Page:Walpole - Fortitude.djvu/472

 “Sit over there, Peter. I've got to talk to you.”

He went back to his chair.

“I've only got a few more weeks to live. I know it. Perhaps only a few more days. I must make the very utmost of my time. I've got to save you”

He said nothing.

“Oh! I know that it must all have seemed to you abominable—as though I were making use of this illness of mine to extort a promise from you, as though just because I'm weak and feeble I can hold an advantage over you. Oh! I know it's all abominable!—but I'll use everything—yes, simply everything—if I can get you to leave this place and go back!”

He could feel that she was pulling herself together for some tremendous effort.

“Peter, I want you now just to think of me, to put yourself out of everything, absolutely, just for this half-hour. After all as I've only a few half-hours left I've got that right.”

Her laugh as she said it was one of the saddest things he'd ever heard.

“Now I'm going to tell you something—something that I'd never thought I'd tell a soul.

“I've not had a very cheerful life. It hasn't had very much to make it bright and interesting. I'm not complaining but it's just been that way—” She broke off for a moment. “I don't want you to interrupt or say anything. It'll make it easier for me if I can just talk out into the night air, as it were—just as though no one were here.”

She went on: “The one thing that's made it possible, made it bearable, made it alive, has been my love for you. Always from the first moment I saw you I have loved you. Oh! I haven't been foolish about it. I knew that you'd never care for me in that kind of way. I knew from the very first that we should be pals but that you'd never dream of anything more romantic. I've never had any one in love with me—I'm not the kind of woman who draws the romance out of men.

“No, I knew you'd never love me, but I just determined that I'd make you, your career, your success, the pivot, the centre of my life.