When she woke the next morning she felt a great lightness ofheart. She recalled her last awakening at Givre, three daysbefore, when it had seemed as though all her life had gonedown in darkness. Now Darrow was once more under the sameroof with her, and once more his nearness sufficed to makethe looming horror drop away. She could almost have smiledat her scruples of the night before: as she looked back onthem they seemed to belong to the old ignorant timorous timewhen she had feared to look life in the face, and had beenblind to the mysteries and contradictions of the human heartbecause her own had not been revealed to her. Darrow hadsaid: "You were made to feel everything"; and to feel wassurely better than to judge.
When she came downstairs he was already in the oak-room withEffie and Madame de Chantelle, and the sense of reassurancewhich his presence gave her was merged in the relief of notbeing able to speak of what was between them. But there itwas, inevitably, and whenever they looked at each other theysaw it. In her dread of giving it a more tangible shape shetried to devise means of keeping the little girl with her,and, when the latter had been called away by the nurse,found an excuse for following Madame de Chantelle upstairsto the purple sitting-room. But a confidential talk withMadame de Chantelle implied the detailed discussion of plansof which Anna could hardly yet bear to consider the vaguestoutline: the date of her marriage, the relative advantagesof sailing from London or Lisbon, the possibility of hiringa habitable house at their new post; and, when theseproblems were exhausted, the application of the same methodto the subject of Owen's future.
His grandmother, having no suspicion of the real reason ofSophy Viner's departure, had thought it "extremely suitable"of the young girl to withdraw to the shelter of her oldfriends' roof in the hour of bridal preparation. Thismaidenly retreat had in fact impressed Madame de Chantelleso favourably that she was disposed for the first time totalk over Owen's projects; and as every human eventtranslated itself for her into terms of social and domesticdetail, Anna had perforce to travel the same round again.
She felt a momentary relief when Darrow presently joinedthem; but his coming served only to draw the conversationback to the question of their own future, and Anna felt anew pang as she heard him calmly and lucidly discussing it.
Did such self-possession imply indifference or insincerity?
In that problem her mind perpetually revolved; and shedreaded the one answer as much as the other.
She was resolved to keep on her course as though nothing hadhappened: to marry Darrow and never let the consciousness ofthe past intrude itself between them; but she was beginningto feel that the only way of attaining to this state ofdetachment from the irreparable was once for all to turnback with him to its contemplation. As soon as this desirehad germinated it became so strong in her that she regrettedhaving promised Effie to take her out for the afternoon.
But she could think of no pretext for disappointing thelittle girl, and soon after luncheon the three set forth inthe motor to show Darrow a chateau famous in the annals ofthe region. During their excursion Anna found it impossibleto guess from his demeanour if Effie's presence between themwas as much of a strain to his composure as to hers. Heremained imperturbably good-humoured and appreciative whilethey went the round of the monument, and she remarked onlythat when he thought himself unnoticed his face grew graveand his answers came less promptly.
On the way back, two or three miles from Givre, she suddenlyproposed that they should walk home through the forest whichskirted that side of the park. Darrow acquiesced, and theygot out and sent Effie on in the motor. Their way ledthrough a bit of sober French woodland, flat as a fadedtapestry, but with gleams of live emerald lingering here andthere among its browns and ochres. The luminous grey airgave vividness to its dying colours, and veiled the distantglimpses of the landscape in soft uncertainty. In such asolitude Anna had fancied it would be easier to speak; butas she walked beside Darrow over the deep soundless flooringof brown moss the words on her lips took flight again. Itseemed impossible to break the spell of quiet joy which hispresence laid on her, and when he began to talk of the placethey had just visited she answered his questions and thenwaited for what he should say next...No, decidedly she couldnot speak; she no longer even knew what she had meant tosay...
The same experience repeated itself several times that dayand the next. When she and Darrow were apart she exhaustedherself in appeal and interrogation, she formulated with afervent lucidity every point in her imaginary argument. Butas soon as she was alone with him something deeper thanreason and subtler than shyness laid its benumbing touchupon her, and the desire to speak became merely a dimdisquietude, through which his looks, his words, his touch,reached her as through a mist of bodily pain. Yet thisinertia was torn by wild flashes of resistance, and whenthey were apart she began to prepare again what she meant tosay to him.
She knew he could not be with her without being aware ofthis inner turmoil, and she hoped he would break the spellby some releasing word. But she presently understood thathe recognized the futility of words, and was resolutely benton holding her to her own purpose of behaving as if nothinghad happened. Once more she inwardly accused him ofinsensibility, and her imagination was beset by tormentingvisions of his past...Had such things happened to himbefore? If the episode had been an isolated accident--"amoment of folly and madness", as he had called it--she couldunderstand, or at least begin to understand (for at acertain point her imagination always turned back); but if itwere a mere link in a chain of similar experiments, thethought of it............