Part 85

"Because I never look away."

"Can you see what's going on inside me?"

"Sometimes. I don't always look."

"Can you help looking?"

"Of course you can."

"You may look. I don't think I mind your looking. Why," she asked abruptly, "don't I mind?"

Her voice had an accent that betrayed her.

"Because there's nothing inside you that you're ashamed of."

She reddened with shame; shame of the fierce, base instinct that had made her keep him to herself. She knew that nothing escaped him. He had the keen, comprehending eyes of the physician who knows the sad secrets of the body; and he had other eyes that saw inward, that held and drew to confession the terrified, reluctant soul. She had an insane longing to throw herself at his feet in confession.

"Yes," she said, "but there are things----And yet----"

He stopped her. "Nothing, Nina, if you really knew yourself."

"Owen--it's not that. It's not because I don't know myself. It's because I know you. I know that, whatever there might be in me, whatever I did, however low I sank--if I could sink--your charity would be there to hold me up. And it wouldn't be your charity, either. I couldn't stand your charity. It wouldn't even be understanding. You don't understand me. It would be some knowledge of me that I couldn't have myself, that nobody but you could have. As if whatever you saw you'd say, 'That isn't really Nina.'"

"I should say, 'That's really Nina, so it's all right.'"

She paused, brooding on the possibilities he saw, that he was bound to see, if he saw anything. Did he, she wondered, really see what was in her, her hidden shames and insanities, the course of the wild blood that he knew must flow from all the Lemprieres to her? She lived, to be sure, the life of an ascetic and took it out in dreams. Yet he must see how her savage, solitary passion clung to him, and would not let go. Did he see, and yet did he not condemn her?

"Owen," she said suddenly, "do you mind seeing?"

"Sometimes I hate it. These aren't the things, you know, I want to see."

She lowered her eyes. Her nervous hand moved slowly to and fro along the window-sill, measuring her next words.

"What--do you want--to see?"

He rose to his feet and looked at her. At her, not through her, and she wondered, had he seen enough? It was as if he withdrew himself before some thought that stirred in her, menacing to peace.

"I can't tell you," he said. "I can't talk about it."

Then she knew what he meant. He was thinking of his vision, his vision of God.

He could not speak of it to her. She had never known him. This soul, with which her own claimed kindred, was hidden from her by all the veils of heaven.

"I know," she said. "Only tell me one thing. Was that what you went out to India and Central Africa to see?"

That drew him.

"No. I went out not to see it. To get away from it. I meant to give things their chance. That's why I went in for medicine. I wasn't going to shirk. I wanted to be a man. Not a long-haired, weedy thing in a soft hat."

"Was it any good?"

"Yes. I proved the unreality of things. I proved it up to the hilt. And I didn't shirk."

"But you wanted to escape, all the time?"