The tears seemed to
scald his eyes. In his heart he cursed God for not permitting him to be
what he longed to be, to feel what he longed to feel. It seemed to him
monstrous, intolerable, that even our emotions are arranged for us as are
arranged the events of our lives. He felt like a doll, a horrible puppet.
"Poor old Robin!"
She was standing beside him, and in her voice there was, just for a
moment, the sound that sometimes comes into a mother's voice when she
speaks to her little child in the dark.
At the moment when he knew he did not love the white angel she stood
beside him.
And she thought that she was only a wretched woman.
CHAPTER XX
ROBIN had gone. He had gone, still protesting that Lady Holme was
deceiving herself, protesting desperately, with the mistaken chivalry of
one who was not only a gentleman to his finger-tips but who was also an
almost fanatical lover of his own romance. After recovering from the
first shock of his disillusion, and her strange reception of it, so
different from anything he could have imagined possible in her, or indeed
in any woman who had lived as she had, he had said everything that was
passionate, everything that fitted in with his old protestations when she
was beautiful. He had spoken, perhaps, even more to recall himself than
to convince her, but he had not succeeded in either effort, and a
strange, mingled sense of tragic sadness and immense relief invaded him
as the width of waterway grew steadily larger between his boat and Casa
Felice.
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