Prisoners | Page 6

his.
"Do not grieve so," he said brokenly. "It is not our fault. It is greater
than either of us. It has come upon us against our wills. We have both
struggled. You don't know how I have struggled, Fay, day and night
since I came to Rome. But I have been in fault. I ought never to have
come, for I knew you were living near Rome. But I did not know it had
touched you, and for myself I had hoped--I thought--that it was past--in
as far as it could pass--that I was accustomed to it. Listen, Fay, and do
not cry so bitterly. I will leave Rome at once. I will not see you again.
My poor darling, we have come to a hard place in life, but we can do
the only thing left to us--our duty."
Fay's heart contracted, and she suddenly ceased sobbing. She had never
thought of this horrible possibility that he would leave her.
She drew the hand that clasped hers to her lips and held it tightly
against her breast.

"Don't leave me," she stammered, trembling from head to foot, from
sheer terror at the thought; "I will be good. I will do what is right. We
are not like other people. We can trust each other. But I can't live
without seeing you sometimes, I could not bear it."
He withdrew his hand. They looked wildly into each other's eyes. His
convulsed face paled and paled. Even as he stood before her she knew
she was losing him, that something was tearing him from her. It was as
certain that he was going from her as if she were standing by his
deathbed.
He kissed her suddenly.
"I shall not come back," he said. And the next moment he was gone.
CHAPTER II
Nous passons notre vie à nous forger des chaînes, et à nous plaindre de
les porter.--VALTOUR.
For a long time Fay had stood on her balcony looking out towards
Rome, while the remembrance of the last few months pressed in upon
her.
It was a week since she had seen Michael, since he had said, "I shall
not come back."
And in the meanwhile she had heard that he had resigned his
appointment, and was leaving Rome at once. She had never imagined
that he would act so quickly, with such determination. She had vaguely
supposed that he would send in his resignation, and then remain on. In
novels in a situation like theirs the man never really went away, or if he
did he came back. Fay knew very little of Michael, but nevertheless she
instinctively felt and quailed before the conviction that he really was
leaving her for ever, that he would reconstruct a life for himself
somewhere in which she could not reach him, in which she would have
no part or lot. He might suffer during the process, but he would do it.
His yea was yea, and his nay, nay. She should see him no more. Some

day, not for a long time perhaps, but some day, she should hear of his
marriage.
Suddenly, without a moment's warning, her own life rose up before her,
distorted, horrible, unendurable. The ilexes, solemn in the sunset,
showed like foul shapes of disgust and nausea. The quiet Campagna
with its distant faintly outlined Sabine hills was rotten to the core.
The duke passed across a glade at a little distance, and, looking up,
smiled gravely at her, with a slight courteous gesture of his brown
hand.
She smiled mechanically in response and shrank back into her room.
Her husband had suddenly become a thing to shudder at, repulsive as a
reptile, intolerable. Her life with him, without Michael, stretched before
her like a loathsome disease, a leprosy, which in the interminable years
would gradually eat her away, a death by inches.
The first throes of a frustrated passion at the stake have probably
seldom failed to engender a fierce rebellion against the laws which light
the faggots round it.
The fire had licked Fay. She fled blindfold from it, not knowing
whither, only away from that pain, over any precipice, into any slough.
"I cannot live without him," she sobbed to herself. "This is not just a
common love affair like other people's. It is everything, my whole life!
It is not as if we were bad people! We are both upright! We always
have been! We have both done our best, but--I can't go on. What is
reputation worth, the world's opinion of me?--nothing."
It was not worth more to Fay at that moment than it has ever been
worth to any other poor mortal since the world's opinion first clashed
with love.
To follow love shows itself time and time again alike to the pure