Owen Leath did not go back with his step-mother to Givre.
In reply to her suggestion he announced his intention ofstaying on a day or two longer in Paris.
Anna left alone by the first train the next morning. Darrowwas to follow in the afternoon. When Owen had left them theevening before, Darrow waited a moment for her to speak;then, as she said nothing, he asked her if she really wishedhim to return to Givre. She made a mute sign of assent, andhe added: "For you know that, much as I'm ready to do forOwen, I can't do that for him--I can't go back to be sentaway again.""No--no!"He came nearer, and looked at her, and she went to him. Allher fears seemed to fall from her as he held her. It was adifferent feeling from any she had known before: confusedand turbid, as if secret shames and rancours stirred in it,yet richer, deeper, more enslaving. She leaned her headback and shut her eyes beneath his kisses. She knew nowthat she could never give him up.
Nevertheless she asked him, the next morning, to let her goback alone to Givre. She wanted time to think. She wasconvinced that what had happened was inevitable, that sheand Darrow belonged to each other, and that he was right insaying no past folly could ever put them asunder. If therewas a shade of difference in her feeling for him it was thatof an added intensity. She felt restless, insecure out ofhis sight: she had a sense of incompleteness, of passionatedependence, that was somehow at variance with her ownconception of her character.
It was partly the consciousness of this change in herselfthat made her want to be alone. The solitude of her innerlife had given her the habit of these hours of self-examination, and she needed them as she needed her morningplunge into cold water.
During the journey she tried to review what had happened inthe light of her new decision and of her sudden relief frompain. She seemed to herself to have passed through somefiery initiation from which she had emerged seared andquivering, but clutching to her breast a magic talisman.
Sophy Viner had cried out to her: "Some day you'll know!"and Darrow had used the same words. They meant, shesupposed, that when she had explored the intricacies anddarknesses of her own heart her judgment of others would beless absolute. Well, she knew now--knew weaknesses andstrengths she had not dreamed of, and the deep discord andstill deeper complicities between what thought in her andwhat blindly wanted...
Her mind turned anxiously to Owen. At least the blow thatwas to fall on him would not seem to have been inflicted byher hand. He would be left with the impression that hisbreach with Sophy Viner was due to one of the ordinarycauses of such disruptions: though he must lose her, hismemory of her would not be poisoned. Anna never for amoment permitted herself the delusion that she had renewedher promise to Darrow in order to spare her step-son thislast refinement of misery. She knew she had been promptedby the irresistible impulse to hold fast to what was mostprecious to her, and that Owen's arrival on the scene hadbeen the pretext for her decision, and not its cause; yetshe felt herself fortified by the thought of what she hadspared him. It was as though a star she had been used tofollow had shed its familiar ray on ways unknown to her.
All through these meditations ran the undercurrent of anabsolute trust in Sophy Viner. She thought of the girl witha mingling of antipathy and confidence. It was humiliatingto her pride to recognize kindred impulses in a characterwhich she would have liked to feel completely alien to her.
But what indeed was the girl really like? She seemed to haveno scruples and a thousand delicacies. She had givenherself to Darrow, and concealed the episode from OwenLeath, with no more apparent sense of debasement than thevulgarest of adventuresses; yet she had instantly obeyed thevoice of her heart when it bade her part from the one andserve the other.
Anna tried to picture what the girl's life must have been:
what experiences, what initiations, had formed her. But herown training had been too different: there were veils shecould not lift. She looked back at her married life, andits colourless uniformity took on an air of high restraintand order. Was it because she had been so incurious that ithad worn that look to her? It struck her with amazement thatshe had never given a thought to her husband's past, orwondered what he did and where he went when he was away fromher. If she had been asked what she supposed he thoughtabout when they were apart, she would instantly haveanswered: his snuff-boxes. It had never occurred to herthat he might have passions, interests, preoccupations ofwhich she was absolutely ignorant. Yet he went up to Parisrather regularly: ostensibly to attend sales andexhibitions, or to confer with dealers and collectors. Shetried to picture him, straight, trim, beautifully brushedand varnished, walking furtively down a quiet street, andlooking about him before he slipped into a doorway. Sheunderstood now that she had been cold to him: what morelikely than that he had sought compensations? All men werelike that, she supposed--no doubt her simplicity had amusedhim.
In the act of transposing Fraser Leath into a Don Juan shewas pulled up by the ironic perception that she was simplytrying to justify Darrow. She wanted to think that all menwere "like that" because Darrow was "like that": she wantedto justify her acceptance of the fact by persuading herselfthat only through such concessions could women like herselfhope to keep what they could not give up. And suddenly shewas filled with anger at her blindness, and then at herdisastrous attempt to see. Why had she forced the truth outof Darrow? If only she had held her tongue nothing need everhave been known. Sophy Viner would have broken herengagement, Owen would have been sent around the world, andher own dream would have been unshattered. But she hadprobed, insisted, cross-examined, not rested till she haddragged the secret to the ligh............