Page:Across the Stream.djvu/232

222 "Did she love me or didn't she?" he cried. "Do tell me if you know."

His passion had found combustible material in her: she flamed with it.

"Helena doesn't love anybody," she said. "Oh, Archie, poor Helena!"

"Poor Helena!" said he. "Why 'poor'? Surely it's far more comfortable to love nobody. Oh, don't remind me of that stupid rot about it being better to have loved and lost. Anyhow, a worse thing is to have loved and not found. That's what has happened to me, and she made me think I had found. She meant to make me think that. Damned well she succeeded, too. And, if you're right about her not loving anybody, do you mean that she doesn't love the Bradshaw?"

Archie had closed a grip on her arm: now she shook his hand off, though loving to have it there.

"I can't answer you that," she said. "And I oughtn't to have said that Helena loves nobody. I withdraw that entirely."

"The saying of it, you mean," said he. "You don't withdraw your belief in it."

"I don't know the truth of it. What I said was only my opinion, and I withdraw it. I oughtn't to have said it."

"But you keep your opinion?" asked he.

"You shouldn't ask me that. I have withdrawn what I said. Please accept that."

In this high noon of stars she could see his face very clearly. It was not angry any longer: it was just empty, as if there was no one there behind the eyes and the mouth. It was a face empty, swept, and garnished, ready for any occupant who might take possession. The sweet, clean water of his nature must have run out on to desert sands; the cistern of the body into which it had so swiftly and boyishly bubbled