Forgive me! forgive me!

   Ah, Marguerite, fain

Would these arms reach to clasp thee:—

   But see! ‘tis in vain.

In the void air towards thee My strain’d arms are cast.

But a sea rolls between us—

   Our different past.

—Matthew Arnold, “Parting” (1853)

A minute’s silence. By a little upward movement of the head she showed she had recovered. She half turned.

“May I finish? There is little more to add.”

“Pray do not distress yourself.”

She bowed in promise, then went on. “He left the next day. There was a ship. He had excuses. His family difficulties, his long stay from home. He said he would return at once. I knew he was lying. But I said nothing. Perhaps you think I should have returned to Mrs. Talbot and pretended that I had indeed been at Sherborne. But I could not hide my feelings, Mr. Smithson. I was in a daze of despair. It was enough to see my face to know some life-changing event had taken place in my absence. And I could not lie to Mrs. Talbot. I did not wish to lie.”

“Then you told her what you have just told me?”

She looked down at her hands. “No. I told her that I had met Varguennes. That he would return one day to marry me. I spoke thus ... not out of pride. Mrs. Talbot had the heart to understand the truth—I mean to forgive me—but I could not tell her that it was partly her own happiness that had driven me.”

“When did you learn that he was married?”

“A month later. He made himself out an unhappy hus-band. He spoke still of love, of an arrangement ... it was no shock. I felt no pain. I replied without anger. I told him my affection for him had ceased, I wished never to see him again.”

“And you have concealed it from everyone but myself?”

She waited a long time before answering. “Yes. For the reason I said.”

“To punish yourself?”

“To be what I must be. An outcast.”

Charles remembered Dr. Grogan’s commonsensical reac-tion to his own concern for her. “But my dear Miss Woodruff, if every woman who’d been deceived by some unscrupulous member of my sex were to behave as you have—I fear the country would be full of outcasts.”

“It is.”

“Now come, that’s absurd.”

“Outcasts who are afraid to seem so.”

He stared at her back; and recalled something else that Dr. Grogan had said—about patients who refused to take medicine. But he determined to make one more try. He leaned forward, his hands clasped.

“I can very well understand how unhappy some circum-stances must seem to a person of education and intelligence. But should not those very qualities enable one to triumph—“

Now she stood, abruptly, and moved towards the edge of the bluff. Charles hastily followed and stood beside her, ready to seize her arm—for he saw his uninspired words of counsel had had the very contrary effect to that intended. She stared out to sea, and something in the set of her face suggested to him that she felt she had made a mistake; that he was trite, a mere mouther of convention. There was something male about her there. Charles felt himself an old woman; and did not like the feeling.

“Forgive me. I ask too much, perhaps. But I meant well.”

She lowered her head, acknowledging the implicit apology; but then resumed her stare out to sea. They were now more exposed, visible to anyone in the trees below.

“And please step back a little. It is not safe here.”

She turned and looked at him then. There was once again a kind of penetration of his real motive that was disconcert-ingly naked. We can sometimes recognize the looks of a century ago on a modern face; but never those of a century to come. A moment, then she walked past him back to the thorn. He stood in the center of the little arena.

“What you have told me does but confirm my previous sentiment. You must leave Lyme.”

“If I leave here I leave my shame. Then I am lost.”

She reached up and touched a branch of the hawthorn. He could not be sure, but she seemed deliberately to press her forefinger down; a second later she was staring at a crimson drop of blood. She looked at it a moment, then took a handkerchief from her pocket and surreptitiously dabbed the blood away.

He left a silence, then sprang it on her.

“Why did you refuse Dr. Grogan’s help last summer?” Her eyes flashed round at him accusingly, but he was ready for that reaction. “Yes—I asked him his opinion. You cannot deny that I had a right to.”

She turned away again. “Yes. You had right.”

“Then you must answer me.”

“Because I did not choose to go to him for help. I mean nothing against him. I know he wished to help.”

“And was not his advice the same as mine?”

“Yes.”

“Then with respect I must remind you of your promise to me.”

She did not answer. But that was an answer. Charles went some steps closer to where she stood staring into the thorn branches.

“Miss Woodruff?”

“Now you know the truth—can you still tender that ad-vice?”

“Most certainly.”

“Then you forgive me my sin?”

This brought up Charles a little short. “You put far too high a value on my forgiveness. The essential is that you forgive yourself your sin. And you can never do that here.”

“You did not answer my question, Mr. Smithson.”

“Heaven forbid I should pronounce on what only Our Maker can decide. But I am convinced, we are all convinced that you have done sufficient penance. You are forgiven.”

“And may be forgotten.”

The dry finality of her voice puzzled him a moment. Then he smiled. “If you mean by that that your friends here intend no practical assistance—“

“I did not mean that. I know they mean kindly. But I am like this thorn tree, Mr. Smithson. No one reproaches it for growing here in this solitude. It is when it walks down Broad Street that it offends society.”

He made a little puff of protest. “But my dear Miss Woodruff, you cannot tell me it is your duty to offend society.” He added, “If that is what I am to infer.”

She half turned. “But is it not that society wishes to remove me to another solitude?”

“What you question now is the justice of existence.”

“And that is forbidden?”

“Not forbidden. But fruitless.”

She shook her head. “There are fruit. Though bitter.”

But it was said without contradiction, with a deep sadness, almost to herself. Charles was overcome, as by a backwash from her wave of confession, by a sense of waste. He perceived that her directness of look was matched by a directness of thought and language—that what had on occa-sion struck him before as a presumption of intellectual equal-ity (therefore a suspect resentment against man) was less an equality than a proximity, a proximity like a nakedness, an intimacy of thought and feeling hitherto unimaginable to him in the context of a relationship with a woman.

He did not think this subjectively, but objectively: here, if only some free man had the wit to see it, is a remarkable woman. The feeling was not of male envy: but very much of human loss. Abruptly he reached out his hand and touched her shoulder in a gesture of comfort; and as quickly turned away. There was a silence.

As if she sensed his frustration, she spoke. “You think then that I should leave?”

At once he felt released and turned eagerly back to her.

“I beg you to. New surroundings, new faces ... and have no worries as regards the practical considerations. We await only your decision to interest ourselves on your behalf.”

“May I have a day or two to reflect?”

“If it so be you feel it necessary.” He took his chance; and grasped the normality she made so elusive. “And I propose that we now put the matter under Mrs. Tranter’s auspices. If you will permit, I will see to it that her purse is provided for any needs you may have.”

Her head bowed; she seemed near tears again. She mur-mured, “I don’t deserve such kindness. I...”

“Say no more. I cannot think of money better spent.”

A delicate tinge of triumph was running through Charles. It had be............