Part 50

"How d'you know?"

"My poor boy, d'you think you can deceive me! And is it not the wife of an officer?"

"Yes."

"A very old friend of yours?"

"It's just that which makes it so terrible."

"I knew it."

"Oh, Mrs. Clibborn, I swear you're the only woman here who's got two ounces of gumption. If they'd only listened to you five years ago, we might all have been saved this awful wretchedness."

He could not understand that Mrs. Clibborn, whose affectations were manifest, whose folly was notorious, should alone have guessed his secret. He was tired of perpetually concealing his thoughts.

"I wish I could tell you everything!" he cried.

"Don't! You'd only regret it. And I know all you can tell me."

"You can't think how hard I've struggled. When I found I loved her, I nearly killed myself trying to kill my love. But it's no good. It's stronger than I am."

"And nothing can ever come of it, you know," said Mrs. Clibborn.

"Oh, I know! Of course, I know! I'm not a cad. The only thing is to live on and suffer."

"I'm so sorry for you."

Mrs. Clibborn thought that even poor Algy Turner, who had killed himself for love of her, had not been so desperately hit.

"It's very kind of you to listen to me," said James. "I have nobody to speak to, and sometimes I feel I shall go mad."

"You're such a nice boy, James. What a pity it is you didn't go into the cavalry!"

James scarcely heard; he stared at the floor, brooding sorrowfully.

"Fate is against me," he muttered.

"If things had only happened a little differently. Poor Reggie!"

Mrs. Clibborn was thinking that if she were a widow, she could never have resisted the unhappy young man's pleading.

James got up to go.

"It's no good," he said; "talking makes it no better. I must go on trying to crush it. And the worst of it is, I don't want to crush it; I love my love. Though it embitters my whole life, I would rather die than lose it. Good-bye, Mrs. Clibborn. Thank you for being so kind. You can't imagine what good it does me to receive a little sympathy."

"I know. You're not the first who has told me that he is miserable. I think it's fate, too."

James looked at her, perplexed, not understanding what she meant. With her sharp, feminine intuition, Mrs. Clibborn read in his eyes the hopeless yearning of his heart, and for a moment her rigid virtue faltered.

"I can't be hard on you, Jamie," she said, with that effective, sad smile of hers. "I don't want you to go away from here quite wretched."

"What can you do to ease the bitter aching of my heart?"

Mrs. Clibborn, quickly looking at the window, noticed that she could not possibly be seen by anyone outside. She stretched out her hand.