Chapter Four.

Chapter Four.The morning found Arnott recovered from his overnight depression; and Pamela’s determination to inquire into things was less positive than on the previous evening. On reflection she decided to wait a little longer. Perhaps if she waited he would broach the matter himself. It might be that she was exaggerating the importance of this thing. In any case she would exercise patience and see what the next mail day brought forth; if his letters caused him annoyance again she would ask him to confide in her the nature of this worry which, while not allowed to share it, was becoming her trouble too. She could not look on and see him bothered without feeling bothered in a measure also; and her entire ignorance as to the nature of the trouble was worrying of itself.Pamela held modern ideas as to a wife’s right to share her husband’s confidence. Marriage unless a mental as well as a physical union was no marriage in her opinion. She desired to face life at her husband’s side, and take all that it offered fearlessly, the bad as well as the good. It had been all good up to the present; but no sky is always cloudless: eternal sunshine would dry up the generous fountains of life, as unbroken happiness will narrow the sympathies and shrivel the best emotions of the heart. Pamela had a healthy appreciation of the blue skies, but she was not in the least afraid of the rain. So long as she had her husband’s love, so long as they were together, she believed that she could meet any trouble, bear any sorrow bravely in the strengthening knowledge of his great love for her.So long as they were together... She dwelt on that thought, smiling and confident. They were together, that was very certain; it seemed equally certain that nothing could happen to separate them. It was indeed such an assured impossibility that she encouraged herself to consider it for the pleasure of proving its absurdity. Herbert, himself, had declared that only death could divide them; and at twenty-six death looms very indistinct along the vista of years.Wandering in the garden, waiting for her husband who was going to motor her out to Sea Point, Pamela speculated on these things with the easy optimism natural to her, and indulged the happy conceit of creating purely imaginary and highly impossible situations for the satisfaction of filling them effectively,—a habit of make-believe which endured from schoolroom days. The appearance of the postman in the drive awoke her from her dreaming to the realisation that the morning was slipping away. Something must be detaining Herbert, possibly something to do with the car.She took the letters from the postman and went indoors. One of the letters was for herself. It was addressed to her in her name before she married, the name she had neither signed nor seen written for five years. It puzzled her that the writer of the letter should be familiar with her present address and yet be ignorant of her change of name. She could not recall having seen the handwriting before. The postmark was London. It was doubtless due to the mistake in the name on the envelope that the letter had not found its way into Arnott’s box at the post office, and so have been collected by him when he fetched his own letters on the previous evening.She went into the sitting-room, and seated herself near the window, and turned the envelope about in her hands. Flailing to identify her correspondent from the superscription, she finally opened it, and withdrawing the closely written sheet of foreign paper, glanced first at the signature. “Lucy Arnott” was written in clear, firm characters at the foot of the page.Pamela’s amazement was unbounded. Who was Lucy Arnott? And why should a connection of her husband address her as Miss Horton? She concluded that it must be a connection of her husband; it was such an unlikely accident that a stranger of the same name would write to her.Curious, and vaguely troubled, Pamela began to read. She read the letter through, read with white, set face, and a mind which failed to grasp the significance of what the cold, formal phrases expressed with perfect lucidity. It occurred to her that the thing was a cruel hoax, a wicked, malicious lie. She could not credit the truth of the writer’s assertion that she was Herbert Arnott’s lawful wife, and that therefore Pamela was not a wife at all—was not legally married...Pamela tried to realise this abomination, and then thrust the horror from her as too terrible for credence. It could not be. She knew that she was married. She had her marriage certificate. Everything had been done in order. Whoever Lucy Arnott was, she could not disprove that.“I don’t know,” the writer said, “whether you were aware of my existence when you consented to pose as Herbert’s wife. I only heard recently that he was living with a wife at Wynberg; therefore I cannot judge whether you have been deceived, or are simply a willing accomplice. If it is a case of deception, you have my sympathy; if the latter, you will not need, and would not appreciate, it. I may state at once, in the event of your cherishing the hope that I will divorce him, that I have no intention of doing so. I have no respect for the divorce laws, which are man-made and for their own convenience, and I have no wish to have my name dragged before the public. I shall take no proceedings against Herbert; it is a matter of entire indifference to me what he does, or how he lives. After this letter you will not hear from me again. Having informed you of what I felt it right you should know, I leave it to you to act as your conscience dictates. If, as I am inclined to fear from a too intimate knowledge of Herbert’s character, you have been cruelly duped, you may, if you stand in need of a friend, count on me as a woman who has suffered also at the same hands and can therefore feel for another.”Pamela sat with the letter in her lap and stared at the page unseeingly. A little choking sound escaped her; it was scarcely a sob, more nearly it resembled a catching of the breath. She made no other sound.For a long while she sat there motionless, holding the letter in her lap between her limp, shaking hands. It wasn’t true... It couldn’t be true... This thought reiterated itself persistently in her bewildered mind; but behind the thought, companioning it always, a doubt chilled her unbelief in the writer’s veracity,—a doubt which came, and came again, until finally it asserted its right to a place in her thoughts; and instead of the reiterated: It can’t be true, the phrase shaped itself: Suppose this thing were true? Suppose this were the secret worry which had troubled Herbert’s peace of late...And then suddenly she heard his voice calling her name, and, looking up, saw him advancing towards her along the stoep. He was looking hot and slightly out of humour. He had taken off his cap in order to cool his brow; he carried it in his hand.“It’s no go, Pam,” he said; “the drive is off for this morning. There is something wrong with the engine. It’s beyond me; the car will have to go into town for repair.”He came up to the window, and stood in the aperture, and gazed at her in surprise. Never had he seen Pamela wear such a look as she wore then. Her face was white; the blue eyes, dilated and dark with pain, stared back into his own with the dazed, unseeing look of a sleep-walker. For the moment he believed she was ill; and he stepped through the window hurriedly and bent over her with anxious solicitude.“Pam!” he said... “My dear, what is it?”Then his eyes fell on the letter in her hands, and his face reddened and then went very white. It was evident that the handwriting was perfectly familiar to him.Pamela put the letter into his hand.“Read it,” she said dully.“Good God!” he cried, and turned the thing he held in hands only a little less unsteady than her own. “How did you get hold of this?”“It came by the post—just now.”“Damn!” he muttered under his breath, and read the letter deliberately. When he had read it he crushed it in his palm and thrust it into his pocket.“I would have died sooner than you had read this,” he said.He made no attempt, she observed, to refute the charge. Somehow she had not expected him to; from the moment when his eye had fallen upon the letter she realised that the information contained in it was true. His first wife was not dead.“Why didn’t you tell me?” she said. She looked at him resentfully with her darkened, pain-filled eyes. “It wasn’t fair to me... You’ve cheated me... You—Oh!”She broke off piteously, and looked away from him out through the window; and he saw that she was weeping. The tears ran down her cheeks, and splashed unheeded on the hands that lay clenched in her lap and made no move to check the bitter rain. Arnott turned his eyes from the piteous face.“I couldn’t tell you,” he muttered... “I loved you. I dared not risk losing you,—and I believed you would never know.”“It’s—bigamy,” she said, and caught her breath again sharply.“Yes.”His voice was sullen.“But that’s punishable,” Pamela said, and scrutinised him with wide, distressed eyes... “Isn’t it?”“Yes.”He made a sudden movement. Before she could stay him he was on his knees beside her, with his arms about her, holding her closely.“I wanted you so badly,” he said. “It was the only way. Oh! Pamela, believe me, I never meant to hurt you... I never meant you to know. My dear—Oh! my dear, don’t turn from me. Forget that you’ve read that letter,—forget that you ever received it. Let things be as they were before.”“But they can’t be,” she insisted. “I’m not—”She broke off and stared at him, frightened and dismayed.“I’m not evenmarried,” she added, the horror of this truth revealing itself in her tones.“You are,” he asserted sullenly. “I married you...”“But you couldn’t,” she persisted, “with your wife alive. The law can punish you for bigamy.”“Do you want the law to punish me?” he asked.“No,” she said. “That wouldn’t help me. And... there’s the child.”He frowned.“You are distressing yourself unnecessarily, Pamela,” he said. “There is no difference really. You felt quite secure until to-day. Your position is as assured now as it ever was. You are more my wife than the woman who wrote that letter. She has a legal right to my name; but we were never mated as you and I are. My first marriage was a bitter mistake which I have ceased to consider long ago. She stands for nothing in my life. You are everything to me—everything. I’d fight to keep you with my last breath.”“You ought not to have done it,” Pamela said, and wrung her hands. He put his hand over hers and stayed her. “You ought to have left me in peace... What peace is there for me now? Any hour this thing may come out. It’s not our secret,—yours and mine alone.”“It’s yours and mine and hers,” he said. “She won’t speak.”“How can you be sure?” Pamela cried passionately. “She told me.”“Yes—damn her!” he returned, and stood up abruptly. “She has been threatening to do that for months. But I thought I could intercept the letter. I never dreamed of her writing to you like this... But she has done what she meant to. She will be silent now.”“But things can’t go on as they have been,” Pamela said piteously. “I can’t stay here, now Iknow. I—Don’t you see, Herbert?—it wouldn’t be right. I should feel—”She shivered suddenly, and broke down again and wept bitterly.“Oh, dear heaven!” she wailed. “What am I to do?”“Do you mean,” he said in a hard voice, “that you think of leaving me?” Then, his calmness deserting him, he went to her and took her in his arms and kissed her tenderly. “Pamela,” he whispered brokenly, “what I have done, I did out of love for you. It may be that I did you a wrong in marrying you; but,—to give you up! ... I couldn’t. Oh! my dearest, believe me, I have fought hard... I fought against my love for you; but it was too strong; it broke down every barrier. It would have broken me if I could not have had you... Dearest, speak to me... Tell me that you forgive me,—that you’ll stick to me. You can’t leave me, Pam,—you can’t leave me. My dear, I couldn’t let you go.”Pamela freed herself from his embrace, and sat bade looking at him with her miserable tear-blurred eyes. She put up a hand and swept the hair back from her brow.“It wouldn’t be right,” she said, and stirred restlessly... “I don’t know... I must think.”She got up and passed him and walked towards the door. He made no attempt to stop her.“I want to be alone,” she said slowly... “I want to think...”She passed out, and the man, rising also and looking after her, stood with a heavy frown darkening his face, his shaking hand pulling nervously at his moustache. The blow which he had so long dreaded had fallen like a thunderbolt and threatened to destroy his home. He could not feel sure how Pamela would act now that she knew the truth. Of her love for him he had no shadow of a doubt; but women like Pamela possessed scruples, queer principles of honour which hardened into obstinacy when the question of right manifested itself beyond all argument. When a thing became a matter of conscience with such women, it was all a toss up, he reflected, whether the woman will not deliberately sacrifice herself to her sense of equity. That as a general rule on smaller matters she is less sensitive in regard to points of honour, inclines her in moments of a serious decision to a greater severity. For the life of him he could not determine what Pamela would decide to do after reflection. The fact that she had insisted on thinking the thing out alone occurred to him as the first step in a moral victory which might spell disaster to the happiness of both.

The morning found Arnott recovered from his overnight depression; and Pamela’s determination to inquire into things was less positive than on the previous evening. On reflection she decided to wait a little longer. Perhaps if she waited he would broach the matter himself. It might be that she was exaggerating the importance of this thing. In any case she would exercise patience and see what the next mail day brought forth; if his letters caused him annoyance again she would ask him to confide in her the nature of this worry which, while not allowed to share it, was becoming her trouble too. She could not look on and see him bothered without feeling bothered in a measure also; and her entire ignorance as to the nature of the trouble was worrying of itself.

Pamela held modern ideas as to a wife’s right to share her husband’s confidence. Marriage unless a mental as well as a physical union was no marriage in her opinion. She desired to face life at her husband’s side, and take all that it offered fearlessly, the bad as well as the good. It had been all good up to the present; but no sky is always cloudless: eternal sunshine would dry up the generous fountains of life, as unbroken happiness will narrow the sympathies and shrivel the best emotions of the heart. Pamela had a healthy appreciation of the blue skies, but she was not in the least afraid of the rain. So long as she had her husband’s love, so long as they were together, she believed that she could meet any trouble, bear any sorrow bravely in the strengthening knowledge of his great love for her.

So long as they were together... She dwelt on that thought, smiling and confident. They were together, that was very certain; it seemed equally certain that nothing could happen to separate them. It was indeed such an assured impossibility that she encouraged herself to consider it for the pleasure of proving its absurdity. Herbert, himself, had declared that only death could divide them; and at twenty-six death looms very indistinct along the vista of years.

Wandering in the garden, waiting for her husband who was going to motor her out to Sea Point, Pamela speculated on these things with the easy optimism natural to her, and indulged the happy conceit of creating purely imaginary and highly impossible situations for the satisfaction of filling them effectively,—a habit of make-believe which endured from schoolroom days. The appearance of the postman in the drive awoke her from her dreaming to the realisation that the morning was slipping away. Something must be detaining Herbert, possibly something to do with the car.

She took the letters from the postman and went indoors. One of the letters was for herself. It was addressed to her in her name before she married, the name she had neither signed nor seen written for five years. It puzzled her that the writer of the letter should be familiar with her present address and yet be ignorant of her change of name. She could not recall having seen the handwriting before. The postmark was London. It was doubtless due to the mistake in the name on the envelope that the letter had not found its way into Arnott’s box at the post office, and so have been collected by him when he fetched his own letters on the previous evening.

She went into the sitting-room, and seated herself near the window, and turned the envelope about in her hands. Flailing to identify her correspondent from the superscription, she finally opened it, and withdrawing the closely written sheet of foreign paper, glanced first at the signature. “Lucy Arnott” was written in clear, firm characters at the foot of the page.

Pamela’s amazement was unbounded. Who was Lucy Arnott? And why should a connection of her husband address her as Miss Horton? She concluded that it must be a connection of her husband; it was such an unlikely accident that a stranger of the same name would write to her.

Curious, and vaguely troubled, Pamela began to read. She read the letter through, read with white, set face, and a mind which failed to grasp the significance of what the cold, formal phrases expressed with perfect lucidity. It occurred to her that the thing was a cruel hoax, a wicked, malicious lie. She could not credit the truth of the writer’s assertion that she was Herbert Arnott’s lawful wife, and that therefore Pamela was not a wife at all—was not legally married...

Pamela tried to realise this abomination, and then thrust the horror from her as too terrible for credence. It could not be. She knew that she was married. She had her marriage certificate. Everything had been done in order. Whoever Lucy Arnott was, she could not disprove that.

“I don’t know,” the writer said, “whether you were aware of my existence when you consented to pose as Herbert’s wife. I only heard recently that he was living with a wife at Wynberg; therefore I cannot judge whether you have been deceived, or are simply a willing accomplice. If it is a case of deception, you have my sympathy; if the latter, you will not need, and would not appreciate, it. I may state at once, in the event of your cherishing the hope that I will divorce him, that I have no intention of doing so. I have no respect for the divorce laws, which are man-made and for their own convenience, and I have no wish to have my name dragged before the public. I shall take no proceedings against Herbert; it is a matter of entire indifference to me what he does, or how he lives. After this letter you will not hear from me again. Having informed you of what I felt it right you should know, I leave it to you to act as your conscience dictates. If, as I am inclined to fear from a too intimate knowledge of Herbert’s character, you have been cruelly duped, you may, if you stand in need of a friend, count on me as a woman who has suffered also at the same hands and can therefore feel for another.”

Pamela sat with the letter in her lap and stared at the page unseeingly. A little choking sound escaped her; it was scarcely a sob, more nearly it resembled a catching of the breath. She made no other sound.

For a long while she sat there motionless, holding the letter in her lap between her limp, shaking hands. It wasn’t true... It couldn’t be true... This thought reiterated itself persistently in her bewildered mind; but behind the thought, companioning it always, a doubt chilled her unbelief in the writer’s veracity,—a doubt which came, and came again, until finally it asserted its right to a place in her thoughts; and instead of the reiterated: It can’t be true, the phrase shaped itself: Suppose this thing were true? Suppose this were the secret worry which had troubled Herbert’s peace of late...

And then suddenly she heard his voice calling her name, and, looking up, saw him advancing towards her along the stoep. He was looking hot and slightly out of humour. He had taken off his cap in order to cool his brow; he carried it in his hand.

“It’s no go, Pam,” he said; “the drive is off for this morning. There is something wrong with the engine. It’s beyond me; the car will have to go into town for repair.”

He came up to the window, and stood in the aperture, and gazed at her in surprise. Never had he seen Pamela wear such a look as she wore then. Her face was white; the blue eyes, dilated and dark with pain, stared back into his own with the dazed, unseeing look of a sleep-walker. For the moment he believed she was ill; and he stepped through the window hurriedly and bent over her with anxious solicitude.

“Pam!” he said... “My dear, what is it?”

Then his eyes fell on the letter in her hands, and his face reddened and then went very white. It was evident that the handwriting was perfectly familiar to him.

Pamela put the letter into his hand.

“Read it,” she said dully.

“Good God!” he cried, and turned the thing he held in hands only a little less unsteady than her own. “How did you get hold of this?”

“It came by the post—just now.”

“Damn!” he muttered under his breath, and read the letter deliberately. When he had read it he crushed it in his palm and thrust it into his pocket.

“I would have died sooner than you had read this,” he said.

He made no attempt, she observed, to refute the charge. Somehow she had not expected him to; from the moment when his eye had fallen upon the letter she realised that the information contained in it was true. His first wife was not dead.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she said. She looked at him resentfully with her darkened, pain-filled eyes. “It wasn’t fair to me... You’ve cheated me... You—Oh!”

She broke off piteously, and looked away from him out through the window; and he saw that she was weeping. The tears ran down her cheeks, and splashed unheeded on the hands that lay clenched in her lap and made no move to check the bitter rain. Arnott turned his eyes from the piteous face.

“I couldn’t tell you,” he muttered... “I loved you. I dared not risk losing you,—and I believed you would never know.”

“It’s—bigamy,” she said, and caught her breath again sharply.

“Yes.”

His voice was sullen.

“But that’s punishable,” Pamela said, and scrutinised him with wide, distressed eyes... “Isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

He made a sudden movement. Before she could stay him he was on his knees beside her, with his arms about her, holding her closely.

“I wanted you so badly,” he said. “It was the only way. Oh! Pamela, believe me, I never meant to hurt you... I never meant you to know. My dear—Oh! my dear, don’t turn from me. Forget that you’ve read that letter,—forget that you ever received it. Let things be as they were before.”

“But they can’t be,” she insisted. “I’m not—”

She broke off and stared at him, frightened and dismayed.

“I’m not evenmarried,” she added, the horror of this truth revealing itself in her tones.

“You are,” he asserted sullenly. “I married you...”

“But you couldn’t,” she persisted, “with your wife alive. The law can punish you for bigamy.”

“Do you want the law to punish me?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “That wouldn’t help me. And... there’s the child.”

He frowned.

“You are distressing yourself unnecessarily, Pamela,” he said. “There is no difference really. You felt quite secure until to-day. Your position is as assured now as it ever was. You are more my wife than the woman who wrote that letter. She has a legal right to my name; but we were never mated as you and I are. My first marriage was a bitter mistake which I have ceased to consider long ago. She stands for nothing in my life. You are everything to me—everything. I’d fight to keep you with my last breath.”

“You ought not to have done it,” Pamela said, and wrung her hands. He put his hand over hers and stayed her. “You ought to have left me in peace... What peace is there for me now? Any hour this thing may come out. It’s not our secret,—yours and mine alone.”

“It’s yours and mine and hers,” he said. “She won’t speak.”

“How can you be sure?” Pamela cried passionately. “She told me.”

“Yes—damn her!” he returned, and stood up abruptly. “She has been threatening to do that for months. But I thought I could intercept the letter. I never dreamed of her writing to you like this... But she has done what she meant to. She will be silent now.”

“But things can’t go on as they have been,” Pamela said piteously. “I can’t stay here, now Iknow. I—Don’t you see, Herbert?—it wouldn’t be right. I should feel—”

She shivered suddenly, and broke down again and wept bitterly.

“Oh, dear heaven!” she wailed. “What am I to do?”

“Do you mean,” he said in a hard voice, “that you think of leaving me?” Then, his calmness deserting him, he went to her and took her in his arms and kissed her tenderly. “Pamela,” he whispered brokenly, “what I have done, I did out of love for you. It may be that I did you a wrong in marrying you; but,—to give you up! ... I couldn’t. Oh! my dearest, believe me, I have fought hard... I fought against my love for you; but it was too strong; it broke down every barrier. It would have broken me if I could not have had you... Dearest, speak to me... Tell me that you forgive me,—that you’ll stick to me. You can’t leave me, Pam,—you can’t leave me. My dear, I couldn’t let you go.”

Pamela freed herself from his embrace, and sat bade looking at him with her miserable tear-blurred eyes. She put up a hand and swept the hair back from her brow.

“It wouldn’t be right,” she said, and stirred restlessly... “I don’t know... I must think.”

She got up and passed him and walked towards the door. He made no attempt to stop her.

“I want to be alone,” she said slowly... “I want to think...”

She passed out, and the man, rising also and looking after her, stood with a heavy frown darkening his face, his shaking hand pulling nervously at his moustache. The blow which he had so long dreaded had fallen like a thunderbolt and threatened to destroy his home. He could not feel sure how Pamela would act now that she knew the truth. Of her love for him he had no shadow of a doubt; but women like Pamela possessed scruples, queer principles of honour which hardened into obstinacy when the question of right manifested itself beyond all argument. When a thing became a matter of conscience with such women, it was all a toss up, he reflected, whether the woman will not deliberately sacrifice herself to her sense of equity. That as a general rule on smaller matters she is less sensitive in regard to points of honour, inclines her in moments of a serious decision to a greater severity. For the life of him he could not determine what Pamela would decide to do after reflection. The fact that she had insisted on thinking the thing out alone occurred to him as the first step in a moral victory which might spell disaster to the happiness of both.

Chapter Five.Pamela spent the day locked in her room. She held no communication with any one. Arnott had no means of discovering how she was passing the time, because on the one occasion when he pleaded for admission she refused to open her door; and he went away troubled and sorely dissatisfied.He left the house and did not return until evening.When she saw him go Pamela had a mad impulse to seize the opportunity and escape from him, but she dismissed this idea almost immediately. To run away would be ridiculous: she was quite free to go at any time. And there was the child. The child was her child; it did not belong to its father. That was the one right of the unmarried mother. The child of the dishonoured union belongs as nature intended to the mother. Pamela began dimly to understand why Herbert had so hated the thought of having children; that at least was a point which counted in his favour.She paced the room at intervals, walking restlessly between the window and the door; but for the greater part of the time she remained seated listlessly in a chair near the open window, staring out at the sunshine, thinking, thinking always, trying to resolve what she ought to do, what she intended doing. The matter rested now between those two points. She had no longer any real doubt as to what she ought to do. Every argument she advanced against taking the right step she recognised perfectly as a deliberate oversight of duty in the pursuit of her own happiness. She wanted him so. In despite of the wrong he had done her, she loved him passionately, with a love which attempted to excuse the injury because of the depth of feeling which had moved him to act as he had acted, which held him to her still in defiance of every law. He had sinned out of love for her. Was she too going to sin in order to keep him?She realised perfectly that if she went out of his life now, though it might break her heart to leave him, though it would possibly break his, she would save from the wreckage her virtue, her self-respect; to continue to live with him, knowing what she knew, was to become an abandoned woman, a woman of loose morals, the wings of whose happiness would be clipped by the sense of her degradation. She would be a thing in the mire, soiled and ashamed,—Arnott’s woman, no longer his wife...She broke off in her reflections, weeping passionately.“I couldn’t bear it,” she moaned. “I couldn’t bear it.”Then, when she grew a little calmer, she faced the alternative. Life without him... never to see him again. To live in some place where her story was unknown,—to know that he was alive, in the world somewhere, hungry for her, aching for her, as she would ache for him,—and not be able to go to him,—never to see his face, nor hear his voice again,—never to feel the clasp of his arms, his kisses on her lips... Would that be more bearable than the other, she wondered, and shivered at a prospect so utterly bleak and forlorn that she could scarce dwell on it even in her thoughts. How could she face separation from him?—such a death in life for them both?And then began again the struggle, the fight of the soul against the desire of the flesh...That evening Pamela went downstairs. She dined with Herbert, or rather sat through the meal; she could not eat. Neither of them spoke much. Once Arnott insisted on her drinking a glass of wine. He had noticed her lack of appetite; and he poured the wine into her glass, and stood by her while she drank it. He was keenly observant of her, and careful not to let her see his attentive regard. He wondered whether she had arrived at any decision, whether she would speak about the matter later. He was feverishly anxious to know what was in her mind. If she was bent on leaving him, he was determined to oppose her to the utmost, to exert every art, every argument he could devise to induce her to alter her decision,—to see the thing from his point of view,—to be reasonable.When she left the table, he rose also and followed her from the room. In the hall, at the foot of the stairs, she paused, glanced at him uncertainly, and changing her mind about going upstairs, entered the drawing-room. He followed her and shut the door.“Tell me,” he said, and stood facing her in the dull glow of the shaded lights, his voice trembling with emotion, body and features tense with the restraint he was bringing to bear on himself, to subdue the anxious desire to hear her speak, to hear her pronounce her verdict, to know the result of that long, miserable, mental struggle which he knew had been taking place in the bedroom from which she had shut him out,—“tell me what you have decided... I can’t bear this racking uncertainty any longer, Pamela... I can’t bear it.”Pamela looked at him with perplexed, miserable eyes.“I haven’t decided,” she said, “anything.”Suddenly her eyes filled with tears, there was a sound of tears in her voice.“I don’t know what to do,” she moaned. “I’ve thought, and thought... I can’t see a way out.”A momentary gleam of triumph leaped into his eyes. He held out his arms.“My dear!” he said.She made no move towards him. She leaned forward, resting her arms on the back of a chair, her gaze fixed on the carpet.“There seems only one thing to do,” she resumed in an expressionless voice... “Thereisonly one thing,—no decent minded woman would consider any other course.”“You mean parting?” he said, and his face hardened.“Yes,—parting,” she echoed, and lifted her gaze and scrutinised him intently. “It won’t undo the evil; but it sets things right, as far as it is possible to right them now.”“Look here!” he cried. He went to her and knelt on the chair upon which she leaned and looked up into her face... “Could you part from me? ... Could you? Think what we have been to one another,—all that our love has meant, and then think of being apart,—always,—never seeing one another even...Couldyou do it, Pam?”Her troubled eyes met his, clouded with a mist of tears.“Don’t!” she muttered, and put a hand quickly to her throat. “I’ve been thinking about it—like that all day.”“And you can’t face it!” he said. He laid a hand firmly upon hers where it rested upon the back of the chair. “My dear... you can’t face it... I can’t face it. I’ve looked at the matter all round; and I can’t face parting now any better than I could face renunciation five years ago. It’s out of the question. It can’t be, Pamela. We’ve gone a long way beyond that.”“But the other thing,—to stay,—that’s impossible too.”“No,” he asserted. “That’s the only thing left us. Except for the compunction I feel in the pain this knowledge has brought you, it hasn’t altered anything for me. I’m trying to look at it from your point of view. The relative values of our position are not changed for me, you see. When you have recovered from the shock of the revelation, I’m hoping you will see things as I do. Nothing is altered really. I have regarded you always sacredly as my dear wife. You will ever remain so to me. Nothing can alter that.”“But I am not your wife,” Pamela said. “Do you think I can ever forget that, now I know? Every time that my eyes meet yours that thought will be in my mind... not you wife,—only your—”“Don’t say it,” he said sharply, and gripped her hand hard. “You are my wife.” He spoke with a certain obstinacy, as though his purpose were to insist on her imagination taking hold of realities which she sought to overlook, which were none the less realities to him because he justified them by his own standard in defiance of conventional law.“I’m not going to give you up, Pamela. I’m going to keep you. If you left me I should follow you. Don’t you see that parting for us is impossible? If we loved less it might be easy to talk of parting,—easy to assume a smug respectability, and give up a little for the satisfaction of feeling virtuous. But people don’t give up everything for the sake of virtue—and to part now would be giving up everything for you and me.”“But I can’t,” she insisted, “continue to live here—as your wife. It’s not only a case of conscience, it’s a matter of self-respect. I shouldhatemyself.”This was a fresh issue. He had not foreseen this, and he realised his inadequacy to grasp the point; it was too intrinsically feminine for his understanding. He stared at her in baffled perplexity.“Do you mean,” he began, and paused, scrutinising her tortured face with disconcerted, incredulous eyes.He stood up, and moved away from her, and remained with his back to her, facing the window. Then abruptly he faced round again.“What do you want to do?” he asked, his nerves on edge with the intolerable strain. “For God’s sake, be reasonable! I can’t stand this any longer. Do you mean that you want to leave me?”Pamela made no answer. She bent forward and leaned her face in her hands and broke into bitter weeping. In a moment he was beside her. He took her in his arms, and drew her head down to his breast, and held her so, still sobbing, with her face hidden in her hands. Tenderly he kissed the bright hair.“Poor little woman!” he said.She clung to him, sobbing and weeping in his embrace.“Oh! I can’t,” she wailed... “I can’t.”Again the light of victory shone in the man’s eyes. He held her more closely.“No,” he said; “we couldn’t do it... Never to meet again! ... We couldn’t do it, dear.”She drew back from his embrace and, seating herself in the chair, continued to weep hopelessly. He fell on his knees beside her.“I’m a brute to have brought this on you,” he muttered. “But I loved you so... Dearest heart, say you forgive me.”He caught her wrists and pulled her hands from her face and kissed the tear-drenched eyes.“Pamela, my darling, forgive me. I meant no harm to you. I never meant you to know.”She regarded him with brimming eyes.“Oh! I wish,” she said, “that I didn’t love you so well.”He kissed her hands. He had won in this first struggle. With patience, he told himself, he would recover the whole ground.For an hour Pamela remained with him, talking the matter threadbare. Arnott did most of the talking; Pamela listened, acquiescing by her silence to much that he urged in his own defence, occasionally interrupting him, more occasionally disputing a point. Gradually he worked round to the subject of their future relations. On this point Pamela was more difficult. She held views of her own in regard to that; and the discussion at times took a bitter tone. He pleaded, he argued eloquently, he even offered concessions. He was patient and displayed a tender consideration which moved her to a corresponding tenderness, but did not shake her resolve.They were still at cross purposes when, heavy with fatigue and misery, she arose and announced her intention of going to bed. The discussion, he recognised, would have to be postponed to some future time. This exasperated him; he left that the delay minimised his chances of victory. Further wrestling with her conscience might confirm her in her resolution, would inevitably make persuasion more difficult. Ultimate victory depended largely on his success in wearing down her scruples before they had time to harden into a conviction of duty.He eyed her resentfully, and bit his lip to keep back the sharp words of reproach which came to his tongue.The puritanical strain in the composition of a good woman was the most baffling factor to cope with; the element of passion became a weak, a futile argument against its frigid strength.“You are punishing me heavily, Pamela,” he said.She turned towards him slowly. Her sad eyes dwelt for a long moment on his face and then looked deliberately away.“My dear, I am not wishing to punish,” she said. “It is equally hard for me.”“Then why...” he began, and paused, irresolute and almost ungovernably angry. “It’s monstrous,” he muttered. “Absurd! We might as well be apart altogether.”Pamela made no response, but went with a dragging step out of the room, up the stairs to the bedroom where she had spent the tragic hours of that weary day.When he was alone, Arnott moved to a chair and seated himself, and remained lost in a gloomy reverie, his sombre gaze fixed sullenly on the floor. The hand of the clock revolved slowly twice round the dial before he roused himself from his bitter reflections. He saw no way out of this muddle. If Pamela persisted in her present attitude it meant the end of their happiness together; her daily presence in his home under the conditions she imposed would prove merely an aggravation.Arnott’s nature was passionate, and his love for Pamela was of the quality that refuses to be subdued. He had never practised restraint; the thought was intolerable. The fever of desire which had led to his bigamous marriage still fired his blood, and moved him to passionate rebellion against Pamela’s decree. He refused to submit to this cold-blooded arrangement. He would have it out with her; he would overcome her scruples; he would,—he must win.He got up, switched off the lights in the room, and passed out into the hall. He switched off the hall light also, and went up the darkened stairs. From beneath the door of Pamela’s room a thin line of light told him that she was awake. He fancied he heard a movement inside the room, and listened. Then deliberately he advanced and tried the door. It was locked.He gritted his teeth, and passed on and entered his dressing-room. For that night at least he had to admit defeat. Oddly, at the moment, though smarting with indignation at being thus determinedly denied admittance, he respected her decision, even while bitterly opposed to it,—he respected her.He sat on the edge of his bed and beat softly on the carpet with his foot. A tormenting desire for her gripped him, as it had not gripped him since the days before he had married her—those days when he had recognised how impossible it was for him to do without her, when finally he had flung every consideration aside and gone through the form of a marriage, which he knew was no marriage, because he could not give her up. His need of her now was every whit as insistent as it had been then. Its very urgency had broken down every law, razed every barrier: it should, he told himself, surmount also this new obstacle which fate had flung in his path.

Pamela spent the day locked in her room. She held no communication with any one. Arnott had no means of discovering how she was passing the time, because on the one occasion when he pleaded for admission she refused to open her door; and he went away troubled and sorely dissatisfied.

He left the house and did not return until evening.

When she saw him go Pamela had a mad impulse to seize the opportunity and escape from him, but she dismissed this idea almost immediately. To run away would be ridiculous: she was quite free to go at any time. And there was the child. The child was her child; it did not belong to its father. That was the one right of the unmarried mother. The child of the dishonoured union belongs as nature intended to the mother. Pamela began dimly to understand why Herbert had so hated the thought of having children; that at least was a point which counted in his favour.

She paced the room at intervals, walking restlessly between the window and the door; but for the greater part of the time she remained seated listlessly in a chair near the open window, staring out at the sunshine, thinking, thinking always, trying to resolve what she ought to do, what she intended doing. The matter rested now between those two points. She had no longer any real doubt as to what she ought to do. Every argument she advanced against taking the right step she recognised perfectly as a deliberate oversight of duty in the pursuit of her own happiness. She wanted him so. In despite of the wrong he had done her, she loved him passionately, with a love which attempted to excuse the injury because of the depth of feeling which had moved him to act as he had acted, which held him to her still in defiance of every law. He had sinned out of love for her. Was she too going to sin in order to keep him?

She realised perfectly that if she went out of his life now, though it might break her heart to leave him, though it would possibly break his, she would save from the wreckage her virtue, her self-respect; to continue to live with him, knowing what she knew, was to become an abandoned woman, a woman of loose morals, the wings of whose happiness would be clipped by the sense of her degradation. She would be a thing in the mire, soiled and ashamed,—Arnott’s woman, no longer his wife...

She broke off in her reflections, weeping passionately.

“I couldn’t bear it,” she moaned. “I couldn’t bear it.”

Then, when she grew a little calmer, she faced the alternative. Life without him... never to see him again. To live in some place where her story was unknown,—to know that he was alive, in the world somewhere, hungry for her, aching for her, as she would ache for him,—and not be able to go to him,—never to see his face, nor hear his voice again,—never to feel the clasp of his arms, his kisses on her lips... Would that be more bearable than the other, she wondered, and shivered at a prospect so utterly bleak and forlorn that she could scarce dwell on it even in her thoughts. How could she face separation from him?—such a death in life for them both?

And then began again the struggle, the fight of the soul against the desire of the flesh...

That evening Pamela went downstairs. She dined with Herbert, or rather sat through the meal; she could not eat. Neither of them spoke much. Once Arnott insisted on her drinking a glass of wine. He had noticed her lack of appetite; and he poured the wine into her glass, and stood by her while she drank it. He was keenly observant of her, and careful not to let her see his attentive regard. He wondered whether she had arrived at any decision, whether she would speak about the matter later. He was feverishly anxious to know what was in her mind. If she was bent on leaving him, he was determined to oppose her to the utmost, to exert every art, every argument he could devise to induce her to alter her decision,—to see the thing from his point of view,—to be reasonable.

When she left the table, he rose also and followed her from the room. In the hall, at the foot of the stairs, she paused, glanced at him uncertainly, and changing her mind about going upstairs, entered the drawing-room. He followed her and shut the door.

“Tell me,” he said, and stood facing her in the dull glow of the shaded lights, his voice trembling with emotion, body and features tense with the restraint he was bringing to bear on himself, to subdue the anxious desire to hear her speak, to hear her pronounce her verdict, to know the result of that long, miserable, mental struggle which he knew had been taking place in the bedroom from which she had shut him out,—“tell me what you have decided... I can’t bear this racking uncertainty any longer, Pamela... I can’t bear it.”

Pamela looked at him with perplexed, miserable eyes.

“I haven’t decided,” she said, “anything.”

Suddenly her eyes filled with tears, there was a sound of tears in her voice.

“I don’t know what to do,” she moaned. “I’ve thought, and thought... I can’t see a way out.”

A momentary gleam of triumph leaped into his eyes. He held out his arms.

“My dear!” he said.

She made no move towards him. She leaned forward, resting her arms on the back of a chair, her gaze fixed on the carpet.

“There seems only one thing to do,” she resumed in an expressionless voice... “Thereisonly one thing,—no decent minded woman would consider any other course.”

“You mean parting?” he said, and his face hardened.

“Yes,—parting,” she echoed, and lifted her gaze and scrutinised him intently. “It won’t undo the evil; but it sets things right, as far as it is possible to right them now.”

“Look here!” he cried. He went to her and knelt on the chair upon which she leaned and looked up into her face... “Could you part from me? ... Could you? Think what we have been to one another,—all that our love has meant, and then think of being apart,—always,—never seeing one another even...Couldyou do it, Pam?”

Her troubled eyes met his, clouded with a mist of tears.

“Don’t!” she muttered, and put a hand quickly to her throat. “I’ve been thinking about it—like that all day.”

“And you can’t face it!” he said. He laid a hand firmly upon hers where it rested upon the back of the chair. “My dear... you can’t face it... I can’t face it. I’ve looked at the matter all round; and I can’t face parting now any better than I could face renunciation five years ago. It’s out of the question. It can’t be, Pamela. We’ve gone a long way beyond that.”

“But the other thing,—to stay,—that’s impossible too.”

“No,” he asserted. “That’s the only thing left us. Except for the compunction I feel in the pain this knowledge has brought you, it hasn’t altered anything for me. I’m trying to look at it from your point of view. The relative values of our position are not changed for me, you see. When you have recovered from the shock of the revelation, I’m hoping you will see things as I do. Nothing is altered really. I have regarded you always sacredly as my dear wife. You will ever remain so to me. Nothing can alter that.”

“But I am not your wife,” Pamela said. “Do you think I can ever forget that, now I know? Every time that my eyes meet yours that thought will be in my mind... not you wife,—only your—”

“Don’t say it,” he said sharply, and gripped her hand hard. “You are my wife.” He spoke with a certain obstinacy, as though his purpose were to insist on her imagination taking hold of realities which she sought to overlook, which were none the less realities to him because he justified them by his own standard in defiance of conventional law.

“I’m not going to give you up, Pamela. I’m going to keep you. If you left me I should follow you. Don’t you see that parting for us is impossible? If we loved less it might be easy to talk of parting,—easy to assume a smug respectability, and give up a little for the satisfaction of feeling virtuous. But people don’t give up everything for the sake of virtue—and to part now would be giving up everything for you and me.”

“But I can’t,” she insisted, “continue to live here—as your wife. It’s not only a case of conscience, it’s a matter of self-respect. I shouldhatemyself.”

This was a fresh issue. He had not foreseen this, and he realised his inadequacy to grasp the point; it was too intrinsically feminine for his understanding. He stared at her in baffled perplexity.

“Do you mean,” he began, and paused, scrutinising her tortured face with disconcerted, incredulous eyes.

He stood up, and moved away from her, and remained with his back to her, facing the window. Then abruptly he faced round again.

“What do you want to do?” he asked, his nerves on edge with the intolerable strain. “For God’s sake, be reasonable! I can’t stand this any longer. Do you mean that you want to leave me?”

Pamela made no answer. She bent forward and leaned her face in her hands and broke into bitter weeping. In a moment he was beside her. He took her in his arms, and drew her head down to his breast, and held her so, still sobbing, with her face hidden in her hands. Tenderly he kissed the bright hair.

“Poor little woman!” he said.

She clung to him, sobbing and weeping in his embrace.

“Oh! I can’t,” she wailed... “I can’t.”

Again the light of victory shone in the man’s eyes. He held her more closely.

“No,” he said; “we couldn’t do it... Never to meet again! ... We couldn’t do it, dear.”

She drew back from his embrace and, seating herself in the chair, continued to weep hopelessly. He fell on his knees beside her.

“I’m a brute to have brought this on you,” he muttered. “But I loved you so... Dearest heart, say you forgive me.”

He caught her wrists and pulled her hands from her face and kissed the tear-drenched eyes.

“Pamela, my darling, forgive me. I meant no harm to you. I never meant you to know.”

She regarded him with brimming eyes.

“Oh! I wish,” she said, “that I didn’t love you so well.”

He kissed her hands. He had won in this first struggle. With patience, he told himself, he would recover the whole ground.

For an hour Pamela remained with him, talking the matter threadbare. Arnott did most of the talking; Pamela listened, acquiescing by her silence to much that he urged in his own defence, occasionally interrupting him, more occasionally disputing a point. Gradually he worked round to the subject of their future relations. On this point Pamela was more difficult. She held views of her own in regard to that; and the discussion at times took a bitter tone. He pleaded, he argued eloquently, he even offered concessions. He was patient and displayed a tender consideration which moved her to a corresponding tenderness, but did not shake her resolve.

They were still at cross purposes when, heavy with fatigue and misery, she arose and announced her intention of going to bed. The discussion, he recognised, would have to be postponed to some future time. This exasperated him; he left that the delay minimised his chances of victory. Further wrestling with her conscience might confirm her in her resolution, would inevitably make persuasion more difficult. Ultimate victory depended largely on his success in wearing down her scruples before they had time to harden into a conviction of duty.

He eyed her resentfully, and bit his lip to keep back the sharp words of reproach which came to his tongue.

The puritanical strain in the composition of a good woman was the most baffling factor to cope with; the element of passion became a weak, a futile argument against its frigid strength.

“You are punishing me heavily, Pamela,” he said.

She turned towards him slowly. Her sad eyes dwelt for a long moment on his face and then looked deliberately away.

“My dear, I am not wishing to punish,” she said. “It is equally hard for me.”

“Then why...” he began, and paused, irresolute and almost ungovernably angry. “It’s monstrous,” he muttered. “Absurd! We might as well be apart altogether.”

Pamela made no response, but went with a dragging step out of the room, up the stairs to the bedroom where she had spent the tragic hours of that weary day.

When he was alone, Arnott moved to a chair and seated himself, and remained lost in a gloomy reverie, his sombre gaze fixed sullenly on the floor. The hand of the clock revolved slowly twice round the dial before he roused himself from his bitter reflections. He saw no way out of this muddle. If Pamela persisted in her present attitude it meant the end of their happiness together; her daily presence in his home under the conditions she imposed would prove merely an aggravation.

Arnott’s nature was passionate, and his love for Pamela was of the quality that refuses to be subdued. He had never practised restraint; the thought was intolerable. The fever of desire which had led to his bigamous marriage still fired his blood, and moved him to passionate rebellion against Pamela’s decree. He refused to submit to this cold-blooded arrangement. He would have it out with her; he would overcome her scruples; he would,—he must win.

He got up, switched off the lights in the room, and passed out into the hall. He switched off the hall light also, and went up the darkened stairs. From beneath the door of Pamela’s room a thin line of light told him that she was awake. He fancied he heard a movement inside the room, and listened. Then deliberately he advanced and tried the door. It was locked.

He gritted his teeth, and passed on and entered his dressing-room. For that night at least he had to admit defeat. Oddly, at the moment, though smarting with indignation at being thus determinedly denied admittance, he respected her decision, even while bitterly opposed to it,—he respected her.

He sat on the edge of his bed and beat softly on the carpet with his foot. A tormenting desire for her gripped him, as it had not gripped him since the days before he had married her—those days when he had recognised how impossible it was for him to do without her, when finally he had flung every consideration aside and gone through the form of a marriage, which he knew was no marriage, because he could not give her up. His need of her now was every whit as insistent as it had been then. Its very urgency had broken down every law, razed every barrier: it should, he told himself, surmount also this new obstacle which fate had flung in his path.

Chapter Six.They were difficult days which followed. Pamela went about as usual, but she looked white and worn, and evidences of sleepless nights and much weeping disfigured her eyes. Arnott, unequal to the tension, decided on a brief separation, and took a trip round the coast. His absence—it was the first time he had gone away without her since their marriage—might bring home to her some realisation of what life would be like if they finally parted. Perhaps, when she was alone, when she missed his actual presence, she would relent. If, when he returned, he found her still obdurate he would broach the subject of a more complete separation.He did not seriously believe that she would bring herself to the point of parting irrevocably. As things were, it was more difficult to part now than it would have been in the first shock of revelation. She had had time in which to adjust her mind to the altered conditions, to be called upon to readjust it, to do so late what she had felt she ought to have done at the beginning, and had failed to do, would add a fresh humiliation to the former difficulty, would make the difficulty greater. He felt fairly convinced that she would not willingly leave him, and he meant to force her into compliance by holding out this suggestion as the only possible alternative.Pamela received the news of his intended departure with a sense of relief. She too had felt the strain to be well nigh intolerable, more so in view of his increased kindness and consideration for her, which made it so terribly difficult to refuse to listen to his pleading. She welcomed the thought of his absence as a relief from the constant pain and embarrassment of his reproachful presence; but when he was gone she missed him, missed him so sorely that she experienced, as he had hoped she would, a sort of terror at the idea of living without him. Almost it seemed to her that the talked-of separation had actually taken place, that he had gone away from her finally, that she would never see him again. A fear took hold of her imagination that he might have gone with the intention of not returning, that this might be his way of avoiding further distresses. Perhaps he would write and inform her that he had chosen this means as the best solution of the problem. He had not, she recalled, made any mention of returning. He had stated simply that he couldn’t stand it, that he must get away. And she had accepted this without questioning, had felt glad that he should go. She no longer felt glad: she only wanted him back.An aching sense of loneliness oppressed her as the days passed and brought no letter from him. She had expected to hear from him when the boat reached Algoa Bay. He sent no word until he was as far as Durban, then he wrote briefly that he was going on further up the coast. She had no knowledge of his movements after that. He did not write again.In the weeks which followed she had ample time for reflection, time in which to determine her future course of action. She spent long hours in the garden revolving things in her mind, trying to disentangle thoughts and emotions and impulses of right and wrong, trying to sift them and get them into some consecutive order. And always she worked back to the one impassable point, the point which his absence made so distressingly clear, that life apart from him was a sheer impossibility. She could not face it. The long lonely years...And yet to continue to live with him! ... That were to choose evil deliberately. And all their life together would be a lie,—an outward respectability which at any moment was liable to exposure for the sham it was.From the bottom of her heart she wished that she might have remained in ignorance of this horrible truth. Then the responsibility of choice would not have been hers. She wanted to keep her happiness and her peace of mind, and that was now impossible. She wanted to continue as Herbert’s wife, and yet remain virtuous; and she could not; her happiness or her virtue must be sacrificed, the one for the other.Pamela prayed for strength and guidance, but her prayers held—as the prayers of many people hold—reservations. She attempted to bargain for the retention of her happiness. She asked to be shown the path of duty clearly, and when it was revealed to her she shut her eyes. There is never great difficulty in seeing the road which is called Duty; it shows always direct and straight ahead; but many people turn their backs on it and look in the opposite direction, because the path of duty is an uphill path, and it is not until one has reached the summit that one can appreciate the fairness of the prospect and the exhilarating freshness of the air. Pamela stood in the valley, and the steepness and the loneliness of the ascent appalled her. Hers was not a nature fashioned for high purposes. The big battles of life require sterner moral principles to bring them to a triumphant issue. She was not gifted with that altruism which enables one to meet a great crisis with the utter self-abnegation by which alone such crises are successfully overcome. Pamela fought her great battle handicapped by reason of her limitations. The high ideals which, while unfaced with any great issue, she had cherished with unconscious hypocrisy failed her in the stress of her need. She was just a weak, loving woman, stricken to the heart, and lonely beyond words to describe,—a woman hungry for her lover, whose last scruple of honour faded into nothingness in the period of his absence.Arnott came home unexpectedly. He sent no intimation of his return; he had not, as a matter of fact, intended to turn back when he did. He obeyed an odd impulse, prompted by a queer, unaccountable fear that if he prolonged his absence Pamela might grow reconciled to doing without him, might grow independent of him. He felt no longer so confident that his temporary separation had been a wise move. He had prolonged it unduly. He had given her time to miss him, and had made the mistake of giving her further time in which to grow used to the idea. With this doubt in his mind he hurried back.He got back in the afternoon rather late for tea. They had met with contrary winds round the coast, and the boat was delayed some hours. Arnott took a taxi at the docks and drove out to his home. He dismissed the taxi at the gate and carried his luggage himself up the path and dumped it down on the stoep for one of the servants to take inside. Then he looked about him with a strange feeling of unreality, and an unexpected sensation of nervousness that manifested itself chiefly in the dryness of his throat. Where, he wondered, was Pamela? This return to a silent, unwelcoming house was disconcerting. He forgot that he was not expected, and began to feel unreasonably annoyed.And then abruptly he became aware of Pamela, standing in the opening of the drawing-room window, gravely regarding him. He looked round suddenly, and their gaze met.“So you have come back?” she said.Her eyes were deep and very intense; the man as he met their shining look felt certain of his welcome. He advanced towards her quickly.“Couldn’t stick it any longer, Pam,” he said. “I wanted you.”He held out his arms. She went forward unhesitatingly, and put her arms about his neck and drew his face to hers and kissed him.“I am so glad you have come home,” she said.Arnott’s clasp of her tightened.“Oh! Pam,” he said, “how good, how jolly to have you again.”He drew her inside the room, looking away from her a little awkwardly, looking about him with an overdone air of ease. Pamela also, now that their greeting was over, assumed an outward calm which she certainly was not feeling, and busied herself with the tea things, having an equal difficulty it seemed in meeting his eyes. That, she discovered later, was one of the developments of their adjusted relations, a sort of furtiveness, that comprised a mixture of deprecation and a shamed shyness that was more instinctive than anything else. The realisation of this hurt her; it detracted immensely from the beauty of their love. But just at first she did not recognise it other than as a temporary embarrassment; it did not distress her particularly.“I was just going to have a lonely tea,” she said, and rang the bell for a fresh supply; “and now—there’s you!”She glanced at him brightly, a swift colour flushing her cheeks. He seated himself on the sofa near the tea-table, and studied her curiously when he believed himself unobserved. He speculated on what might be in her mind, what the actual thoughts and feeling were which she hid so successfully behind her welcoming manner. For the first time within his knowledge of her he realised a subtlety, a certain secretive force, which he had not suspected in her. It was like coming unexpectedly upon a familiar spot and finding the view altered and contracted by surprising innovations. One felt that behind the obstructions the prospect was exactly the same; it was one’s own view that was restricted and created these new impressions.“It’s good to be home,” he said, and dropped into a discursive chat about the places he had visited. “Tried all I could to get rid of the thought of you, Pam,” he said at the finish, and glanced at her with a sudden, faintly deprecating smile. “It wasn’t a bit of use. You pursued and brought me back... God! how you haunted me at nights! ... And your face looked back at me from the water whenever I gazed down at the sea.”Pamela sat down beside him. She slipped a hand into his, but she did not look at him.“It’s been the same with me,” she said,—“you were always there, somehow. I wonder... I suppose there are lots of people like ourselves who grow dependent on one another... You’ve never been away from me before.”“And you missed me?” he questioned.She looked at him then with grave, perplexed eyes, and nodded.“It was an experiment,” he said presently. “I wanted to see if we could do it—and we can’t... We can’t part.”“And we can’t,” Pamela repeated slowly. “No, I don’t think we can.”Suddenly she leaned forward and played nervously with a little fanciful spoon in her saucer.“I meant to,” she said,—“at first. I felt—I still feel it’s the right thing to do. After you had gone away, I knew I couldn’t. I suppose I am not a good woman really.” She broke off the jerky sentences, and gazed at him somewhat wistfully. “It’s hard to want to be happy, and to know that one ought not to be. I suppose that’s why she told me... She wouldn’t leave me to be peacefully ignorant. She wanted to stretch me on the rack too.”“Lord knows!” he answered, and stirred his tea irritably. “She’s threatened to tell you,” he added, “ever since some fool of an acquaintance, who’d been out here and was struck with the name, told her that I was living here; but I thought I could intercept the letter. I didn’t allow for it coming to the house. I knew she would never make an open scandal. She’s too proud, for one thing. Besides, she is absolutely indifferent. So long as we are not in the same country, it would never trouble her what I did.”“But,” said Pamela, a little shyly, “she must have loved you once.”“I don’t know,” he said. “I am beginning to doubt myself, whether it is really love which brings the greater part of the world together. Not infrequently curiosity is at the bottom of it,—or the desire to make a home. The majority of cases, of course, are the result of passion,—the fundamental scheme for the continuance of the race. I don’t see that it’s much use bothering one’s head about these matters. I married when I was a hot-headed young fool; after I found out my mistake—too late. I met love... Well, I suppose I ought to have turned my back on love,—and I didn’t. There you are.”“Yes,” Pamela returned slowly. “That is just the part I find it impossible to excuse. That was your big error; and it is going to be responsible for our further wrong-doing.”“Look here!” he cried. “Life is in one’s own hands. One either makes it difficult by moralising, or simple by being philosophical and taking all it has to offer. It holds a lot of good for you and me, Pam... Why moralise?”“Because,” Pamela answered, and her eyes filled with unexpected tears, “in making a deliberate choice of evil I don’t wish to cheat myself into believing that it is the only course open to me; it isn’t. If I am a bad woman, I will at least be sincere.”He took her two hands and held them between his own and looked with kindly tolerance into the sweet, distressed face. He no longer felt any need to plead with her; he knew his case was won. Very tenderly he put her hands to his lips.“You odd inconsistency,” he murmured, “how you delight in tormenting yourself! Can’t you see that in this matter you are entirely blameless? All the evil is mine. You are driven into a corner, poor child. Nobody in his senses would hold you responsible. Put the blame on to me, Pam,—I’m equal to shouldering it.” He slipped an arm about her, and drew her closer. “If it had all to be gone through again, I’d do the same.”

They were difficult days which followed. Pamela went about as usual, but she looked white and worn, and evidences of sleepless nights and much weeping disfigured her eyes. Arnott, unequal to the tension, decided on a brief separation, and took a trip round the coast. His absence—it was the first time he had gone away without her since their marriage—might bring home to her some realisation of what life would be like if they finally parted. Perhaps, when she was alone, when she missed his actual presence, she would relent. If, when he returned, he found her still obdurate he would broach the subject of a more complete separation.

He did not seriously believe that she would bring herself to the point of parting irrevocably. As things were, it was more difficult to part now than it would have been in the first shock of revelation. She had had time in which to adjust her mind to the altered conditions, to be called upon to readjust it, to do so late what she had felt she ought to have done at the beginning, and had failed to do, would add a fresh humiliation to the former difficulty, would make the difficulty greater. He felt fairly convinced that she would not willingly leave him, and he meant to force her into compliance by holding out this suggestion as the only possible alternative.

Pamela received the news of his intended departure with a sense of relief. She too had felt the strain to be well nigh intolerable, more so in view of his increased kindness and consideration for her, which made it so terribly difficult to refuse to listen to his pleading. She welcomed the thought of his absence as a relief from the constant pain and embarrassment of his reproachful presence; but when he was gone she missed him, missed him so sorely that she experienced, as he had hoped she would, a sort of terror at the idea of living without him. Almost it seemed to her that the talked-of separation had actually taken place, that he had gone away from her finally, that she would never see him again. A fear took hold of her imagination that he might have gone with the intention of not returning, that this might be his way of avoiding further distresses. Perhaps he would write and inform her that he had chosen this means as the best solution of the problem. He had not, she recalled, made any mention of returning. He had stated simply that he couldn’t stand it, that he must get away. And she had accepted this without questioning, had felt glad that he should go. She no longer felt glad: she only wanted him back.

An aching sense of loneliness oppressed her as the days passed and brought no letter from him. She had expected to hear from him when the boat reached Algoa Bay. He sent no word until he was as far as Durban, then he wrote briefly that he was going on further up the coast. She had no knowledge of his movements after that. He did not write again.

In the weeks which followed she had ample time for reflection, time in which to determine her future course of action. She spent long hours in the garden revolving things in her mind, trying to disentangle thoughts and emotions and impulses of right and wrong, trying to sift them and get them into some consecutive order. And always she worked back to the one impassable point, the point which his absence made so distressingly clear, that life apart from him was a sheer impossibility. She could not face it. The long lonely years...

And yet to continue to live with him! ... That were to choose evil deliberately. And all their life together would be a lie,—an outward respectability which at any moment was liable to exposure for the sham it was.

From the bottom of her heart she wished that she might have remained in ignorance of this horrible truth. Then the responsibility of choice would not have been hers. She wanted to keep her happiness and her peace of mind, and that was now impossible. She wanted to continue as Herbert’s wife, and yet remain virtuous; and she could not; her happiness or her virtue must be sacrificed, the one for the other.

Pamela prayed for strength and guidance, but her prayers held—as the prayers of many people hold—reservations. She attempted to bargain for the retention of her happiness. She asked to be shown the path of duty clearly, and when it was revealed to her she shut her eyes. There is never great difficulty in seeing the road which is called Duty; it shows always direct and straight ahead; but many people turn their backs on it and look in the opposite direction, because the path of duty is an uphill path, and it is not until one has reached the summit that one can appreciate the fairness of the prospect and the exhilarating freshness of the air. Pamela stood in the valley, and the steepness and the loneliness of the ascent appalled her. Hers was not a nature fashioned for high purposes. The big battles of life require sterner moral principles to bring them to a triumphant issue. She was not gifted with that altruism which enables one to meet a great crisis with the utter self-abnegation by which alone such crises are successfully overcome. Pamela fought her great battle handicapped by reason of her limitations. The high ideals which, while unfaced with any great issue, she had cherished with unconscious hypocrisy failed her in the stress of her need. She was just a weak, loving woman, stricken to the heart, and lonely beyond words to describe,—a woman hungry for her lover, whose last scruple of honour faded into nothingness in the period of his absence.

Arnott came home unexpectedly. He sent no intimation of his return; he had not, as a matter of fact, intended to turn back when he did. He obeyed an odd impulse, prompted by a queer, unaccountable fear that if he prolonged his absence Pamela might grow reconciled to doing without him, might grow independent of him. He felt no longer so confident that his temporary separation had been a wise move. He had prolonged it unduly. He had given her time to miss him, and had made the mistake of giving her further time in which to grow used to the idea. With this doubt in his mind he hurried back.

He got back in the afternoon rather late for tea. They had met with contrary winds round the coast, and the boat was delayed some hours. Arnott took a taxi at the docks and drove out to his home. He dismissed the taxi at the gate and carried his luggage himself up the path and dumped it down on the stoep for one of the servants to take inside. Then he looked about him with a strange feeling of unreality, and an unexpected sensation of nervousness that manifested itself chiefly in the dryness of his throat. Where, he wondered, was Pamela? This return to a silent, unwelcoming house was disconcerting. He forgot that he was not expected, and began to feel unreasonably annoyed.

And then abruptly he became aware of Pamela, standing in the opening of the drawing-room window, gravely regarding him. He looked round suddenly, and their gaze met.

“So you have come back?” she said.

Her eyes were deep and very intense; the man as he met their shining look felt certain of his welcome. He advanced towards her quickly.

“Couldn’t stick it any longer, Pam,” he said. “I wanted you.”

He held out his arms. She went forward unhesitatingly, and put her arms about his neck and drew his face to hers and kissed him.

“I am so glad you have come home,” she said.

Arnott’s clasp of her tightened.

“Oh! Pam,” he said, “how good, how jolly to have you again.”

He drew her inside the room, looking away from her a little awkwardly, looking about him with an overdone air of ease. Pamela also, now that their greeting was over, assumed an outward calm which she certainly was not feeling, and busied herself with the tea things, having an equal difficulty it seemed in meeting his eyes. That, she discovered later, was one of the developments of their adjusted relations, a sort of furtiveness, that comprised a mixture of deprecation and a shamed shyness that was more instinctive than anything else. The realisation of this hurt her; it detracted immensely from the beauty of their love. But just at first she did not recognise it other than as a temporary embarrassment; it did not distress her particularly.

“I was just going to have a lonely tea,” she said, and rang the bell for a fresh supply; “and now—there’s you!”

She glanced at him brightly, a swift colour flushing her cheeks. He seated himself on the sofa near the tea-table, and studied her curiously when he believed himself unobserved. He speculated on what might be in her mind, what the actual thoughts and feeling were which she hid so successfully behind her welcoming manner. For the first time within his knowledge of her he realised a subtlety, a certain secretive force, which he had not suspected in her. It was like coming unexpectedly upon a familiar spot and finding the view altered and contracted by surprising innovations. One felt that behind the obstructions the prospect was exactly the same; it was one’s own view that was restricted and created these new impressions.

“It’s good to be home,” he said, and dropped into a discursive chat about the places he had visited. “Tried all I could to get rid of the thought of you, Pam,” he said at the finish, and glanced at her with a sudden, faintly deprecating smile. “It wasn’t a bit of use. You pursued and brought me back... God! how you haunted me at nights! ... And your face looked back at me from the water whenever I gazed down at the sea.”

Pamela sat down beside him. She slipped a hand into his, but she did not look at him.

“It’s been the same with me,” she said,—“you were always there, somehow. I wonder... I suppose there are lots of people like ourselves who grow dependent on one another... You’ve never been away from me before.”

“And you missed me?” he questioned.

She looked at him then with grave, perplexed eyes, and nodded.

“It was an experiment,” he said presently. “I wanted to see if we could do it—and we can’t... We can’t part.”

“And we can’t,” Pamela repeated slowly. “No, I don’t think we can.”

Suddenly she leaned forward and played nervously with a little fanciful spoon in her saucer.

“I meant to,” she said,—“at first. I felt—I still feel it’s the right thing to do. After you had gone away, I knew I couldn’t. I suppose I am not a good woman really.” She broke off the jerky sentences, and gazed at him somewhat wistfully. “It’s hard to want to be happy, and to know that one ought not to be. I suppose that’s why she told me... She wouldn’t leave me to be peacefully ignorant. She wanted to stretch me on the rack too.”

“Lord knows!” he answered, and stirred his tea irritably. “She’s threatened to tell you,” he added, “ever since some fool of an acquaintance, who’d been out here and was struck with the name, told her that I was living here; but I thought I could intercept the letter. I didn’t allow for it coming to the house. I knew she would never make an open scandal. She’s too proud, for one thing. Besides, she is absolutely indifferent. So long as we are not in the same country, it would never trouble her what I did.”

“But,” said Pamela, a little shyly, “she must have loved you once.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I am beginning to doubt myself, whether it is really love which brings the greater part of the world together. Not infrequently curiosity is at the bottom of it,—or the desire to make a home. The majority of cases, of course, are the result of passion,—the fundamental scheme for the continuance of the race. I don’t see that it’s much use bothering one’s head about these matters. I married when I was a hot-headed young fool; after I found out my mistake—too late. I met love... Well, I suppose I ought to have turned my back on love,—and I didn’t. There you are.”

“Yes,” Pamela returned slowly. “That is just the part I find it impossible to excuse. That was your big error; and it is going to be responsible for our further wrong-doing.”

“Look here!” he cried. “Life is in one’s own hands. One either makes it difficult by moralising, or simple by being philosophical and taking all it has to offer. It holds a lot of good for you and me, Pam... Why moralise?”

“Because,” Pamela answered, and her eyes filled with unexpected tears, “in making a deliberate choice of evil I don’t wish to cheat myself into believing that it is the only course open to me; it isn’t. If I am a bad woman, I will at least be sincere.”

He took her two hands and held them between his own and looked with kindly tolerance into the sweet, distressed face. He no longer felt any need to plead with her; he knew his case was won. Very tenderly he put her hands to his lips.

“You odd inconsistency,” he murmured, “how you delight in tormenting yourself! Can’t you see that in this matter you are entirely blameless? All the evil is mine. You are driven into a corner, poor child. Nobody in his senses would hold you responsible. Put the blame on to me, Pam,—I’m equal to shouldering it.” He slipped an arm about her, and drew her closer. “If it had all to be gone through again, I’d do the same.”

Chapter Seven.For the first few months after Arnott’s return Pamela enjoyed once more the delirious happiness of a second honeymoon. Arnott was very much in love, very grateful to her for her acceptance of her awkward and delicate position. He was bent on making good in every way possible. His love overflowed in floods of grave tenderness: he lavished upon her unexpected and extravagant gifts. Pamela appreciated his tenderness; but the gifts—too frequent and haphazard, suggesting that he recognised the necessity for pleasing and propitiating her—hurt her; it seemed to her that they represented the price of her degradation. She was reminded continually that she was no longer a free woman: she was a man’s mistress, bought and owned by hire. The price of the jewels he heaped upon her might be taken as an estimate of her value. Always he had been generous to her; he had given her many valuable presents, on her birthday, on their marriage day, and such like occasions, not, as he did now, at odd moments as though he had constantly in his mind the humiliation she endured for his sake, as though he felt the necessity to express his gratitude in some fashion, to reward her uncomplaining devotion.Pamela endured many hours of secret shame over these glittering evidences of his recognition of their altered relations. But the thing which wounded her most, wounded her whenever she looked into the clear eyes of her child, whenever the sound of little feet, the sweet shrill baby voice, fell upon her ears, was the knowledge that this little innocent creature—her baby—was born out of wedlock, was a bastard.Pamela’s mind was growing accustomed to the use of ugly terms, which she recognised fully that the world—if the world ever learnt the truth—would connect with her name and with her child’s. Such terms had once been an offence in her ears,—now they fitted her; they were no less an offence, but she accustomed herself to them. She was brutally frank with herself in the matter of her voluntarily accepted, shameful position.But in one matter she determined she would always remain secretive; the child should never learn the facts of her parents’ marriage. Neither she nor Arnott could ever requite the injury they had done the child. She had sinned in ignorance, his was the greater sin; but now her responsibility, her culpability, exceeded his. Her knowledge of the truth made her duty to the child manifestly clear; but duty had fought its unequal battle, and was beaten to the dust.Pamela’s honour had gone down into the mud, a beaten and trampled thing. She had made her first great mistake, and already her punishment was beginning. In yielding against all her principles of right, though he had fought his hardest to conquer her scruples of honourable decency, she had lost to a great extent Arnott’s respect. At the moment when knowledge first came to her, when she had so miserably tried to do what was right, his respect for her had stood so high, had been so immense and overwhelming and self-humiliating, that instead of hating her chastity which threatened to part them, he had only loved her the more strongly because of it, had admired and wanted her more insistently; now he recognised that in this weak, yielding woman, whose passion for him equalled his passion for her, subjugated all her finer qualities, he held an easy captive; a captive who shrank from freedom, who had ceded all right to be considered before and above himself.When the first flush of triumph over his victory had worn off, and with it his almost humble gratitude for her tender submissiveness, the quality of his love underwent a change, a change which manifested itself in surprising and disconcerting ways. The sensualism in his nature, which he had never allowed her to suspect hitherto, was no longer kept under; little discourtesies, formerly never practised, became common with him; on occasions he was openly rude to her. He atoned for these lapses afterwards with presents and demonstrations of greater affection. He believed that Pamela forgot these occasions as soon as he did; she always forgave readily and responded at once to his kinder moods; but Pamela did not forget. Each act of discourtesy, each rough word, left its wound in her soul.She realised, despite Arnott’s reiterated insistence that, save for the distress which this knowledge afforded her, everything remained really unchanged, that this was not so. The whole fabric of their world was changed. Their union became a deliberate criminal conspiracy, a furtive defiance of the laws of the land; it had ceased to be a bond of comradeship based on mutual esteem,—it had ceased to be a bond in any sense of the word, save in their dependence on one another. A love which has once been fine and free and frankly expansive contracts in an atmosphere of secrecy and shamed suppressions; it loses vitality.There was in the changed conditions of her life much which influenced very strongly Pamela’s development. Strange new emotions were born in her with all the anguish of new birth; a deeper understanding and at the same time a less generous conception of life grew in her. She lost something of her joyous irresponsibility and acquired a profounder wisdom. It was as though her mind developed while her soul’s growth remained temporarily arrested. And during the process the girl in her died for ever and the woman evolved in her stead.No one can pass through a grave crisis and emerge unchanged from the devastating floods that submerge one during the process. It depends entirely on the moral strength of the individual plunged into these deep waters whether he or she rises above them grandly, or merely flounders desperately until an insecure footing results as the waters recede. The calm mind, the braced purpose, of the moral victor, faces the dark hour and conquers it, and gains even from the bitterest struggle much which beautifies and is helpful to the soul, much which makes each succeeding battle to be fought simpler of conquest than the last; on the other hand, to reject the fight from motives of fear or other reluctance leaves one not only a loser in the battle, but shorn of the necessary armour wherewith to face the next fight. Pamela had lost her battle; she had thrown aside her armour and surrendered, because victory seemed to promise only an empty reward. She lost more than she knew by her surrender; not only did she forfeit her self-respect, her purity, her great gladness in life; she lost too the clean honest delight in Arnott’s love for her, in her love for him; the bright pleasant surface of things was smudged and dull; she no longer breathed in the open; it was as though ugly walls enclosed and stifled her soul.Inexplicably, she blamed the woman who had enlightened her,—Arnott’s wife,—more than she blamed Arnott himself for these miserable new conditions. She rebelled at being forced to shoulder the responsibility of her own act. If only she had been left in ignorance! ... From the bottom of her stricken, aching heart she wished that she had never received, never opened, that fatal letter. She wanted to go back to the period of her ignorance, wanted intensely to have her unsullied happiness again; and that was impossible. The door which has once stood open no longer conceals what it guards, nor can the surface of a thing that is tarnished attain to the same pristine beauty as before.During those first months of knowledge, Pamela passed through many varied phases; from dull misery, to heroic intention, which ended in a passive defeat and an acceptance of the new conditions. There followed a period of shamed, yet glowing, happiness in Arnott’s return. This phase waned all too speedily, and left only discontent and distressful self-reproach, and a first doubt as to the selflessness of Arnott’s devotion. After a while these emotions also faded, ceased in time to harass her continually; and she drifted into a state of careless apathy, a comatose condition of the soul, the result of which only future events could determine, according to the influences and impressions that were likely to bear on her life.It was during this period of indifference, of atrophied emotions, and moral inertia, that her second child was born to her,—a son. What once had been the crowning wish of her life was now granted when she had ceased to desire the gift. The birth of the boy was her final humiliation.Arnott, himself, awaited the coming of this child with mixed emotions; its birth was at once a source of triumph and of disgust to him. The last remnant of respect he retained for Pamela died at the boy’s birth. He scorned her weakness, yet he rejoiced at it because of the more complete hold it gave him upon her. She could never reproach him with being the father of their second child; she must even cease to reproach him for the past. She was now equally guilty with him.Pamela had made her first great mistake in refusing to part from him; her second greater mistake resulted in the birth of their son.By an odd chance, as though an ironic fate decreed that this child should perpetuate the older shame of his parents’ bigamous marriage with the later shame of his own birth, the baby was born on the anniversary of the wedding day. The old custom of keeping up that date as the most festive day in the year would assuredly have lapsed, even had the boy’s coming not made it an impossibility. Whatever Arnott felt about the matter, Pamela could not have celebrated with her friends the mock event which formerly had been to her a glad and sacred rite. She deeply regretted that the boy’s birth fell on the same date. Always she would be reminded of that date, would be compelled to recognise it. With each year of the child’s growth it would assume an added importance, call for greater distinctiveness; the child when he grew old enough would insist on its recognition.Arnott bought her a diamond bracelet to celebrate the double event; but he had sense enough not to present his offering until she was downstairs again and able to take an interest in things. He gave it to her one afternoon out in the garden.They had had tea together under the trees, and Pamela lay in her cane lounge, so still and so unusually silent that he fancied she was drowsy, and remained quiet also in order not to disturb her. But Pamela was not asleep; she was lost in thought. Suddenly she opened her eyes and looked at him fully.“I have been thinking about a name for baby,” she said. “Have you any preference in the matter?”“No,” he answered.He thought he detected a slight shade of vexation pass across her face, and added, after reflection:“Why not Herbert? ... We’ve reproduced you.”She flushed faintly.“That was your wish,” she said. “But it seems to me confusing when the children are christened after the parents.”“Well, it was merely a suggestion,” he returned easily.“I think I should like him called David, after my father,” she added presently. “He was the best man I have ever known.”Arnott made no response. The expression of her reason for her selection seemed to him in the circumstances uncalled for.“You don’t dislike the name, I hope?” she asked.“No. I don’t say I’d choose it. It’s rather Welsh, isn’t it?”“It’s British,” she replied, “anyway.”“Look here!” he said, dismissing the subject of the baby’s name, and fumbling in his pocket for the present which he had brought out with him, “I’ve something here for a good girl.”He leaned forward and dropped the case into her lap. Pamela took it up and opened it carelessly. She was growing a little bored with having to express gratitude so frequently for his thought for her.“Another!” she said, and held the bracelet in a languid hand. She made no effort to try it on. “You really shouldn’t be so extravagant, Herbert. I have more jewellery than I can possibly wear.”He went round to her chair and slipped the bracelet on her arm and fastened it.“It’s pretty,” he said... “You like it?”“It’s beautiful,” she replied.“And my thanks?” he said.He leaned over her. Flushed, faintly reluctant Pamela lifted her face in response. He kissed her eagerly. She always failed to understand his appreciation of these exacted caresses. It was one of his peculiarities that he enjoyed what he gained masterfully more than what was voluntarily ceded.

For the first few months after Arnott’s return Pamela enjoyed once more the delirious happiness of a second honeymoon. Arnott was very much in love, very grateful to her for her acceptance of her awkward and delicate position. He was bent on making good in every way possible. His love overflowed in floods of grave tenderness: he lavished upon her unexpected and extravagant gifts. Pamela appreciated his tenderness; but the gifts—too frequent and haphazard, suggesting that he recognised the necessity for pleasing and propitiating her—hurt her; it seemed to her that they represented the price of her degradation. She was reminded continually that she was no longer a free woman: she was a man’s mistress, bought and owned by hire. The price of the jewels he heaped upon her might be taken as an estimate of her value. Always he had been generous to her; he had given her many valuable presents, on her birthday, on their marriage day, and such like occasions, not, as he did now, at odd moments as though he had constantly in his mind the humiliation she endured for his sake, as though he felt the necessity to express his gratitude in some fashion, to reward her uncomplaining devotion.

Pamela endured many hours of secret shame over these glittering evidences of his recognition of their altered relations. But the thing which wounded her most, wounded her whenever she looked into the clear eyes of her child, whenever the sound of little feet, the sweet shrill baby voice, fell upon her ears, was the knowledge that this little innocent creature—her baby—was born out of wedlock, was a bastard.

Pamela’s mind was growing accustomed to the use of ugly terms, which she recognised fully that the world—if the world ever learnt the truth—would connect with her name and with her child’s. Such terms had once been an offence in her ears,—now they fitted her; they were no less an offence, but she accustomed herself to them. She was brutally frank with herself in the matter of her voluntarily accepted, shameful position.

But in one matter she determined she would always remain secretive; the child should never learn the facts of her parents’ marriage. Neither she nor Arnott could ever requite the injury they had done the child. She had sinned in ignorance, his was the greater sin; but now her responsibility, her culpability, exceeded his. Her knowledge of the truth made her duty to the child manifestly clear; but duty had fought its unequal battle, and was beaten to the dust.

Pamela’s honour had gone down into the mud, a beaten and trampled thing. She had made her first great mistake, and already her punishment was beginning. In yielding against all her principles of right, though he had fought his hardest to conquer her scruples of honourable decency, she had lost to a great extent Arnott’s respect. At the moment when knowledge first came to her, when she had so miserably tried to do what was right, his respect for her had stood so high, had been so immense and overwhelming and self-humiliating, that instead of hating her chastity which threatened to part them, he had only loved her the more strongly because of it, had admired and wanted her more insistently; now he recognised that in this weak, yielding woman, whose passion for him equalled his passion for her, subjugated all her finer qualities, he held an easy captive; a captive who shrank from freedom, who had ceded all right to be considered before and above himself.

When the first flush of triumph over his victory had worn off, and with it his almost humble gratitude for her tender submissiveness, the quality of his love underwent a change, a change which manifested itself in surprising and disconcerting ways. The sensualism in his nature, which he had never allowed her to suspect hitherto, was no longer kept under; little discourtesies, formerly never practised, became common with him; on occasions he was openly rude to her. He atoned for these lapses afterwards with presents and demonstrations of greater affection. He believed that Pamela forgot these occasions as soon as he did; she always forgave readily and responded at once to his kinder moods; but Pamela did not forget. Each act of discourtesy, each rough word, left its wound in her soul.

She realised, despite Arnott’s reiterated insistence that, save for the distress which this knowledge afforded her, everything remained really unchanged, that this was not so. The whole fabric of their world was changed. Their union became a deliberate criminal conspiracy, a furtive defiance of the laws of the land; it had ceased to be a bond of comradeship based on mutual esteem,—it had ceased to be a bond in any sense of the word, save in their dependence on one another. A love which has once been fine and free and frankly expansive contracts in an atmosphere of secrecy and shamed suppressions; it loses vitality.

There was in the changed conditions of her life much which influenced very strongly Pamela’s development. Strange new emotions were born in her with all the anguish of new birth; a deeper understanding and at the same time a less generous conception of life grew in her. She lost something of her joyous irresponsibility and acquired a profounder wisdom. It was as though her mind developed while her soul’s growth remained temporarily arrested. And during the process the girl in her died for ever and the woman evolved in her stead.

No one can pass through a grave crisis and emerge unchanged from the devastating floods that submerge one during the process. It depends entirely on the moral strength of the individual plunged into these deep waters whether he or she rises above them grandly, or merely flounders desperately until an insecure footing results as the waters recede. The calm mind, the braced purpose, of the moral victor, faces the dark hour and conquers it, and gains even from the bitterest struggle much which beautifies and is helpful to the soul, much which makes each succeeding battle to be fought simpler of conquest than the last; on the other hand, to reject the fight from motives of fear or other reluctance leaves one not only a loser in the battle, but shorn of the necessary armour wherewith to face the next fight. Pamela had lost her battle; she had thrown aside her armour and surrendered, because victory seemed to promise only an empty reward. She lost more than she knew by her surrender; not only did she forfeit her self-respect, her purity, her great gladness in life; she lost too the clean honest delight in Arnott’s love for her, in her love for him; the bright pleasant surface of things was smudged and dull; she no longer breathed in the open; it was as though ugly walls enclosed and stifled her soul.

Inexplicably, she blamed the woman who had enlightened her,—Arnott’s wife,—more than she blamed Arnott himself for these miserable new conditions. She rebelled at being forced to shoulder the responsibility of her own act. If only she had been left in ignorance! ... From the bottom of her stricken, aching heart she wished that she had never received, never opened, that fatal letter. She wanted to go back to the period of her ignorance, wanted intensely to have her unsullied happiness again; and that was impossible. The door which has once stood open no longer conceals what it guards, nor can the surface of a thing that is tarnished attain to the same pristine beauty as before.

During those first months of knowledge, Pamela passed through many varied phases; from dull misery, to heroic intention, which ended in a passive defeat and an acceptance of the new conditions. There followed a period of shamed, yet glowing, happiness in Arnott’s return. This phase waned all too speedily, and left only discontent and distressful self-reproach, and a first doubt as to the selflessness of Arnott’s devotion. After a while these emotions also faded, ceased in time to harass her continually; and she drifted into a state of careless apathy, a comatose condition of the soul, the result of which only future events could determine, according to the influences and impressions that were likely to bear on her life.

It was during this period of indifference, of atrophied emotions, and moral inertia, that her second child was born to her,—a son. What once had been the crowning wish of her life was now granted when she had ceased to desire the gift. The birth of the boy was her final humiliation.

Arnott, himself, awaited the coming of this child with mixed emotions; its birth was at once a source of triumph and of disgust to him. The last remnant of respect he retained for Pamela died at the boy’s birth. He scorned her weakness, yet he rejoiced at it because of the more complete hold it gave him upon her. She could never reproach him with being the father of their second child; she must even cease to reproach him for the past. She was now equally guilty with him.

Pamela had made her first great mistake in refusing to part from him; her second greater mistake resulted in the birth of their son.

By an odd chance, as though an ironic fate decreed that this child should perpetuate the older shame of his parents’ bigamous marriage with the later shame of his own birth, the baby was born on the anniversary of the wedding day. The old custom of keeping up that date as the most festive day in the year would assuredly have lapsed, even had the boy’s coming not made it an impossibility. Whatever Arnott felt about the matter, Pamela could not have celebrated with her friends the mock event which formerly had been to her a glad and sacred rite. She deeply regretted that the boy’s birth fell on the same date. Always she would be reminded of that date, would be compelled to recognise it. With each year of the child’s growth it would assume an added importance, call for greater distinctiveness; the child when he grew old enough would insist on its recognition.

Arnott bought her a diamond bracelet to celebrate the double event; but he had sense enough not to present his offering until she was downstairs again and able to take an interest in things. He gave it to her one afternoon out in the garden.

They had had tea together under the trees, and Pamela lay in her cane lounge, so still and so unusually silent that he fancied she was drowsy, and remained quiet also in order not to disturb her. But Pamela was not asleep; she was lost in thought. Suddenly she opened her eyes and looked at him fully.

“I have been thinking about a name for baby,” she said. “Have you any preference in the matter?”

“No,” he answered.

He thought he detected a slight shade of vexation pass across her face, and added, after reflection:

“Why not Herbert? ... We’ve reproduced you.”

She flushed faintly.

“That was your wish,” she said. “But it seems to me confusing when the children are christened after the parents.”

“Well, it was merely a suggestion,” he returned easily.

“I think I should like him called David, after my father,” she added presently. “He was the best man I have ever known.”

Arnott made no response. The expression of her reason for her selection seemed to him in the circumstances uncalled for.

“You don’t dislike the name, I hope?” she asked.

“No. I don’t say I’d choose it. It’s rather Welsh, isn’t it?”

“It’s British,” she replied, “anyway.”

“Look here!” he said, dismissing the subject of the baby’s name, and fumbling in his pocket for the present which he had brought out with him, “I’ve something here for a good girl.”

He leaned forward and dropped the case into her lap. Pamela took it up and opened it carelessly. She was growing a little bored with having to express gratitude so frequently for his thought for her.

“Another!” she said, and held the bracelet in a languid hand. She made no effort to try it on. “You really shouldn’t be so extravagant, Herbert. I have more jewellery than I can possibly wear.”

He went round to her chair and slipped the bracelet on her arm and fastened it.

“It’s pretty,” he said... “You like it?”

“It’s beautiful,” she replied.

“And my thanks?” he said.

He leaned over her. Flushed, faintly reluctant Pamela lifted her face in response. He kissed her eagerly. She always failed to understand his appreciation of these exacted caresses. It was one of his peculiarities that he enjoyed what he gained masterfully more than what was voluntarily ceded.

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