nor­folk jack­et had walked the moors that morn­ing with Jane. She had recog­nised the feel of it as he drew her hand with­in his arm, and they had laughed over its many as­so­ci­ations. But now Simp­son was fold­ing it and putting it away, and a very cor­rect­ly clad doc­tor sat in an arm-​chair in front of the li­brary fire, his long legs crossed the one over the oth­er, his broad shoul­ders buried in the depths of the chair.

Garth sat where he could feel the warm flame of the fire, pleas­ant in the chill evening which suc­ceed­ed the bright spring day. His chair was placed side­ways, so that he could, with his hand, shield his face from his vis­itor should he wish to do so.

“Yes,” Dr. Brand was say­ing thought­ful­ly, “I can eas­ily see that all things which reach you in that dark­ness as­sume a dif­fer­ent pro­por­tion and pos­sess a great­ly en­hanced val­ue. But I think you will find, as time goes on, and you come in con­tact with more peo­ple, there will be a great read­just­ment, and you will be­come less con­scious­ly sen­si­tive to sound and touch from oth­ers. At present your whole ner­vous sys­tem is high­ly strung, and re­sponds with an ex­ag­ger­at­ed vi­bra­tion to ev­ery im­pres­sion made up­on it. A high­ly strung ner­vous sys­tem usu­al­ly ex­ag­ger­ates. And the medi­um of sight hav­ing been tak­en away, the oth­er means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the out­er world, hear­ing and touch, draw to them­selves an over­plus of ner­vous force, and have be­come painful­ly sen­si­tive. Even­tu­al­ly things will right them­selves, and they will on­ly be use­ful­ly keen and acute. What was it you were go­ing to tell me about Nurse Rose­mary not shak­ing hands?”

“Ah, yes,” said Garth. “But first I want to ask, Is it a rule of her or­der, or guild, or in­sti­tu­tion, or what­ev­er it is to which she be­longs, that the nurs­es should nev­er shake hands with their pa­tients?”

“Not that I have ev­er heard,” replied the doc­tor.

“Well, then, it must have been Miss Gray’s own per­fect in­tu­ition as to what I want, and what I don’t want. For from the very first she has nev­er shak­en hands, nor in any way touched me. Even in pass­ing across let­ters, and hand­ing me things, as she does scores of times dai­ly, nev­er once have I felt her fin­gers against mine.”

“And this pleas­es you?” in­quired the doc­tor, blow­ing smoke rings in­to the air, and watch­ing the blind face in­tent­ly.

“Ah, I am so grate­ful for it,” said Garth earnest­ly. “Do you know, Brand, when you sug­gest­ed send­ing me a la­dy nurse and sec­re­tary, I felt I could not pos­si­bly stand hav­ing a wom­an touch me.”

“So you said,” com­ment­ed the doc­tor qui­et­ly.

“No! Did I? What a bear you must have thought me.”

“By no means,” said the doc­tor, “but a dis­tinct­ly un­usu­al pa­tient. As a rule, men–“

“Ah, I dare say,” Garth in­ter­posed half im­pa­tient­ly. “There was a time when I should have liked a soft lit­tle hand about me. And I dare say by now I should of­ten enough have caught it and held it, per­haps kissed it–who knows? I used to do such things, light­ly enough. But, Brand, when a man has known the touch of THE Wom­an, and when that touch has be­come noth­ing but a mem­ory; when one is dashed in­to dark­ness, and that mem­ory be­comes one of the few things which re­main, and, re­main­ing, brings un­told com­fort, can you won­der if one fears an­oth­er touch which might in any way dim that mem­ory, su­per­sede it, or take away from its ut­ter sa­cred­ness?”

“I un­der­stand,” said the doc­tor slow­ly. “It does not come with­in my own ex­pe­ri­ence, but I un­der­stand. On­ly–my dear boy, may I say it?– if the One Wom­an ex­ists–and it is ex­cus­able in your case to doubt it, be­cause there were so many–sure­ly her place should be here; her ac­tu­al touch, one of the things which re­main.”

“Ah, say it,” an­swered Garth, light­ing an­oth­er cigarette. “I like to hear it said, al­though as a mat­ter of fact you might as well say that if the view from the ter­race ex­ists, I ought to be able to see it. The view is there, right enough, but my own de­fi­cien­cy keeps me from see­ing it.”

“In oth­er words,” said the doc­tor, lean­ing for­ward and pick­ing up the match which, not be­ing thrown so straight as usu­al, had just missed the fire; “in oth­er words, though She was the One Wom­an, you were not the One Man?”

“Yes,” said Garth bit­ter­ly, but al­most be­neath his breath. “I was ‘a mere boy.’”

“Or you thought you were not,” con­tin­ued the doc­tor, seem­ing not to have heard the last re­mark. “As a mat­ter of fact, you are al­ways the One Man to the One Wom­an, un­less an­oth­er is be­fore you in the field. On­ly it may take time and pa­tience to prove it to her.”

Garth sat up and turned a face of blank sur­prise to­wards the doc­tor. “What an ex­traor­di­nary state­ment!” he said. “Do you re­al­ly mean it?”

“Ab­so­lute­ly,” replied the doc­tor in a tone of qui­et con­vic­tion. “If you elim­inate all oth­er con­sid­er­ations, such as mon­ey, lands, ti­tles, wish­es of friends, at­trac­tion of ex­te­ri­ors–that is to say, ad­mi­ra­tion of mere phys­ical beau­ty in one an­oth­er, which is af­ter all just a ques­tion of com­par­ative anato­my; if, freed of all this so­cial and ha­bit­ual en­vi­ron­ment, you could place the man and the wom­an in a men­tal Gar­den of Eden, and let them face one an­oth­er, stripped of all shams and con­ven­tion­al­ities, soul view­ing soul, naked and unashamed; if un­der those cir­cum­stances she is so tru­ly his mate, that all the no­blest of the man cries out: ‘This is the One Wom­an!’ then I say, so tru­ly is he her mate, that he can­not fail to be the One Man; on­ly he must have the con­fi­dence re­quired to prove it to her. On him it bursts, as a rev­ela­tion; on her it dawns slow­ly, as the break­ing of the day.”

“Oh, my God,” mur­mured Garth bro­ken­ly, “it was just that! The Gar­den of Eden, soul to soul, with no reser­va­tions, noth­ing to fear, noth­ing to hide. I re­alised her my WIFE, and called her so. And the next morn­ing she called ME ‘a mere boy,’ whom she could not for a mo­ment think of mar­ry­ing. So what be­comes of your fool the­ory, Brand?”

“Con­firmed,” replied the doc­tor qui­et­ly. “Eve, afraid of the im­men­si­ty of her bliss, doubt­ful of her­self, fear­ful of com­ing short of the mar­vel of his ide­al of her, flee­ing from Adam, to hide among the trees of the gar­den. Don’t talk about fool the­ories, my boy. The fool-​fact was Adam, if he did not start in prompt pur­suit.”

Garth sat for­ward, his hands clutch­ing the arms of his chair. That qui­et, lev­el voice was awak­en­ing doubts. as to his view of the sit­ua­tion, the first he had had since the mo­ment of turn­ing and walk­ing down the Shen­stone vil­lage church three years ago. His face was livid, and as the fire­light played up­on it the doc­tor saw beads of per­spi­ra­tion gleam on his fore­head.

“Oh, Brand,” he said, “I am blind. Be mer­ci­ful. Things mean so ter­ri­bly much in the dark.”

The doc­tor con­sid­ered. Could his nurs­es and stu­dents have seen the look on his face at that mo­ment, they would have said that he was per­form­ing a most crit­ical and del­icate op­er­ation, in which a slip of the scalpel might mean death to the pa­tient. They would have been right; for the whole fu­ture of two peo­ple hung in the bal­ance; de­pend­ing, in this cri­sis, up­on the doc­tor’s firm­ness and yet del­ica­cy of touch. This strained white face in the fire­light, with its beads of men­tal agony and its ap­peal­ing “I am blind,” had not en­tered in­to the doc­tor’s cal­cu­la­tions. It was a view of “the oth­er man” up­on which he could not look un­moved. But the thought of that pa­tient fig­ure with ban­daged eyes sit­ting up­stairs in sus­pense, stretch­ing dear help­less hands to him, stead­ied the doc­tor’s nerve. He looked in­to the fire.

“You may be blind, Dal­main, but I do not want you to be a fool,” said the doc­tor qui­et­ly.

“Am I–was I–a fool?” asked Garth.

“How can I judge?” replied the doc­tor. “Give me a clear ac­count of the cir­cum­stances from your point of view, and I will give you my opin­ion of the case.”

His tone was so com­plete­ly dis­pas­sion­ate and mat­ter-​of-​fact, that it had a calm­ing ef­fect on Garth, giv­ing him al­so a sense of se­cu­ri­ty. The doc­tor might have been speak­ing of a sore throat, or a ten­den­cy to sci­at­ica.

Garth leaned back in his chair, slipped his hand in­to the breast- pock­et of his jack­et, and touched a let­ter ly­ing there. Dare he risk it? Could he, for once take for him­self the com­fort of speak­ing of his trou­ble to a man he could com­plete­ly trust, and yet avoid the dan­ger of be­tray­ing her iden­ti­ty to one who knew her so in­ti­mate­ly?

Garth weighed this, af­ter the man­ner of a chess-​play­er look­ing sev­er­al moves ahead. Could the con­ver­sa­tion be­come more ex­plic­it, suf­fi­cient­ly so to be of use, and yet no clue be giv­en which would re­veal Jane as the One Wom­an?

Had the doc­tor ut­tered a word of pres­sure or sug­ges­tion, Garth would have de­cid­ed for si­lence. But the doc­tor did not speak. He leaned for­ward and reached the pok­er, mend­ing the fire with ex­treme care and method. He placed a fra­grant pine log up­on the spring­ing flame, and as he did so he whis­tled soft­ly the clos­ing bars of Veni, Cre­ator Spir­itus.

Garth, oc­cu­pied with his own men­tal strug­gle, was, for once, obliv­ious to sounds from with­out, and did not re­alise why, at this crit­ical mo­ment, these words should have come with gen­tle in­sis­tence in­to his mind:

“Keep far our foes; give peace at home; Where Thou art Guide, no ill can come.”

He took them as an omen. They turned the scale.

“Brand,” he said, “if, as you are so kind as to sug­gest, I give my­self the ex­treme re­lief of con­fid­ing in you, will you promise me nev­er to at­tempt to guess at the iden­ti­ty of the One Wom­an?”

The doc­tor smiled; and the smile in his voice as he an­swered, added to Garth’s sense of se­cu­ri­ty.

“My dear fel­low,” he said, “I nev­er guess at oth­er peo­ple’s se­crets. It is a form of men­tal recre­ation which does not ap­peal to me, and which I should find nei­ther en­ter­tain­ing nor re­mu­ner­ative. If I know them al­ready, I do not re­quire to guess them. If I do not know them, and their pos­ses­sors wish me to re­main in ig­no­rance, I would as soon think of steal­ing their purse as of filch­ing their se­cret.”

“Ah, thanks,” said Garth. “Per­son­al­ly, I do not mind what you know. But I owe it to her, that her name should not ap­pear.”

“Un­doubt­ed­ly,” said the doc­tor. “Ex­cept in so far as she her­self, choos­es to re­veal it, the One Wom­an’s iden­ti­ty should al­ways re­main a se­cret. Get on with your tale, old chap. I will not in­ter­rupt.”

“I will state it as sim­ply and as short­ly as I can,” be­gan Garth. “And you will un­der­stand that there are de­tails of which no fel­low could speak.–I had known her sev­er­al years in a friend­ly way, just stay­ing at the same hous­es, and meet­ing at Lord’s and Hen­ley and all the places where those in the same set do meet. I al­ways liked her, and al­ways felt at my best with her, and thought no end of her opin­ion, and so forth. She was a friend and a re­al chum to me, and to lots of oth­er fel­lows. But one nev­er thought of love-​mak­ing in con­nec­tion with her. All the sil­ly things one says to or­di­nary wom­en she would have laughed at. If one had sent her flow­ers to wear, she would have put them in a vase and won­dered for whom they had re­al­ly been in­tend­ed. She danced well, and rode straight; but the man she danced with had to be aw­ful­ly good at it, or he found him­self be­ing guid­ed through the gid­dy maze; and the man who want­ed to be in the same field with her, must be pre­pared for any fence or any wall. Not that I ev­er saw her in the hunt­ing-​field; her love of life and of fair play would have kept her out of that. But I use it as a de­scrip­tive il­lus­tra­tion. One was al­ways glad to meet her in a house par­ty, though one could not have ex­plained why. It is quite im­pos­si­ble to de­scribe her. She was just–well, just–“

The doc­tor saw “just Jane” trem­bling on Garth’s lips, and knew how in­ad­equate was ev­ery ad­jec­tive to ex­press this name. He did not want the flood of Garth’s con­fi­dences checked, so he sup­plied the need­ed words.

“Just a good sort. Yes, I quite un­der­stand. Well?”

“I had had my in­fat­ua­tions, plen­ty of them,” went on the ea­ger young voice. “The one thing I thought of in wom­en was their ex­te­ri­ors. Beau­ty of all kinds–of any kind–crazed me for the mo­ment. I nev­er want­ed to mar­ry them, but I al­ways want­ed to paint them. Their moth­ers, and aunts, and oth­er old dowa­gers in the house par­ties used to think I meant mar­riage, but the girls them­selves knew bet­ter. I don’t be­lieve a girl now walks this earth who would ac­cuse me of flirt­ing. I ad­mired their beau­ty, and they knew it, and they knew that was all my ad­mi­ra­tion meant. It was a pleas­ant ex­pe­ri­ence at the time, and, in sev­er­al in­stances, helped for­ward good mar­riages lat­er on. Pauline Lis­ter was ap­por­tioned to me for two whole sea­sons, but she even­tu­al­ly mar­ried the man on whose jol­ly old stair­case I paint­ed her. Why didn’t I come a crop­per over any of them? Be­cause there were too many, I sup­pose. Al­so, the at­trac­tion was skin-​deep. I don’t mind telling you quite frankly: the on­ly one whose beau­ty used to cause me a re­al pang was La­dy Brand. But when I had paint­ed it and shown it to the world in its per­fec­tion, I was con­tent. I asked no more of any wom­an than to paint her, and find her paintable. I could not ex­plain this to the hus­bands and moth­ers and chap­er­ons, but the wom­en them­selves un­der­stood it well enough; and as I sit here in my dark­ness not a mem­ory ris­es up to re­proach me.”

“Good boy,” said Deryck Brand, laugh­ing. “You were vast­ly mis­un­der­stood, but I be­lieve you.”

“You see,” re­sumed Garth, “that sort of thing be­ing mere­ly skin- deep, I went no deep­er. The on­ly wom­en I re­al­ly knew were my moth­er, who died when I was nine­teen, and Margery Graem, whom I al­ways hugged at meet­ing and part­ing, and al­ways shall hug un­til I kiss the old face in its cof­fin, or she straight­ens me in mine. Those ties of one’s in­fan­cy and boy­hood are among the clos­est and most sa­cred life can show. Well, so things were un­til a cer­tain evening in June sev­er­al years ago. She–the One Wom­an–and I were in the same house par­ty at a love­ly old place in the coun­try. One af­ter­noon we had been talk­ing in­ti­mate­ly, but quite ca­su­al­ly and frankly. I had no more thought of want­ing to mar­ry her than of propos­ing to old Margery. Then–some­thing hap­pened,–I must not tell you what; it would give too clear a clue to her iden­ti­ty. But it re­vealed to me, in a few mar­vel­lous mo­ments, the wom­an in her; the wife, the moth­er; the strength, the ten­der­ness; the exquisite per­fec­tion of her true, pure soul. In five min­utes there awak­ened in me a hunger for her which noth­ing could still, which noth­ing ev­er will still, un­til I stand be­side her in the Gold­en City, where they shall hunger no more, nei­ther thirst any more; and there shall be no more dark­ness, or de­pend­ing up­on sun, moon, or can­dle, for the glo­ry of God shall light­en it; and there shall be no more sor­row, nei­ther shall there be any more pain, for for­mer things shall have passed away.”

The blind face shone in the fire­light. Garth’s ret­ro­spec­tion was bring­ing him vi­sions of things to come.

The doc­tor sat quite still and watched the vi­sion fade. Then he said: “Well?”

“Well,” con­tin­ued the young voice in the shad­ow, with a sound in it of hav­ing dropped back to earth and find­ing it a mourn­ful place; “I nev­er had a mo­ment’s doubt as to what had hap­pened to me. I knew I loved her; I knew I want­ed her; I knew her pres­ence made my day and her ab­sence meant chill night; and ev­ery day was ra­di­ant, for she was there.”

Garth paused for breath and to en­joy a mo­ment of silent ret­ro­spec­tion.

The doc­tor’s voice broke in with a ques­tion, clear, in­ci­sive. “Was she a pret­ty wom­an; hand­some, beau­ti­ful?”

“A pret­ty wom­an?” re­peat­ed Garth, amazed: “Good heav­ens, no! Hand­some? Beau­ti­ful? Well you have me there, for, ‘pon my hon­our, I don’t know.”

“I mean, would you have wished to paint her?” “I HAVE paint­ed her,” said Garth very low, a mov­ing ten­der­ness in his voice; “and my two paint­ings of her, though done in sad­ness and done from mem­ory, are the most beau­ti­ful work I ev­er pro­duced. No eye but my own has ev­er seen them, and now none ev­er will see them, ex­cept­ing those of one whom I must per­force trust to find them for me, and bring them to me for de­struc­tion.”

“And that will be–?” queried the doc­tor.

“Nurse Rose­mary Gray,” said Garth.

The doc­tor kicked the pine log, and the flames dart­ed up mer­ri­ly. “You have cho­sen well,” he said, and had to make a con­scious ef­fort to keep the mirth in his face from pass­ing in­to his voice. “Nurse Rose­mary will be dis­creet. Very good. Then we may take it the One Wom­an was beau­ti­ful?”

But Garth looked per­plexed. “I do not know,” he an­swered slow­ly. “I can­not see her through the eyes of oth­ers. My vi­sion of her, in that il­lu­mi­nat­ing mo­ment, fol­lowed the in­spired or­der of things,–spir­it, soul, and body. Her spir­it was so pure and per­fect, her soul so beau­ti­ful, no­ble, and wom­an­ly, that the body which clothed soul and spir­it par­took of their per­fec­tion and be­came un­ut­ter­ably dear.”

“I see,” said the doc­tor, very gen­tly. “Yes, you dear fel­low, I see.” (Oh, Jane, Jane! You were blind, with­out a ban­dage, in those days!)

“Sev­er­al glo­ri­ous days went by,” con­tin­ued Garth. “I re­alise now that I was liv­ing in the glow of my own cer­tain­ty that she was the One Wom­an. It was so clear and sweet and won­der­ful to me, that I nev­er dreamed of it not be­ing equal­ly clear to her. We did a lot of mu­sic to­geth­er for pure en­joy­ment; we talked of oth­er peo­ple for the fun of it; we en­joyed and ap­pre­ci­at­ed each oth­er’s views and opin­ions; but we did not talk of our­selves, be­cause we KNEW, at least _I_ knew, and, be­fore God, I thought she did. Ev­ery time I saw her she seemed more grand and per­fect. I held the gold­en key to tri­fling mat­ters not un­der­stood be­fore. We young fel­lows, who all ad­mired her, used nev­er­the­less to joke a bit about her wear­ing col­lars and stocks, top boots and short skirts; whack­ing her leg with a rid­ing-​whip, and stir­ring the fire with her toe. But af­ter that evening, I un­der­stood all this to be a sort of fence be­hind which she hid her exquisite wom­an­li­ness, be­cause it was of a deep­er qual­ity than any man look­ing up­on the mere sur­face of her had ev­er fath­omed or un­der­stood. And when she came trail­ing down in the evening, in some­thing rich and cling­ing and black, with lots of soft old lace cov­er­ing her bo­som and mov­ing with the beat­ing of her great ten­der heart; ah, then my soul re­joiced and my eyes took their fill of de­light! I saw her, as all day long I had known her to be,– per­fect in her proud, sweet wom­an­li­ness.”

“Is he re­al­ly un­con­scious,” thought the doc­tor, “of how un­mis­tak­able a word-​pic­ture of Jane he is paint­ing?”

“Very soon,” con­tin­ued Garth, “we had three days apart, and then met again at an­oth­er house, in a week­end par­ty. One of the sea­son’s beau­ties was there, with whom my name was be­ing freely cou­pled, and some­thing she said on that sub­ject, com­bined with the fear­ful blank­ness of those three in­ter­minable days, made me re­solve to speak with­out de­lay. I asked her to come out on to the ter­race that evening. We were alone. It was a moon­light night.”

A long si­lence. The doc­tor did not break it. He knew his friend was go­ing over in his mind all those things of which a man does not speak to an­oth­er man.

At last Garth said sim­ply, “I told her.”

No com­ment from the doc­tor, who was vivid­ly re­mind­ed of Jane’s “Then–it hap­pened,” when SHE had reached this point in the sto­ry. Af­ter a few mo­ments of fur­ther si­lence, steeped in the sil­ver moon­light of rem­inis­cence for Garth; oc­cu­pied by the doc­tor in a rapid piec­ing in of Jane’s ver­sion; the sad young voice con­tin­ued:

“I thought she un­der­stood com­plete­ly. Af­ter­wards I knew she had not un­der­stood at all. Her ac­tions led me to be­lieve I was ac­cept­ed, tak­en in­to her great love, even as she was wrapped around by mine. Not through fault of hers,–ah, no; she was blame­less through­out; but be­cause she did not, could not, un­der­stand. what any touch of hers must mean to me. In her dear life, there had nev­er been an­oth­er man; that much I knew by unerring in­stinct and by her own ad­mis­sion. I have some­times thought that she may have had an ide­al in her girl­ish days, against whom, in af­ter years, she mea­sured oth­ers, and, find­ing them come short, held them at arm’s length. But, if I am right in this sur­mise, he must have been a blind fool, un­con­scious of the price­less love which might have been his, had he tried to win it. For I am cer­tain that, un­til that night, no man’s love had ev­er flamed about her; she had nev­er felt her­self en­veloped in a cry which was all one pas­sion­ate, in-​ar­tic­ulate, in­ex­pli­ca­ble, bound­less need of her­self. While I thought she un­der­stood and re­spond­ed,–Heav­en knows I DID think it,–she did not in the least un­der­stand, and was on­ly try­ing to be sym­pa­thet­ic and kind.”

The doc­tor stirred in his chair, slow­ly crossed one leg over the oth­er, and looked search­ing­ly in­to the blind face. He was find­ing these con­fi­dences of the “oth­er man” more try­ing than he had ex­pect­ed.

“Are you sure of that?” he asked rather huski­ly.

“Quite sure,” said Garth. “Lis­ten. I called her–what she was to me just then, what I want­ed her to be al­ways, what she is for­ev­er, so far as my part goes, and will be till death and be­yond. That one word,–no, there were two,–those two words made her un­der­stand. I see that now. She rose at once and put me from her. She said I must give her twelve hours for qui­et thought, and she would come to me in the vil­lage church next morn­ing with her an­swer. Brand, you may think me a fool; you can­not think me a more egre­gious ass than I now think my­self; but I was ab­so­lute­ly cer­tain she was mine; so sure that, when she came, and we were alone to­geth­er in the house of God, in­stead of go­ing to her with the anx­ious haste of sup­pli­ant and lover, I called her to me at the chan­cel step as if I were in­deed her hus­band and had the right to bid her come. She came, and, just as a sweet for­mal­ity be­fore tak­ing her to me, I asked for her an­swer. It was this: ‘I can­not mar­ry a mere boy.’”

Garth’s voice choked in his throat on the last word. His head was bowed in his hands. He had reached the point where most things stopped for him; where all things had ceased for­ev­er to be as they were be­fore.

The room seemed strange­ly silent. The ea­ger voice had poured out in­to it such a flow of love and hope and long­ing; such a re­veal­ing of a soul in which the true love of beau­ty had cre­at­ed per­pet­ual youth; of a heart held free by high ide­als from all play­ing with less­er loves, but ris­ing to vol­canic force and height when the true love was found at last.

The doc­tor shiv­ered at that an­ti­cli­max, as if the chill of an emp­ty church were in his bones. He knew how far worse it had been than Garth had told. He knew of the cru­el, hu­mil­iat­ing ques­tion: “How old are you?” Jane had con­fessed to it. He knew how the out­ward glow of ador­ing love had fad­ed as the mind was sud­den­ly turned in­ward to self-​con­tem­pla­tion. He had known it all as ab­stract fact. Now he saw it ac­tu­al­ly be­fore him. He saw Jane’s strick­en lover, bowed be­side him in his blind­ness, liv­ing again through those sights and sounds which no mer­ci­ful cur­tain of obliv­ion could ev­er hide or veil.

The doc­tor had his faults, but they were not Pe­ter’s. He nev­er, un­der any cir­cum­stances, spoke BE­CAUSE he wist not what to say.

He leaned for­ward and laid a hand very ten­der­ly on Garth’s shoul­der. “Poor chap,” he said. “Ah, poor old chap.”

And for a long while they sat thus in si­lence.