The Literary Sense. Эдит Несбит
She had put on the prettiest gown she had, in the hope that he would be sorry; then she was ashamed of the impulse; also its pale clear greenness seemed to intensify the pinkness of her nose. So she went back to the trailing grey gown. Her wearing of her best Honiton lace collar seemed pardonable. He would never notice it—or know that real lace is more becoming than anything else. She waited for him in the deep shadow, and it was all the morning that she waited. For he knew the value of suspense, and he had not the generosity that disdains the use of the obvious weapon. He was right so far, that before he came she had had time to wonder whether it was her life's one chance of happiness that she had thrown away. But he drove the knife home too far, for when at last she heard the click of the gate and saw the gleam of flannels through the shrubbery, the anxious questioning, "Will he come?" "Have I offended him beyond recall?" changed at one heart-beat to an almost perfect understanding of his reasons for delay. She greeted him coldly. That he expected. But he saw—or believed he saw—the relief under the coldness—and he brought up his forces for the attack.
"Dear," he said—almost at once—"forgive me for last night. It was true, and if I had expressed it better you'd have understood. It isn't just the house and garden, and the perfect life. It's you! Don't you understand what it is to come back from the world to all this, and you—you—you—the very centre of the star?"
"It's all very well," she said, "but that wasn't what you said last night."
"It's what I meant," said he. "Dear, don't you see how much I want you?"
"But—I'm old—and plain, and—"
She looked at him with eyes still heavy from last night's tears, and he experienced an unexpected impulse of genuine tenderness.
"My dear," he said, "when I first remember your mother she was about your age. I used to think she was the most beautiful person in the world. She seemed to shed happiness and peace around her—like—like a lamp sheds light. And you are just like her. Ah—don't send me away."
"Thank you," she said, struggling wildly with the cross currents of emotion set up by his words. "Thank you. I have not lived single all these years to be married at last because I happen to be like my mother."
The words seemed a treason to the dead, and the tears filled Dorothea's eyes.
He saw them; he perceived that they ran in worn channels, and the impulse of tenderness grew.
Till this moment he had spoken only the truth. His eyes took in the sunny lawn beyond the yew shadow, the still house: the whir of the lawn-mower was music at once pastoral and patriotic. He heard the break in her voice; he saw the girlish grace of her thin shape, the pathetic charm of her wistful mouth. And he lied with a good heart.
"My dear," he said, with a tremble in his voice that sounded like passion, "my dear—it's not for that—I love you, Dolly—I think I must have loved you all my life!"
And at the light that leaped into her eyes he suddenly felt that this lie was nearer truth than he had known.
"I love you, dear—I love you," he repeated, and the words were oddly pleasant to say. "Won't you love me a little, too?"
She covered her face with her hands. She could no more have doubted him than she could have doubted the God to whom she had prayed night and morning for all these lonely years.
"Love you a little?" she said softly. "Ah! Robert, don't you know that I've loved you all my life?"
So a lie won what truth could not gain. And the odd thing is that the lie has now grown quite true, and he really believes that he has always loved her, just as he certainly loves her now. For some lies come true in the telling. But most of them do not, and it is not wise to try experiments.
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