The Shadow of the East

“Before God I swear that I am not,” he said, with unexpected fierceness that startled her, and the sudden painful gripping of the strong hands on her shoulders made her for the first time aware of his strength. She thought of it wonderingly. If it had been otherwise, if he had loved her, how gladly she would have surrendered to it. It would have stood between her and the unknown world that loomed sometimes in spite of her confidence with a sinister horror on which she dared not dwell. In the safety of his arms she would never have known fear, his strength would have shielded her through life. And, in a lesser degree, his strength might still be hers to turn to, if she would. A new conception of the future she had planned rushed over her, the confidence she had felt fell suddenly away, leaving fear and dread and a terror of loneliness. His touch had destroyed her faith in herself. It had done more. In some subtle way it seemed to her he had by his touch claimed her. And with his hands still pressing her shoulders she felt a strange inability to oppose him. He had sworn that it was not pity that dictated his offer. He had said that love did not exist for him. What then could be his motive? She could find none.

“You wouldn’t lie to me?” she whispered, tormented with doubt, “you wish this—this marriage—truly?”

He looked at her steadily.

“I wish it, truly,” he said firmly.

“You would let me go on with my work?” she faltered, fighting for time.

“I have said that I would not interfere with you in any way, that you would be free in everything,” he answered, and as if in earnest of the freedom promised his hands slipped from her.

The fire had died down again, and the room was almost dark, he could hardly see her where she stood. He waited, hoping she would speak, then abruptly: “Can you give me an answer, Gillian?”

He heard the quick intake of her breath, felt her trembling beside him.

“Oh, if you would give me time,” she murmured entreatingly. “I want to think. It means so much.”

“Take all the time you wish,” he said, and went quietly away. And his going brought a sudden desolation. She longed to call him back, to promise what he asked, to yield without further struggle. But uncertainty held her. Motionless she stood staring through the darkness at the dim outline of the door that had closed behind him, her breast heaving tumultuously, until tears blinded her and with a gasping sob she slipped to the floor. She had never dared to hope that he could love her, but the truth from his own lips was bitter. And for a time the realisation of that bitterness deadened all other feeling. Overwrought with the emotion of the last few hours, her nerves strained to breaking point, she was unable to check the tide of grief that shook her to the very depths of her being. With her face hidden in the soft rug, her outflung hands clenching convulsively, she wept in an abandonment of sorrow.

If he had never spoken, if he had never made this strange proposal but had maintained until the end the detached reserve that had seemed to set so wide a gulf between them, it would have been easier to bear. He would have passed out of her life, inscrutable as he had always been. But with his change of attitude, in the intimacy of the few hours they had spent alone, she had seen him with new eyes. The mysterious unapproachable guardian had gone for ever, and in his place was a very human man revealing characteristics she had never imagined to exist, showing an interest and a gentleness she had never suspected. He had exhibited a similarity of tastes and ideas that agreed extraordinarily with her own, he had talked as to a comrade. The companionship had been very sweet—very sorrowful. She could never think of him again as he had been, and the new conception of him gave a poignant stab to her grief. In the brief happiness of the afternoon she had had a fleeting vision of what might have been “if he had loved me,” she moaned, and it seemed to her that she had never known until now the real depth of her own love. What she had felt before was not comparable with the overwhelming passion that the touch of his hands had quickened. It swept her like a raging torrent, carrying her beyond the limit of her understanding, bringing with it strange yearnings that, half-understood, she shuddered from, ashamed.

Torn with emotion she wept until she had no tears left, until the hard racking sobs died away and her tired sorrow-shaken body lay still. For the moment, exhausted, her agony of mind was dulled and time was non-existent. She did not move or lift her head from the tear-wet rug. A great weariness seemed to deaden all faculty. The minutes passed unnoticed. Then some latent consciousness stirred in her brain and she looked up startled.