II
There were times when their friendship seemed well-nigh perfect, the perfect thing that they would have it to be, and on such a day of complete understanding, Stephen suddenly spoke to Martin about Morton.
They two were alone together in her study, and she said: “There’s something I want to tell you—you must often have wondered why I left my home.”
He nodded: “I’ve never quite liked to ask, because I know how you loved the place, how you love it still …”
“Yes, I love it,” she answered.
Then she let every barrier go down before him, blissfully conscious of what she was doing. Not since Puddle had left her had she been able to talk without restraint of her exile. And once launched she had not the least wish to stop, but must tell him all, omitting no detail save one that honour forbade her to give—she withheld the name of Angela Crossby.
“It’s so terribly hard on Mary,” she finished; “think of it, Mary’s never seen Morton; she’s not even met Puddle in all these years! Of course Puddle can’t very well come here to stay—how can she and then go back to Morton? And yet I want her to live with my mother … But the whole thing seems so outrageous for Mary.” She went on to talk to him of her father: “If my father had lived, I know he’d have helped me. He loved me so much, and he understood—I found out that my father knew all about me, only—” She hesitated, and then: “Perhaps he loved me too much to tell me.”
Martin said nothing for quite a long time, and when he did speak it was very gravely: “Mary—how much does she know of all this?”
“As little as I could possibly tell her. She knows that I can’t get on with my mother, and that my mother won’t ask her to Morton; but she doesn’t know that I had to leave home because of a woman, that I was turned out—I’ve wanted to spare her all I could.”
“Do you think you were right?”
“Yes, a thousand times.”
“Well, only you can judge of that, Stephen.” He looked down at the carpet, then he asked abruptly: “Does she know about you and me, about …”
Stephen shook her head: “No, she’s no idea. She thinks you were just my very good friend as you are today. I don’t want her to know.”
“For my sake?” he demanded.
And she answered slowly: “Well, yes, I suppose so … for your sake, Martin.”
Then an unexpected, and to her very moving thing happened; his eyes filled with pitiful tears: “Lord,” he muttered, “why need this have come upon you—this incomprehensible dispensation? It’s enough to make one deny God’s existence!”
She felt a great need to reassure him. At that moment he seemed so much younger than she was as he stood there with his eyes full of pitiful tears, doubting God, because of his human compassion: “There are still the trees. Don’t forget the trees, Martin—because of them you used to believe.”
“Have you come to believe in a God then?” he muttered.
“Yes,” she told him, “it’s strange, but I know now I must—lots of us feel that way in the end. I’m not really religious like some of the others, but I’ve got to acknowledge God’s existence, though at times I still think: ‘Can He really exist?’ One can’t help it, when one’s seen what I have here in Paris. But unless there’s a God, where do some of us find even the little courage we possess?”
Martin stared out of the window in silence.