Moth and Rust | Page 5

tons of others younger and
better looking than I am."
"Now, Anne, I am absolutely certain that you have never run a yard
after him."
"I have never appeared to do so," said Anne, with her faint, enigmatical
smile. "The proprieties have been observed. At least by me they have.
But I have covered a good deal of ground, nevertheless."
"I don't know what he is made of."
"Well, he is made of money for one thing, and I have not a shilling. He
knows that."
"He ought to be only too honoured by your being willing to think of
him. In my young days a man of his class would not have had a
chance."
"Millionaires get their chance nowadays."
"Then why doesn't he take it?"
"Because," said Anne, her lip quivering, "he thinks I like him for his
money. He has got that firmly screwed into his head."
"As if a woman like you would do such a thing."
"Women extremely like me are doing such things all the time. How is
he to know I am different?"
"He must be a fool."
"He does not look like one."

"No," said Mrs. Trefusis meditatively, "I must own he does not. He has
a bullet head. I saw him once at the Duchess of Dundee's last summer.
He was pointed out to me as the biggest thing in millionaires since
Barnato. But I must confess he was the very last person in the world
whom I should have thought you would have looked at--for himself, I
mean."
"That is what he thinks."
"He is so very unattractive."
"He is an ugly, forbidding-looking man of forty," said Anne, who had
become very pale.
"I should not go as far as that," said Mrs. Trefusis, somewhat
disconcerted.
"Oh! I can for you!" said Anne, her quiet eyes flashing. "He is all these
things. He is exactly what I would rather not have married. And I think
he knows that instinctively, poor man! But in spite of all that, in spite
of everything that repels me, I know that we belong to each other. He
did not choose to like me, or I to like him. I never had any choice in the
matter. When I first saw him I recognised him. I had known him all my
life. I had been waiting for him always without knowing it. I never
really understood anything till he came. I did not fall in love with him;
at least, not in the way I see others do, and as I once did myself years
ago. I am not attracted towards him. I am him. And he is me. One can't
fall in love with oneself. He is my other self. We are one. We may live
painfully apart as we are doing now--he may marry some one else: but
the fact remains the same."
Mrs. Trefusis did not answer. Love is so rare that when we meet it we
realise that we are on holy ground.
"You and he will marry some day," she said at last.
Her thoughts went back to her own youth, and its romantic love and
marriage. There was no romance here as she understood it, nothing but

a grim reality. But it almost seemed as if love could go deeper without
romance.
"I do not see how a misunderstanding can hold together between you."
"You forget mother," said Anne.
Mrs. Trefusis had momentarily forgotten her closest friend, the
Duchess of Quorn, that notorious match-making mother of a quartette
of pretty, well-drilled daughters, all of whom were now advantageously
married except Anne--the eldest. And if Anne was not at this moment
wedded to George Trefusis it was not owing to want of zeal on the part
of both mothers. Mrs. Trefusis was irrevocably behind the scenes in
Anne's family.
"Mother ought by nature to have been a man and a cricketer," said
Anne, "instead of the mother of many daughters. She is 'game' to the
last, she is a hard hitter, and she will run till she drops on the chance of
any catch. But her bowling is her strong point. Young men have not a
chance with her. Her style may not be dignified, but her eye is
extraordinary. Harry Lestrange did his silly, panic-stricken best, but--he
is married to Cecily now."
"Did he really try to get out of it?"
"He did. He liked Cecily a little; he had certainly flirted with her when
she came in his way, but he never made the least effort to meet her, and
he did not want to marry her."
"And Cecily?"
"Cecily did not dislike him. She was only nineteen, and she had--so she
told me--always hoped for curly hair; and of course Harry's is quite
straight, what little there is of