The Vision of Desire — A Closer Reading

She looked away from him towards the distant mountains rimming the horizon.

"I meant just what I said. I can't marry you," she answered mechanically.

"But that's absurd! You've known I cared--you've cared, too--all these weeks. And last night you promised--you said--"

"Last night!" She swung round and faced him. "I tell you we've got to _forget_ last night--count it out. It--it was just an interlude--"

She broke off, blenching at the abrupt change in his expression. Up till now his face had been full of an incredulous, boyish bewilderment, half tender, half chiding. Within himself he had refused to believe that there was any serious intent behind her letter. It was fruit of some foolish misunderstanding or shy feminine withdrawal, and he was here to straighten it all out, to reassure her. But that word "interlude"! Had she been deliberately playing with him after all? Women did such things--sometimes. His features took on a sudden sternness.

"An interlude?" he repeated quietly. "I'm afraid I don't understand. Will you explain?"

Her shoulders moved resentfully.

"Why do you want to force me into explanations?" she burst out. "Surely--_surely_ you understand? We can't marry--we haven't money enough!"

There was a long pause before he spoke again.

"I've enough money to marry on, if it comes to that," he said at last, slowly. "Though we should certainly be comparatively poor. What you mean is that I'm not rich enough to satisfy you, I suppose?"

"Yes. I'm sick--_sick_ of being poor! I've been poor all my life--always having to skimp and save and do things on the cheap--go without this and make shift with that. I'm tired of it! This last two months with Aunt Elvira--all this luxury and beauty," she gestured eloquently towards the villa standing like a gem in its exquisite Italian setting, "the car, the perfect service, as many frocks as I want--Oh! I've loved it all! And I can't give it up. I can't go back to being poor again!"

She paused, breathless, and her eyes, passionately upbraiding, beseeching understanding, sought his face.

"Don't you understand?" she added, twisting her hands together.

"Yes, I'm beginning to," he returned briefly. "But how are you going to compass what you want--as a permanency? Your visit to Lady Templeton can't extend indefinitely."

She was silent, evading his glance. Her foot beat nervously on the flagged path where they stood.

"Is there some one else?" he asked incisively. "Another man--who can give you all these things?"

A dull, shamed red flushed her cheek. With an effort she forced herself to answer him.

"Yes," she said very low. "There is--some one else."

"I wonder if he realises his luck!"

The palpable sneer in his voice cut like a lash. She winced under it.

"One more question--I'd like to know the answer out of sheer curiosity." His voice was clear and hard--like ice, "You knew you were going to do this to me--last night?"

Her lips moved but no words came. She gestured mutely--imploringly.

His implacable insistence whipped her into a sudden flare of defiance. She was like a cornered animal.

"Yes, then, if you must have it--I _did_ know!" she flung at him in a low tone of furious anger.

Involuntarily he stepped back from her a pace, like a man suddenly smitten and stunned.

"While for me last night was sacred!" he muttered under his breath.

Before the utter scorn and repugnance in the low-breathed words her defiance crumbled to pieces.

"And for me, too! Eliot, I wasn't pretending. I _do_ love you. I never meant you to know, but last night--I couldn't help it. I'd promised to marry the--the other man, and then you came, and we were alone--and--Oh!"--desperately, lifting a wrung face to his. "Why won't you understand?"

But the beautiful, imploring face failed to move him one jot. Something had died suddenly within him--the something that was young and eager and blindly trusting. When she ceased speaking he was only conscious that he wanted to take her and break her between his two hands--destroy her as he had destroyed the letter she had written. The blood was drumming in his temples. His hands clenched and unclenched spasmodically. She was so slender a thing that it would be very easy ... very easy with those iron muscles of his.... And then she would be dead. She was so beautiful and so rotten at the core that she would be better dead....