She had been playing for perhaps an hour, when a sudden exhaustion
seized upon her, and her hands fell nerveless and inert upon her lap;
she dropped her chin upon her breast and closed her eyes. She was
drunken with her own music.
When she opened them again a few moments later, they fell upon the
face of Arthur Stuart, who stood a few feet distant regarding her
with haggard eyes. Unexpected and strange as his presence was, Joy
felt neither surprise nor wonder. She had been thinking of him so
intensely, he had been so interwoven with the music she had been
playing, that his bodily presence appeared to her as a natural
result. He was the first to speak; and when he spoke she noticed
that his voice sounded hoarse and broken, and that his face was drawn
and pale.
"I came to Beryngford this morning expressly to see you, Joy," he
said. "I have many things to say to you. I went to your residence
and was told by the maid that I would find you here. I followed, as
you see. We have had many meetings in church edifices, in organ
lofts. It seems natural to find you in such a place, but I fear it
will be unnatural and unfitting to say to you here, what I came to
say. Shall we return to your home?"
His eyes shone strangely from dusky caverns, and there were deep
lines about his mouth.
"He, too, has suffered," thought Joy; "I have not borne it all
alone." Then she said aloud: "We are quite undisturbed here; I know of nothing I could listen to
in my room which I could not hear you say in this place. Go on."
He looked at her silently for a moment, his cheeks pale, his breast
heaving. Before he came to Beryngford, he had fought his battle
between religion and human passion, and passion had won. He had cast
under his feet every principle and tradition in which he had been
reared, and resolved to live alone henceforth for the love and
companionship of one human being, could he obtain her consent to go
with him.
Yet for the moment, he hesitated to speak the words he had resolved
to utter, under the roof of a house of God, so strong were the
influences of his early training and his habits of thought. But as
his eyes feasted upon the face before him, his hesitation vanished,
and he leaned toward her and spoke. "Joy," he said, "three years ago
I went away and left you in sorrow, alone, because I was afraid to
brave public opinion, afraid to displease my mother and ask you to be
my wife. The story your mother told me of your birth, a story she
left in manuscript for you to read, made a social coward of me. I
was afraid to take a girl born out of wedlock to be my life
companion, the mother of my children. Well, I married a girl born in
wedlock; and where is my companion?" He paused and laughed
recklessly. Then he went on hurriedly: "She is in an asylum for the
insane. I am chained to a corpse for life. I had not enough moral
courage three-years ago to make you my wife. But I have moral
courage enough now to come here and ask you to go with me to
Australia, and begin a new life together. My mother died a year ago.
I donned the surplice at her bidding. I will abandon it at the
bidding of Love. I sinned against heaven in marrying a woman I did
not love. I am willing to sin against the laws of man by living with
the woman I do love; will you go with me, Joy?" There was silence
save for the beating of the rain against the stained window, and the
wailing of the wind.