Page:The Climber (Benson).djvu/133

Rh from simple, sheer ambition, and the triumphant satisfaction of her success. But in a moment that impulse passed; there was no practical end to be served by it, and in truth it was no more than that cheap instinct of honesty, to keep nothing back, that at times assails the most secretive and diplomatic.

"And—and you forgive me?" asked Lucia.

"Oh, my dear, you don't understand; there is no question of forgiveness. It is as I have said. Oh, Lucia"

Maud stopped a moment, calling to mind the extremely crude things that Lucia had said about love, when they sat in the window-seat of the house in Warwick Square.

"How completely love has turned the tables on you," she said. "Don't you remember the dreadful things you said to me that night—how that all young men were exactly alike, and that you did not like them, but that you could imagine liking an old man most awfully? And all the time, I remember, you thought you were making discoveries about yourself, and getting to know yourself! Now go on quick—quick, dear Lucia! I am dying to hear it all—all from the very beginning down to the fact of your having no headache. I am sure that will be entrancing. I think we will have that first."

Lucia felt much better. Though she had known how devoted Maud was to her, she had not guessed that her devotion went so far as this. But what it had cost Maud to take her revelations in this way, how fierce had been the struggle between all that was best in her and her sense of personal loss and bitter bereavement, she did not think of considering. Maud had done her part heroically, had recited like a creed what she knew to be the truest and the worthiest way of looking at this, and had so stifled all in her that cried out against the cruelty of it that Lucia never suspected that there had been a struggle at all, or that she was struggling now, and would have to struggle long to be true to her best self. She thought it very wonderful of Maud to behave like this, but to Maud it seemed perfectly natural, as if there was no other possible mode of behaviour. And she accepted this incomparable attitude with gratefulness. Indeed, as has been said, she was immensely touched, and proceeded to the recital of the diplomatic headache with composure.

"I wonder if you will think it was too awful of me," she said. "You see, he wrote to say he was staying in a house near, and asked if he might come over. But you were here, and—forgive me, dear—I didn't know how you would take what I have just