"I don't think our engagement can go on," she plunged, and felt exactly that loss of breath that comes with a dive into icy water.
"But, how," he said, sitting up astonished beyond measure, "not go on?""I have been thinking while you have been talking. You see--Ididn't understand."
She stared hard at her finger-nails. "It is hard to express one's self, but I do want to be honest with you. When I promised to marry you I thought I could; I thought it was a possible arrangement. I did think it could be done. I admired your chivalry. I was grateful."She paused.
"Go on," he said.
She moved her elbow nearer to him and spoke in a still lower tone. "I told you I did not love you.""I know," said Manning, nodding gravely. "It was fine and brave of you.""But there is something more."
She paused again.
"I--I am sorry-- I didn't explain. These things are difficult.
It wasn't clear to me that I had to explain. . . . I love some one else."They remained looking at each other for three or four seconds.
Then Manning flopped back in his chair and dropped his chin like a man shot. There was a long silence between them.
"My God!" he said at last, with tremendous feeling, and then again, "My God!"Now that this thing was said her mind was clear and calm. She heard this standard expression of a strong soul wrung with a critical coldness that astonished herself. She realized dimly that there was no personal thing behind his cry, that countless myriads of Mannings had "My God!"-ed with an equal gusto at situations as flatly apprehended. This mitigated her remorse enormously. He rested his brow on his hand and conveyed magnificent tragedy by his pose.
"But why," he said in the gasping voice of one subduing an agony, and looked at her from under a pain-wrinkled brow, "why did you not tell me this before?""I didn't know-- I thought I might be able to control myself.""And you can't?"
"I don't think I ought to control myself.""And I have been dreaming and thinking--""I am frightfully sorry. . . ."
"But-- This bolt from the blue! My God! Ann Veronica, you don't understand. This--this shatters a world!"She tried to feel sorry, but her sense of his immense egotism was strong and clear.
He went on with intense urgency.
"Why did you ever let me love you? Why did you ever let me peep through the gates of Paradise? Oh! my God! I don't begin to feel and realize this yet. It seems to me just talk; it seems to me like the fancy of a dream. Tell me I haven't heard. This is a joke of yours." He made his voice very low and full, and looked closely into her face.
She twisted her fingers tightly. "It isn't a joke," she said.
"I feel shabby and disgraced. . . . I ought never to have thought of it. Of you, I mean. . . ."He fell back in his chair with an expression of tremendous desolation. "My God!" he said again. . . .
They became aware of the waitress standing over them with book and pencil ready for their bill. "Never mind the bill," said Manning tragically, standing up and thrusting a four-shilling piece into her hand, and turning a broad back on her astonishment. "Let us walk across the Park at least," he said to Ann Veronica. "Just at present my mind simply won't take hold of this at all. . . . I tell you--never mind the bill. Keep it!
Keep it!"
Part 6
They walked a long way that afternoon. They crossed the Park to the westward, and then turned back and walked round the circle about the Royal Botanical Gardens and then southwardly toward Waterloo. They trudged and talked, and Manning struggled, as he said, to "get the hang of it all."It was a long, meandering talk, stupid, shameful, and unavoidable. Ann Veronica was apologetic to the bottom of her soul. At the same time she was wildly exultant at the resolution she had taken, the end she had made to her blunder. She had only to get through this, to solace Manning as much as she could, to put such clumsy plasterings on his wounds as were possible, and then, anyhow, she would be free--free to put her fate to the test. She made a few protests, a few excuses for her action in accepting him, a few lame explanations, but he did not heed them or care for them. Then she realized that it was her business to let Manning talk and impose his own interpretations upon the situation so far as he was concerned. She did her best to do this. But about his unknown rival he was acutely curious.
He made her tell him the core of the difficulty.
