Again the little
head!--and the soft curls. Kitty was there--crouched beside
him--weeping. There flashed into his mind an image of the night in
London when she had come to him thus; and unwelcome as the whole
remembrance was, he was conscious of a sudden swelling wave of pity and
passion. What if he sprang up, caught her in his arms, forgave her, and
bade the world go hang!
No! The impulse passed, and in his turn he feigned sleep. The thought of
her long deceit, of the selfish wilfulness wherewith she had requited
deep love and easy trust, was too much; it seared his heart. And there
was another and a subtler influence. To have forgiven so easily would
have seemed treachery to those high ambitions and ideals from which--as
he thought, only too certainly--she had now cut him off. It was part of
his surviving youth that the catastrophe seemed to him so absolute. Any
thought of the fresh efforts which would be necessary for the
reconquering of his position was no less sickening to him than that of
the immediate discomforts and humiliations to be undergone. He would go
back to books and amusement; and in the idling of the future there would
be plenty of time for love-making.
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