The Beast in the Jungle | Page 4

why should I?" he asked.
"Lived away, you mean, from what I myself was?"
"From what I was. I was of course an ass," Marcher went on; "but I
would rather know from you just the sort of ass I was than--from the
moment you have something in your mind--not know anything."
Still, however, she hesitated. "But if you've completely ceased to be
that sort--?"
"Why I can then all the more bear to know. Besides, perhaps I haven't."
"Perhaps. Yet if you haven't," she added, "I should suppose you'd
remember. Not indeed that I in the least connect with my impression
the invidious name you use. If I had only thought you foolish," she
explained, "the thing I speak of wouldn't so have remained with me. It
was about yourself." She waited as if it might come to him; but as, only
meeting her eyes in wonder, he gave no sign, she burnt her ships. "Has
it ever happened?"
Then it was that, while he continued to stare, a light broke for him and
the blood slowly came to his face, which began to burn with
recognition.
"Do you mean I told you--?" But he faltered, lest what came to him
shouldn't be right, lest he should only give himself away.
"It was something about yourself that it was natural one shouldn't
forget--that is if one remembered you at all. That's why I ask you," she
smiled, "if the thing you then spoke of has ever come to pass?"

Oh then he saw, but he was lost in wonder and found himself
embarrassed. This, he also saw, made her sorry for him, as if her
allusion had been a mistake. It took him but a moment, however, to feel
it hadn't been, much as it had been a surprise. After the first little shock
of it her knowledge on the contrary began, even if rather strangely, to
taste sweet to him. She was the only other person in the world then who
would have it, and she had had it all these years, while the fact of his
having so breathed his secret had unaccountably faded from him. No
wonder they couldn't have met as if nothing had happened. "I judge,"
he finally said, "that I know what you mean. Only I had strangely
enough lost any sense of having taken you so far into my confidence."
"Is it because you've taken so many others as well?"
"I've taken nobody. Not a creature since then."
"So that I'm the only person who knows?"
"The only person in the world."
"Well," she quickly replied, "I myself have never spoken. I've never,
never repeated of you what you told me." She looked at him so that he
perfectly believed her. Their eyes met over it in such a way that he was
without a doubt. "And I never will."
She spoke with an earnestness that, as if almost excessive, put him at
ease about her possible derision. Somehow the whole question was a
new luxury to him--that is from the moment she was in possession. If
she didn't take the sarcastic view she clearly took the sympathetic, and
that was what he had had, in all the long time, from no one
whomsoever. What he felt was that he couldn't at present have begun to
tell her, and yet could profit perhaps exquisitely by the accident of
having done so of old. "Please don't then. We're just right as it is."
"Oh I am," she laughed, "if you are!" To which she added: "Then you
do still feel in the same way?"
It was impossible he shouldn't take to himself that she was really

interested, though it all kept coming as a perfect surprise. He had
thought of himself so long as abominably alone, and lo he wasn't alone
a bit. He hadn't been, it appeared, for an hour--since those moments on
the Sorrento boat. It was she who had been, he seemed to see as he
looked at her--she who had been made so by the graceless fact of his
lapse of fidelity. To tell her what he had told her--what had it been but
to ask something of her? something that she had given, in her charity,
without his having, by a remembrance, by a return of the spirit, failing
another encounter, so much as thanked her. What he had asked of her
had been simply at first not to laugh at him. She had beautifully not
done so for ten years, and she was not doing so now. So he had endless
gratitude to make up. Only for that he must see just how he had figured
to her. "What, exactly, was the account I gave--?"
"Of the way you did feel? Well, it was very simple. You said you